Chelmsford, Massachusetts

The town of Chelmsford, Massachusetts is or has been home to many of the principal characters in the Clarkwoods Literary Universe. It was founded in 1655 by European settlers who had been running the indigenous populations of the Massachusetts colony off their ancestral lands for thirty-five years by this point.

The center of town sits at the intersection of five major local roads, and that snarl of pavement was without a traffic light until the year 2004. Some locals called this intersection “Chicken Corner” in the years before the traffic lights came to town—the idea being that you were taking your life into your own hands, as in a game of chicken, when you traveled through the center—but members The Silver Family never called it that. In fact, it was only thanks to out-of-town relatives name-dropping the landmark and the Silvers looking confused that they ever discovered the nickname.

Beyond its wacky intersection and its Chelmsford Ginger Ale, the town is known for… absolutely nothing. Like many Massachusetts suburbs—and suburbs across the United States and the globe—Chelmsford is no place special. But, as Maria Hill said of the country Sokovia in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Chelmsford is on the way to every place special. And that’s gotta count for something, right?