Profile of Stoughton, "Wisconsin Communities"

MAN: A man had a dream. The dreamer was Luke Stoughton. The dream was a founding of a town.

SCHMIDT: Many men have dreams, but often they are planted in mists of fantasy and fall short of realization. This dream, though, was different. It was firmly rooted in man's need for opportunity for elbow room. This dream was unusual, because it came true. The dream of founding a town was based on deep, rich land, land a man could farm without breaking his back in plow; land which was cheap and easily had; land bursting with elbow room and opportunity. Wisconsin land.

[organ music]

[sound of children at recess]

SCHMIDT: We said that Stoughton's dream came true. For proof we offer these sounds captured by our tape recorder. This is the sound of a Stoughton playground at recess.

[recess sounds]

[factory sounds]

SCHMIDT: This is the sound of Stoughton men at work in Stoughton industry.

[milking sounds]

SCHMIDT: This is the sound of a Stoughton farmer milking his cows.

[train whistle]

SCHMIDT: And this is the sound of transportation connecting Stoughton with our markets. These are vital sounds in Stoughton, 1950. These, then, are some of the 00:02:00results of Luke Stoughton's dream.

ANNOUNCER: The Wisconsin College of the Air presents: Wisconsin Communities, a new series of documentary programs. Wisconsin Communities profiles sketches of the Badger State. Here now is your producer-narrator, Carl Schmidt.

SCHMIDT: How does a town spring up? Why do people stop there? Why do they stay? What are the essential ingredients of a community? What makes it tick? These are the questions we'll be asking about Wisconsin communities. The answers are not obvious. They're often composed of intangibles, difficult to find, and still more difficult to express; answers sometimes found in such things as luck, ignorance, fortitude, or the weather. And so we ask you to watch with us as we 00:03:00tell these stories. Watch for the answers to our questions: why do people settle here, and why do they stay? What makes the town tick? Eighteen miles south of Madison on U.S. Highway 51, the road slopes down to the Yahara River and winds through Main Street, Stoughton, Wisconsin. We search for answers to our questions in this community of 5,000 people. We looked around for some of the old-timers; the first settlers, of course, are gone. People like Luke Stoughton, who founded the town, on land once owned by Daniel Webster. Or the wheat farmers who first tilled the soil. After all, that was a century ago. But we did find a man deep with the wisdom of a rich life -- a life of observation, study and appreciation of the things around him. In the year 1900, a Norwegian settler 00:04:00fathered a son, Ferd Homme by name. And he endowed that son with many stories of pioneer days. Ferd has woven these and other stories into a history of Stoughton. He talked with us in the power plant where he works. In the background you will hear the hum of 60,000 volts of electricity. Here now is Ferd, and he's answering the question, "Why did the people settle in Stoughton?"

HOMME: Well I suppose the primary reason that the settlement occurred right here is because of the river. Luke Stoughton, who lived in Janesville back in the early '40s, noticed that this place would make a good place for a mill, a good mill site, so he bought the entire plot of land from Daniel 00:05:00Webster. Not from Daniel--I'll back up from that, he didn't buy it from Daniel Webster, but Daniel Webster at one time owned it, and either didn't make the payments or couldn't or something like that. But Stoughton bought it from the state, or territory of Wisconsin. His first move was to build a dam and a flour mill. Most of the settlers were from the East, were interested in raising wheat. That is what they hoped to do. So you can see the importance of the mill. Of course, where a mill exists, it becomes a good place for a blacksmith to establish, for a little hotel to take care of the farmers, who in those days had 00:06:00to come in with their grain by ox team, and, of course, couldn't get very far in one day. Everything was built right around that mill.

SCHMIDT: They came from Norway, these immigrants. They came here in search of a promised land: a land of wealth and perpetual plenty. What they found was often brutally disillusioning. Here's Ferd with an example.

