“Name that Year” is designed to put your knowledge of Tracy and its newsmakers of the past to the test. Each week, we will publish a news item that ran in a past edition — maybe it was a major event, or a story about a Tracy resident — it’s up to you to determine in what year that particular news item hit the pages of the paper:
• THE APPEARANCE OF THE CHICAGO KNOCKERS — an all-women mud wrestling team — before 1,200 fans at this year’s Lyon County Fair didn’t go on without controversy.
“This can’t pass without comment,” said Lynn Seeling of Marshall. “This trash is not entertainment.”
Seeling said that she and others were not protesting the women who belonged to the team. What demonstrators objected to was the type of entertainment the Knockers brought to a county fair.
“The point is,” said Scot Kindschi, “is that this is the Lyon County Fair. This is for moms, dads and kids. This type of entertainment is teaching children that it’s okay to degrade women in this fashion.”
Kindschi added that this type of entertainment is, “fine at the corner bar, no one cares, but it’s not for the county fairs.”
The protesting of the entertainment at the fair started with the National Organization For Women, (NOW) said Roma Mortenson-Kindschi.
“We became involved because the fair board is due for a change,” Mortenson-Kindschi said.
Mortenson-Kindschi said that they wanted people to realize that there are people in Lyon County who do not approve of the type of entertainment chosen for the grandstand this year.
To choose the entertainment members of the fair board, attend a convention in Minneapolis each January to see what is available for entertainment.
“We pick something we can afford and that people would like,” said board member Gorden Breczinski. “I don’t approve of a lot of things people do,” Breczinski said, “But I don’t protest them either.”
Owner of the Chicago Knockers, Tom Sailor, compared this entertainment to a movie.
“If you want to go see it, you go. If you don’t want to go, no one forces you to.”
• Last week’s answer: The Peoples Natural Gas office in Tracy closed Aug. 4, 1995.
