Interview
I [interviewer Dale Treleven] discussed with Tomter the possibility of an interview in the fall of 1976 at the Trempealeau County Court House, Whitehall. At the end of our visit Tomter agreed to be taped at some future date; in April 1978 I followed up with a letter suggesting areas we might discuss.
Our recorded conversation took place on a beautiful fall day in the board of supervisors room at the Trempealeau County Court House. We were virtually uninterrupted while taping several hours before breaking for lunch and after resuming our discussion for several hours on the afternoon of May 24, 1978. We paused for about twenty minutes during the afternoon while state senator Thomas Harnisch (D-Neillsville) discussed with Tomter some local Democratic party matters.
While Tomter in his mid-fifties was a relatively young person to interview for the Wisconsin Agriculturalists oral history project, I was drawn to him because of his ability to recall and relate clearly aspects of life on a very small farm, quite typical at that time in Trempealeau County, and to discuss frankly how he rose and descended the agricultural ladder. By 1968, however, Tomter had other options. He was widely recognized as a leader in the Trempealeau County Farmers Union during the 1950's and 60's and helped to build the county's “New Democratic party” in the same period. The development of the party in such rural strongholds as Trempealeau County, according to Tomter, occurred because of widespread farmer discontent over the Eisenhower administration's farm policy in general and low parity levels for milk and dairy products in particular. Lester Johnson's special election victory in 1953 to fill the unexpired term of old progressive Republican Congressman Merlin Hull signaled the beginning of a shift to the Democrats by farmers in the West Central and Northwestern regions of the state.
At any rate, a friendly, congenial Harold Tomter ran successfully for county clerk in 1970 on the strength of Farmers Union and Democratic party support. His recollections about the county Farmers Union and county politics in general, along with his remembrances of growing up on a tiny dairy farm, then operating a larger dairy complex on a share basis, mark the strengths of the interview.
Abstract to the Interview
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds, The abstract below lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic on “Automobiles” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 13:05 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “thirteen minutes, five seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “Automobiles” continues until approximately 16:45 at which point discussion of the next topic (“Description of Small, Crowded Farm House”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example the sentences underneath “Automobiles” give further details on what appears on the tape between 13:05 and 16:45.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However the abstract when used with the index will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Index to the Interview
The index, which is keyed to the same time announcement track (second track) as the abstract, gives a single alphabetical listing of proper nouns (persons, places, groups, etc.), distinct historical phenomena (Depression, World War II, etc.) and other aspects of rural life (schools, politics, Trempealeau County, etc.) which appear in the abstract. Each entry is followed by one or more three-part citations specifying the location(s) where the entry appears. For instance, Brannan Farm Plan is followed by 2:2 - 22:50. This indicates a reference to the Brannan Farm Plan appears on Tape 2, Side 2 within the time-marking beginning at twenty-two minutes, fifty seconds of the time announcement