HOMME: My dad tells, for instance, he came here with that idea, he and a son of a minister in Norway. The ministers in Norway were, they were the top of the social class. They had power, prestige, wealth and everything else. So this lad could have stayed in Norway and had everything he wanted. But he came here to pick up some of this easygoing money. They landed in Stoughton, walked about 00:07:00seven miles out into the country, asking different farmers for jobs, and finally got a job planting tobacco in the spring of the year. No tobacco planters. You simply walked along with a basket of plants and a pail full of water, stooped over, poked a hole in the ground, put some water in, put the plant in, one more step and you stooped again. Now from doing that from dawn until dark, this poor lad, who had never done a day's work in his life, he was so tired he couldn't even eat. He just threw himself on the bed and wept and said, "This is where I came to pick my money off the trees, and I've worked like a fool since dawn and I've earned 50 cents." So he went back to Norway. My dad didn't have money enough, so he had 00:08:00to stay.

SCHMIDT: Ferd's dad was 28 years old at that time. He lived to be 96. One man among thousands who thronged a new country in a new world. They settled with a spirit called American, a spirit transplanted from other shores. Here it grew and thrived and won the name American, being nourished here. Today, three out of every four people in Stoughton are of Norwegian descent, and the shores of the old country are still remembered. Old songs and legends, old ways of doing things. People can store them away, alter them, bring them out only on Sundays, but discard them? Never. At Stoughton, for instance, Norwegians still prepare dinners of lutefisk and lefse. We talked with Mrs. Lita Sperle, a Stoughton woman renowned for her experience with this Norwegian dish. Here is Mrs. Sperle answering our question: can you tell us something about lutefisk?

SPERLE: Years ago they used to always call it the "dried fish tusk." It is a 00:09:00Norwegian name. Now I think they make it mostly from codfish, as I understand it. And years ago, of course, the mothers were quite busy, and went out about a month before Thanksgiving to buy this dry tusk or lutefisk as they called it, and they would before that time, they would start to save their wood ashes because they contained lye. And then they would pour water on those ashes to kind of make a brine out of them, and then pour them on the dried lutefisk. And as I remember, they used to soak it in that lye mixture, wood-ashes mixture, for about three weeks. Then they would start the process of--oh, what do you call it--taking that lye out of there after the fish had loosened from its bones and 00:10:00things like that. Then they would--they used to call it watering. That's what they did, watered it out. That would be for three, four days that they would keep on watering it, and then they would, in the meantime they would be starting other batches so, as I remember it, there are lutefisk practically all winter long for the table. And for the church suppers, the various mothers and families would start this process of getting the fish ready for the suppers.

SCHMIDT: Lutefisk goes with lefse like bread with butter, like bacon with eggs. Here's Mrs. Sperle with a description of lefse, and the way it's eaten with lutefisk.

SPERLE: Well, lefse is a, sort of a, it's made with flour, and milk, and shortening. A lot of people use potatoes with it. It's quite a trick in making 00:11:00it so that it's pliable and won't get hard. And they usually use that with your lutefisk, fill the lutefisk--fill the lefse full of lutefisk and melted butter, roll it up and eat it without any idea as to how you look when you are eating it.

SCHMIDT: Like to try some? Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Lutefisk in Stoughton today is a tie with the historic past. It is often used as the reason to gather socially, as at supper in the church basement. Lutefisk is also the basis of a wholesale food concern, and the basis of a unique high school cheer.

CHEERLEADERS: Lutefisk and Lefse, [unintelligible] Stoughton, Stoughton, rah rah rah!

[crowd cheering]

[psalmodicon playing]

SCHMIDT: In Stoughton you will find an instrument called the psalmodicon, one of the few in the country; hollow box, single string, played by stroking the string with a bow. It is a crude affair once used by Norwegian choirs to set pitch. Once there were four psalmodicon players in Stoughton, but [unintelligible] and old age have reduced the number to two. We have recorded a Norwegian folksong for you as played on these psalmodicons.

