The motel was a part-time college dorm, 43 years ago

In 1975, UW-La Crosse worked out a deal with the Holiday Inn on the pike to send students there in the fall, to ease crowding in the dorms on campus.  Up to 50 women and 30 men would be able to sign up for rooms at the motel, for $350 a semester.  Life at the Holiday Inn, two miles from the university, featured luxuries like private bathrooms, color cable TV, nightly entertainment in the lounge, and the motel swimming pool.

“All in the Family” and “Happy Days” were among the top TV shows in early ’75, while “Gunsmoke” was ending a 20-year run on CBS.  La Crosse was being called a conservative town in terms of entertainment, by the manager of one local TV station.  Peter Good was station manager at WKBT, and he was defending Channel 8’s decisions in recent years not to show certain controversial programs offered by CBS.  WKBT chose not to rerun a two-part episode of the sitcom “Maude” dealing with abortion, because nearly half of La Crosse’s population was Catholic.  And Channel 8 did not run a play called “Sticks and Bones” about a blind Vietnam veteran, because it was timed to run when POW’s were returning to the US from Vietnam.  Good called the play, which appears to portray a murder and an assisted suicide, “atrocious.”  Talk about TV 43 years ago, 1975, yesterday in La Crosse.