His mistake was killing a snake, 29 years ago

In the summer of 1990, the La Crosse Tribune printed four letters to the editor on a single day which all sharply criticized an area man who had killed a rattlesnake in Hixon Forest. They said a snake in a wildlife preserve should not have been killed, and one writer called the man a “misguided do-gooder.” That same summer, a rare bird turned up in Jackson County. The Kirtland’s warbler was normally only seen in Michigan during the warm weather months.

A 29-year-old Texas man was telling the media he had proof that his father shot President Kennedy in 1963. The unemployed salesman said his father, a former Dallas policeman, fired two of the shots that killed JFK, and that suspected shooter Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire any of the fatal shots, although he was part of the assassination plot. Supposedly, the evidence was written in the father’s diary, and the father had died eight years after the shooting. A former CIA director said the evidence was fake.

Roseanne Barr had a hit TV show in 1990, but many Americans, including President Bush, were outraged when Barr sang the national anthem badly and grabbed herself at a baseball game. Shortly after that incident, Roseanne performed at the St. Paul Riverfest and joked about singing the anthem. A newspaper cartoon singled out Roseanne, along with Richard Nixon and Bob Hope, as three famous people who should not be given a youth hormone, so they could live longer. Roseanne and the anthem, in 1990, yesterday in La Crosse.