[psalmodicon music]

SCHMIDT: The two psalmodicons lie flat upon the table, players facing each other. A Mr. Felland built these instruments. He is now dead. But his wife, Mrs. 00:13:00Felland, has kept on teaching the art. A Norwegian folksong played upon the Norwegian psalmodicon. You know, that instrument was familiar to Stoughton in the days of wheat farming, the 1870's or thereabouts. Now days wheat farming, like the psalmodicon, is largely a thing of the past. Wheat was the big thing for Stoughton farmers and townsmen back then. The Stoughton mill was fed by wheat. The crop was a natural for the Norsemen. The seed was easy to grow, farms were small, crops were large. Ferd Homme says Stoughton was like a bit of Norway where farms are always small, but that's part of his story as he set it down in Oak Opening: Ferd's History of the Community. Here he is.

HOMME: We had little spots of prairie in between the groves of oak trees that 00:14:00would lend itself to the farmer who wanted to build a log cabin, and plant a little wheat by hand, and harvest it by hand with a scythe and cradle, and thrash it out by a very primitive method, flail, or having oxen walk around and stomp the grains out of the straw. Even--some of them went to quite a bit of labor to get the chaff out of the grain with no thrashing machine. They'd climb up into a tree with a sack of wheat, and have their womenfolks and children down below holding a blanket on a day with a little breeze. Then he'd pour the wheat out of that sack and the wind would blow the chaff away and they would catch the grain.

SCHMIDT: But the wheat years were limited. Chinch bugs invaded the fields with 00:15:00ravenous appetites. They destroyed the tender stalks. Meanwhile, the yield began to plunge downward, as many harvests took the life out of the soil. Wheat farming was doomed. And so farmers turned to tobacco. Acre upon acre of green leaves rose up, were cultivated, cut down, stripped and stemmed, and then replaced by more rows of green leaves. Acre upon acre.

HOMME: There was more tobacco raised in Dane County, I believe, than anywhere else in the world at one time, and Stoughton was right in the heart of that.

SCHMIDT: We talked with a man who has been a buyer of tobacco around Stoughton all his life -- Andrew Berkland.

BERKLAND: I started in a warehouse in 1897 for John Holtz, down here in a little shack. I was thirteen years old and we had to make a living then. We couldn't go to school. When nine months [unintelligible], that's all. Go to school when you 00:16:00had nothing else to do. Everybody, everybody.

SCHMIDT: There was a time within Andy's memory when small cigar factories, employing two or three men each, made and marketed their product in the surrounding area. By 1920 the last of these were gone, and Stoughton today is primarily a warehouse location. We talked with Andy in the King Edward cigar warehouse, where he was sorting bundles of tobacco from the '49 crop. He's been in tobacco for 53 years, and in that time he's seen a lot of tobacco. We asked Andrew Berkland about the tobacco picture today, as compared with fifty years ago.

BERKLAND: I don't think they raise over 25-30 million pounds in the whole state.

SCHMIDT: In the whole state. Mm hmm.

BERKLAND: They used to raise 50 and 60. They used to be crazy for it, they used to; but the chewing has tapered off, cigarettes is taking their place. Cigars 00:17:00isn't selling so fast. Where they needed three million pounds of scrap, they seem to get along with little, just about a half a million now, or a million. So they're not chewing so much. Think the younger generation has run into cigarettes. I remember in 1910-11, went out here in the country one afternoon, we bought 8 thousand bundles, Will Macintosh and I, good tobacco. Nothing unusual to find them from six to a thousand bundles on a farm. It's gotten to be a big crop now, 200, isn't that right? No tobacco business. Tobacco is going down. Seems sort of tobacco is getting poorer every year; harder to raise it. 00:18:00The weather conditions, or elements, or something.

SCHMIDT: Think it could be the soil, the effect on tobacco?

BERKLAND: Soil has something to do with it. Something's wrong. Wore out, probably.

