Seems like everybody wanted to watch the World Series, 60 years ago

Only one major league baseball club from Wisconsin has ever been a World Series champion, and that was the 1957 Milwaukee Braves.  They beat the Yankees 4 games to 3 that fall, and just about any public place in La Crosse with a TV set tuned to the Series drew a crowd.  The series games were all played in the daytime in those days.  Doerflinger’s department store had five TV sets showing the games.  Banks and hospitals also set up television screens during the ball games…and while La Crosse police were not allowed to have TV’s at headquarters, they could listen to the Braves on the radio.  
 
The La Crosse area lost a state lawmaker in ’57, when Republican Eugene Toepel left the Assembly after just four years.  Governor Vernon Thomson appointed Toepel as a county judge to fill the seat left vacant when Judge Roy Ahlstrom died.  Toepel remained on the bench until the 1980’s.  
 
Louis Armstrong performed at La Crosse’s Avalon Ballroom in 1957.  Satchmo would return to La Crosse seven years later, as a headliner during Oktoberfest.  Popular records around the U.S. that fall included “Jailhouse Rock” by Elvis…the Everly Brothers singing “Wake Up Little Susie”…and a double-sided hit by Pat Boone, “April Love” and “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano,” 60 years ago, yesterday in La Crosse.