Chapter Two Foundation

Chapter Two: Foundation 

It seems true that everything follows from something else so every foundation is essential--whether of a physical construction or an individual life  .

A weak foundation mean weakness in everything subsequent.

For my own foundation, I was lucky this time around to start my life in a stable family with  parents that loved me and brothers that supported and were good to me.

My dad, Andy Wold, always worked as a retail salesman. I never knew him to be home sick a single day in his life. In early years he was a week-end drummer in dance bands and loved to sing old-time popular songs and hymns in church. He was well-liked by his peers and always brought a light edge to every situation with his very subtle Norwegian sense of humor. He had a neat little mustache and mom thought he looked like Clark Gable. He never became a boss--he didn't like that responsibility--but he always provided for his family. I think he always put his family's welfare before his own. He was religious in a quiet and personal way. And he dearly loved my mother--he thought she was terrific. Dad and mom were high-school sweethearts who never fell out of love.

Mom, Lorene Clayton Wold, was the kind of mother a boy is lucky to get. She loved the outdoors, camping, pick-nicks  and campfires, singing gospel songs, digging in the dirt and weeding the garden. She liked to have a dog and a couple of cats, some chickens for eggs and maybe a rabbit or even donkeys, pigs and calves on our half acre "Three Willow Ranch"  on the outskirts of the little town of Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was kind, thoughtful of others and a very sociable little woman--always on the look-out for someone interesting to talk to but fiercely independent as the daughter of a Texan cowboy/contractor. She was deeply religious, loved church activities, Bible study and was proud  when elder brother Joe became a Lutheran minister and missionary.

My two brothers, Joe, Jack, and I were all healthy kids-- active in games and sports, given piano lessons and participating in school drama and singing clubs and drummers in high school marching bands. We were Boy Scouts, Luther Leaguers and did the things typical good boys of the 50's in America did.