SCHMIDT: The soil is worn out, probably. Tobacco wears on the soil like wheat wears on the soil. Farmers found that out. Often they solved the problem by moving to other farms, as Ferd Homme puts it.

HOMME: Some of the farmers who made good money at it would even brag that they ruined three farms.

SCHMIDT: There's a rather bitter adage which one hears now and then, it goes like this: The father says, "Well son, here's the farm, it's yours now." And the son says, "Thanks for the farm, dad, but where is the land?" The law of conservation had to he learned and learned the hard way. In the 00:19:001920s, when the tobacco crops failed, the law was a theory no more. It was a fact. You've got to protect the soil to protect yourself. But how? By what means? There laid a problem. It defied farmers around Stoughton, around the state and throughout the Midwest. How? How can a man restore the soil? Today the answers born of necessity are old hat for most of us. Contour plowing, rotate crops, apply fertilizers and, when in doubt, go to school, as farmers do these days. Stoughton today has a busy program of vocational agriculture. Mr. Schaefer, the teacher, is kept busy with two classes in the high school, plus an extensive schedule with adult farmers from the surrounding areas. The agricultural picture today is considerably brighter than it's been at any time in the last thirty years. One of the big reasons is the present practice of soil 00:20:00conservation. We asked Mr. Schaefer if he had any difficulties selling conservation. Here is his answer.

SCHAEFER: Not like it used to be. The resistance is withered away primarily by, example, farmers are doing strip cropping, are putting in terraces where necessary. But mostly they're considered, or are generally concerned about keeping the rough land seeded.

HOMME: All of those things are hopeful indications that the farmers are awakening to the fact that not only tobacco and wheat, but human beings, too, are a product of the soil. They are all a crop and we have to take care of the soil if we are going to continue living.

SCHMIDT: Thanks Ferd. You turn a mighty good phrase.

[factory sounds]

SCHMIDT: This is the sound of busy industry in the Stoughton of today. It was not always so. There were times of boom and bust for Stoughton industry. That in itself is not unusual; most industries in most communities have their ups and downs. But in Stoughton the economic storm swept in suddenly, and in a matter of minutes the devastation was complete. Herewith: the story of Stoughton industry. First came the wheat farmers, and there was business for a mill. Then followed more farmers and more wheat. Soon there was need of wagons for transport. A factory sprang up. The railroad came to town, broadening the factory's market possibilities. This factory was the only industry in town. The Mandt wagonworks. Time and hardship have erased that company, but some of the old-timers remember 00:22:00it with affection. We turn now to a gentleman who is three generations old. His name is Chris Nesten. His accent rich and distinctly Norwegian, Chris worked at the wagonworks at the turn of the century.

NESTEN: When I first started to work down in the shop there, that was in the spring of 1899. It was that, it was slack times at that time of the year. I was a stranger there, I didn't know anybody around the shop, but I found it to be a very friendly place. Everybody was friendly, they saw a new man coming, everybody friendly, asked "where are you from," and so forth and so on. Of course, everyone was very much interested if I intend to stay, be a wagon maker, and so forth and so on. But I found that a very friendly group of men, and they were helpful in every way. Our wages were very small, but the cost of living was according.

SCHMIDT: Yes, the cost of living was according. Want to compare it with your cost of living in the atomic age? After listening to Chris you get hungry for the old days. Problems were simpler then, the pace of living slower, the likelihood of seeing your children grow up more probable. But what happens, what happens when the only industry in town folds up? Get that: the only industry in town folds up. Is there anything short of catastrophic in that? Do you call that a simple problem? We are moving to the outskirts of Stoughton again, and we are talking with Ferd Homme.

HOMME: At one time there were two wagon factories here, one had a monthly payroll of $90,000, the other one had a payroll of $50,000 a month. That meant 00:24:00$140,000 a month coming into a small town. All of a sudden, that stops. Ghost towns have resulted from much lesser calamities than that.

