Drunk driving became an issue in the Wisconsin governor’s race, 50 years ago

Gov. Warren Knowles was running for a third two-year term in the fall of 1968. Knowles was promoting traffic safety in his campaign, by showing a girl’s picture in newspaper ads. The ad said “Her name is Nancy. She’s nine years old. Will she be dead on the highway in another nine?” Knowles did win the election.

President Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, became grandparents for the second time in late ’68. Their oldest daughter, Lynda Bird Robb, had a girl. Lynda was married to UW-Madison graduate Chuck Robb. LBJ already had a grandson named Patrick Lyndon Nugent. Patrick’s mother was Luci Baines Johnson, and his father was Patrick Nugent, a graduate of Campion High School in Prairie du Chien and Marquette University.

Spooky TV at Halloween of ’68. Five days a week, you could watch the soap opera “Dark Shadows,” about a vampire named Barnabas. Boris Karloff and “Bewitched” co-star Agnes Moorehead made Halloween appearances on the Jonathan Winters variety show. And you could watch Phyllis Diller on her own show every Sunday night, after “Bonanza.” Scary, huh? That was in 1968, yesterday in La Crosse.