There was money to be made in fishing licenses, 44 years ago

In 1974, La Crosse County clerk Russ Fiedler reported that he had earned more than 53-hundred dollars in the previous year in fees from licenses issued through his office…mostly from hunting and fishing permits.  That amounted to about one-third of Fiedler’s income.  The clerk’s annual salary in ’74 was 11-thousand dollars.
 
In the months before he resigned over the Watergate scandal, President Nixon’s approval rating was unusually low.  The Harris Poll gave Nixon ratings in the lower 30’s during April and May, but the president dropped to 26 per cent approval in June.  
 
Gundersen Clinic in La Crosse opened a 5-story addition that summer…actually putting the top three floors on some older parts of the building.  The clinic housed just over 100 doctors in La Crosse.  
 
On Memorial Day of ’74, the Ray Stevens comedy record ‘The Streak’ was the number 1 song in America.  At the end of summer, Labor Day weekend, Paul Anka topped the charts with ‘(You’re) Having My Baby’…44 years ago, Yesterday in La Crosse.