SCHMIDT: And there it was. The death of industry in Stoughton. Men out of jobs. The year was 1922. It was a fateful year, a doubly fateful year because Stoughton farmers were in trouble, too. Their tobacco lands were giving out, and now the wagonworks. It was suddenly discovered that the market for wagons was largely gone. A man by the name of Henry Ford had quite a bit to do with that. The wagonworks had made the difference between a little mill center, and a thriving industrial area nourishing the families of many Norwegian immigrants. The population of Stoughton was justified only in terms of the jobs available at the wagonworks. And now, those jobs were gone. Something had to be done. For 00:25:00some, the only answer was to move elsewhere in search of work. For others who could stick it out a little longer, the storm finally subsided and the sun broke through. Here's Ferd with the rest of the story.

HOMME: The city bought the land and buildings, largely, that these two factories were using, and went into that labor to try to urge other manufacturers to come here and start up. Offered them free buildings, free taxes, and everything else to try to encourage them. And we had some success. That's what brought such concerns as the Highway Trailer here, and some of the other factories that helped carry 00:26:00us along through that period. And then of course, when this last war started with its attending boom, Stoughton prospered like all other towns. That is what put us on our feet again.

SCHMIDT: And what does it sound like to bounce back? Listen a moment.

[sounds of a machine shop]

SCHMIDT: That's how it sounds. Punch press and lathes spinning out the products of industry. The same industrial might that bounced back during the war years: bounced back because it had an investment to protect, the lives of Stoughton men. The job was well done, awards for merit will tell you that. It was a personal job for Stoughton. The home front here was never very far from the fighting front. We know that, we took a walk down Main Street. At the corner of Main and Fifth, we stopped. There before us was a white panel, gray with the 00:27:00names of the war dead: Stoughton's investment in World War II. We were not surprised at the number, we expected to find a long roster. Part of the backbone of the 32nd Division came from here. The Division left so many of its number on the black beaches of Pacific islands. And so, the wheels of industry are turning once more in Stoughton. Did the experience of the '20s teach Stoughton anything? In search of an answer we visited a factory. We chose one that bridges past and present: The Stoughton Cab and Body Company. Here is a company that makes wagon tops, only they are modern wagons and you can put six men in the truck drivers cab. Head of the company is Bob Peterson. He took us into his office, and there 00:28:00behind his desk we saw pictures of his product, cabs, all sizes already fitted on trucks. First off, we asked Bob about his company and how it started. The next voice is that of Mr. Peterson as he talks with us.

PETERSON: The Stoughton Cab and Body company was organized as it is at present in 1937. Or 18--yes, 1937. But it really is the inheritor of the Stoughton Wagon companies of the past. That is, the tradition and the skills of the workmen have been carried over into the manufacture of cabs and truck bodies.

SCHMIDT: I see. Could you tell us a little more in detail about your product, about what you are making here?

PETERSON: We make all sorts of truck bodies or van bodies. Also special cabs such as large crew cabs: 5, 6, 7 and 9 man capacity, as well as sleeper cabs. 00:29:00Then, too, we have made cargo bodies and special cabs for the arctic region for the government.

SCHMIDT: Did you find that some of the skills that were employed in the old wagonworks carrying over, some of those skills being useful in your company?

PETERSON: Yes, definitely. There were men there who were skilled in woodwork. That still is used to some extent especially in van bodies. Then, too, there were men who were skilled in metal work, and that is used a great deal in present construction.

SCHMIDT: As for the industrial outlook in Stoughton, well, here we are asking that question. What is, in your opinion, the industrial outlook in Stoughton? Would you say it's good?

PETERSON: I think the industrial outlook is better than it has been in the past for several reasons. There is a definite move toward the spreading of industries 00:30:00out through the country, away from the centralized areas. Then, too, there is the diversification of industry here today, whereas in the past, Stoughton was pretty much a one-industry place. And under those conditions, the people were at the mercy of success or failure of one industry.

