Interview
Roy Meier as a possible interviewee for the Wisconsin Agriculturalists Oral History Project was first brought to my [interviewer Dale Treleven's] attention by Society employee Mark Knipping, at the time a field representative. Knipping's assessment of an individual brimming with information about the development of agriculture and logging, its crucial counterpart for that area of the state, proved to be an understatement. Beyond the detail Meier could provide about his rural neighborhood in general, I decided to tape Meier as a type of agriculturalist whose farm remained a very modest-sized operation but one that nevertheless provided a reliable source of income when added to logging profits. At the same time, Meier supplemented his income in many ways such as working on, then supervising road crews in the Town of Spirit, and by hauling farmers' livestock to receiving stations.
I first met Roy Meier on February 13, 1979, toured his museum, and chatted with Roy and his wife (the former Helen Pearson from the nearby Tim's Hill area) while seated around the kitchen table of their modest but comfortable farm house. I returned to the Meier farm on three consecutive mornings from March 21-23, 1979, for taping sessions in the morning until noon on the 21st and 22nd before leaving to complete other Society field work.
After completing the March 23rd taping session in Meier's living room, also the location of the earlier sessions, we ate a light lunch before I drove him around the neighborhood with tape recorder operating. Despite a persistent storm which combined snow and sleet (the listener will hear our voices amidst windshield wipers and drivulets on metal), the excursion added much to the completeness of the interview series. Among the resources researchers will find preserved to supplement this interview are photocopied portions of plat maps that, when used with the attached abstract, will allow them to locate the section, farmstead, or structure that Meier discussed during the excursion. The entire interview, when used with other materials donated to the Society's collections by Roy Meier, provides researchers with an abundance of information about the life, activities, and remembrances of a most remarkable individual and his rural neighbors in a northern Wisconsin county. Other researchers may desire to read Jeanette Gilge's Never Miss a Sunset (Elgin, IL: David C. Cook Publishing Co., 1975), the basis of which is the Karl Albert Maier family in 1902-1903.
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 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 “FAMILY COMPOSITION” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 04:45 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “four minutes, forty-five seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “FAMILY COMPOSITION” continues until approximately 07:10, at which point discussion of the next topic (“ORIGINS OF MEIER FAMILY”) begins.
Notice that in most cases, sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “FAMILY COMPOSITION” give further details on what appears on the tape between 04:45 and 07:10.
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 to locate easily distinct topics and discussion among the many minutes of commentary.
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, organizations, books, periodicals), distinct historical phenomena (Depression, Crash, World War II, McCarthyism), and concepts and activities (economy in government, ethnicity, organizing, collective bargaining) which appear on the tape/in the abstract. Each entry is followed by one or more citations specifying the location(s) where the entry appears. For instance, Americanism is followed by the citation 1:1, 24:00. This indicates that a reference to Americanism appears on Tape 1, Side 1, within the time-marking beginning at 24:00 of the time announcement. The index includes cross references but no subheadings except where there are a considerable number of entries for a heading that may be easily divided.
