Checking on the cops, 33 years ago

The CB radio fad may have been done by 1984, but special radios were still popular…especially police scanners, for people to listen to squad-car radios.  Wettstein’s in La Crosse was selling a Bearcat scanner for $99.

If you wanted a good car radio with a cassette player, you could buy a Clarion model for about $200 at Schaak Electronics in Valley View Mall. 

Talk radio was becoming popular in 1984.  Listeners to WIZM could hear Talknet at night, to get financial advice from Bruce Williams or information about personal affairs from Sally Jessy Raphael.  Both hosts later came to La Crosse for public appearances.  And Larry King was on late at night.  He hadn’t started his TV show on CNN yet.

In ’84, NASA was beginning to take applications for civilian astronauts.  The official job title was “space flight participant.”  The first civilian on a space shuttle crew was teacher Christa McAuliffe, whose died in the Challenger disaster in 1986.  We wouldn’t get a teacher leading lessons in orbit until more than 20 years later.  NASA was searching for civilians 33 years ago, yesterday in La Crosse.