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Yesterday in La Crosse

“Concrete streets can ignore Father Time”…a claim made 53 years ago

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Fifty-three years ago, the Portland Cement Association of Milwaukee was running newspaper ads in La Crosse touting the long life of a street made of concrete.  The ad said that concrete pavement installed early in the century was designed for light traffic loads, such as horse-drawn buggies and small cars.  But many of those old roads were still in good shape.  The first concrete road in Wisconsin was built in 1908, in Fond du Lac.
 
In the fall of ’64, Americans waited for an official government report on the assassination of their president, almost a year earlier.  TV networks aired live news reports at the hour when the Warren Commission report was released on a Sunday afternoon in September.  The panel headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in the shooting, and that he did not conspire with anyone else.
 
The Packers had that Sunday off.  They were playing a rare Monday night game at Detroit, and won it 14-to-10…but they couldn’t win the division that year.  It was the last time Green Bay failed to win a league championship during Vince Lombardi’s run as head coach.  Fifty-three years ago, 1964, yesterday in La Crosse.
 

A native of Prairie du Chien, Brad graduated from UW - La Crosse and has worked in radio news for more than 30 years, mostly in the La Crosse area. He regularly covers local courts and city and county government. Brad produces the features "Yesterday in La Crosse" and "What's Buried on Brad's Desk." He also writes the website "Triviazoids," which finds odd connections between events that happen on a certain date, and he writes and performs with the local comedy group Heart of La Crosse. Brad been featured on several national TV programs because of his memory skills.

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