SCHMIDT: And what of the principle industries in town? Can you give us a brief rundown on those? Mr. Peterson again.

PETERSON: Yes, today we have our little company, which employs 50 men. We have the Highway Trailer plant, which employs sometimes as many as 350, perhaps the average is a little less than that. The Armour plant from 50 to 75 men. The mill plant, about the same number; the canning company, the various tobacco companies, the garment factory. All of them employ a number of people.

SCHMIDT: With the number of industries in town working roughly full time, there are enough industries to employ the people now in Stoughton, is that right?

PETERSON: Yes, when they are operating normally.

SCHMIDT: Various industries of several types. Diversification of industry. There's a big lesson that Stoughton has learned from the collapse from its one and only industry back in the '20s. This diversification, these industries mean jobs and security to Stoughton workers. These industries mean five hundred jobs to Stoughton. That's employment enough for every man in the labor supply. But time is short, and we move now into the shop of the Stoughton Cab and Body Company.

[sound of sheet metal shop]

SCHMIDT: We are in the sheet metal shop of the Stoughton Cab and Body Company now. You can tell from the background that this place is bustling with activity. Mr. Peterson is standing beside me here. I wonder if you could give us an 00:32:00idea of some of the operations that are going on around us here now.

PETERSON: The grinding noise you hear in the background is a buffer, which is a sheet of paper with sandpaper on it, grinding off the rough parts of steel. The steel is being spot welded where you hear the clicking noise, spot welded together to form an arctic cab closure, an enclosure to put on army trucks to save men from freezing up in the arctic zones.

SCHMIDT: I notice over here on our left some stamped out parts. Are those doors or cab roofs or something like that?

PETERSON: Yes, you are right. They are the cab roofs and not the door.

SCHMIDT: Are those made here or are they stamped out elsewhere?

PETERSON: They're made here. In our own shop, we make the pattern from which the dies are cast at the neighboring foundry. Then we machine them so that we do 00:33:00practically all of our own tool and die work.

SCHMIDT: Practically the whole operation is done here then?

PETERSON: Yes, we form all of the steel.

SCHMIDT: Industrial Stoughton. 100 years of pioneering. First a mill site, then a wagon center, now a city of industries, old and new. Bob Peterson has told us that the industrial outlook for Stoughton is bright, but what about the farmers? What's happened to them since the bitter lesson of the '20s? Back then, tobacco was king in terms of cash and acreage. Here is Mr. Schaefer, the Vocational Agricultural teacher, talking about the change in crops.

SCHAEFER: Well, as far as the community is concerned around Stoughton, the change has been very dramatic. There is very little wheat grown, and it is only grown for a feed product to be used on the farm. But tobacco, probably back in 00:34:00the '20s, the number of acres was much greater than is grown at the present time.

SCHMIDT: Tobacco is still the top cash crop in the area, and represents a large percentage of the total number of acres under cultivation. The biggest crops, now though, are legumes, for hay and pasture, and then corn, grain, peas, and sweet corn. With improved conservation practices and the increasing awareness of the importance of agricultural welfare, we can report that the farmers' outlook is bright also. How does a community grow up? Why do folks unpack and settle by a river? Is it that a river means power, and power spins a wheel and creates a job? Partly that. But what is it that keeps a man, holds him when crisis and calamity cascade upon a town? Stoughton has known such times. Yet the people pull themselves up by their bootstraps and see it through. Why? What does 00:35:00Stoughton offer these people? We tried to find the answer. Economic opportunity? Of course, that's vital. The opportunity for jobs for financial security. But there are other reasons. Stoughton has a fine school system, famous throughout the state. Parents rely on it for the education of their children. They have faith in it and they protect it with fierce pride. Mr. Olson, the superintendent of schools, had this to say.

OLSON: The Stoughton schools have had the opportunity throughout a good many years of having a great deal of fine support from the community; not only are they interested in the schools from a civic point of view, but they have always 00:36:00indicated a continuing willingness to provide the necessary financial support to operate a good school system. And I think that has been characteristic of the citizens of Stoughton through all these years, a continuing willingness to support their schools in a financial way, as well as in a moral way.

SCHMIDT: Thank you, Mr. Olson.

[band playing]

SCHMIDT: The quality of the Stoughton High School band reflects the pride of parents and students. High school students take a general course and elect studies of special interest to them. Nearly thirty percent of the young people go to college. You know, that figure is way above average. Think of it: one out of every three students entering college. The fact speaks well for Stoughton teachers. After all, haven't they helped in the decision? The desire to learn 00:37:00does not come from books. Nor does the desire to think. It lies dormant within a person, a minor spark that must be kindled and fed by those around you.

[church music]

SCHMIDT: Churches are the mark of a people's faith. There are many of them in Stoughton, nearly all Lutheran, and all of them built since the turn of the century. The newest church is the First Lutheran. A thousand people worship here every Sunday. In the background, you can hear their choir in practice session. The anthem: Salvation is Created. Shall we sit in for a moment?

[church music]

SCHMIDT: A good place to raise a family. That's what a man wants and looks for. Good schools, a church of his faith and a community that's friendly. Good neighbors in Stoughton are as much a tradition as the festival of Norwegian Independence. So it has been for more than a century. We can report having 00:39:00visited Stoughton that it has a friendly climate. But a far better reporter is Chris Nesten. You met him earlier. His memories are mellow, and they suggest a man who has known many friends. We asked him if people really change? Do they seem happier for deluxe gadgets in a super age, or were they just as happy in the days before? How about that, Chris?

NESTEN: Eh, oh, I think that the people are generally as happy in their lot as they were fifty years ago, but it was a smaller group then. The city was smaller. Everybody knew everybody else. You could sit on the street corner and know everybody that went by. The difference may be, of course, that we have more people. It is impossible to know everybody, and to be friendly to everybody. But I think 00:40:00people is just as friendly and live just as happy now as they did.

SCHMIDT: Thanks, Chris. We doubt if Stoughton will ever be a ghost town, so long as men like you strengthen it and help it to endure. No town is a one-man affair. It's the sum of many energies, the strength of many men. Mill workers and wheat farmers, tobacco merchants and warehouse men. They fostered Stoughton. Their sons and their grandsons now sustain it. Today, Stoughton's industrial and agricultural vigor is greater than ever before, a sign of a healthy present and a hopeful future.

[music]

SCHMIDT: There is, of course, more to the Stoughton story than we've been able to tell. There is in this town a heritage of courageous living, a heritage of 00:41:00happy, full living. There is the heritage of eccentric Judge Hans Holversen, wearing a ragged straw hat, summer and winter, but confounding the Madison lawyer who mistook him for a yokel. There is the heritage of Dr. Iverson, performing a successful operation for cataract in 1906 when few surgeons in the whole country who would have dared the job. There is Hans Pickerud, drawing weird plaintive harmony from his eight-string fiddle. There's Mike [unintelligible] his two sons who can step on a scale and tip a thousand pounds. There is Ole Helliksen, high kicker extraordinary. Put a hat on a cane, hold it as high as possible, he'd kick it off. And there's the heritage of Garnwa Greta Swalheim, rowing a boat up the Yahara River to fish when she was over a hundred years old.

[organ music]

SCHMIDT: In 1836 a man had a dream. The dreamer was Luke Stoughton. The dream was of founding a town. The dream came true. The town was founded. People came to the town, came to work, to live, to raise families. This is Stoughton's dream come true.

ANNOUNCER: You have heard "Profile of Stoughton," part 2 in the new College of the Air Series, Wisconsin Communities. Script by Stanley Buchholz and Carl Schmidt. Music by Patricia Hazard. The production was directed by Carl Schmidt. 00:43:00This is the Wisconsin College of the Air.