David Wold – An old fart who enjoys writing about this and that

I’m an old fart, post 70 but feel younger than I actually am. On the other hand, who knows how you’re supposed to feel regardless of whether you’re 20 or 78 - years old?

I’ve lived in Sweden since 1976 after a six-year stint in San Francisco. The first 30 years of my life, the formative years as they say, apart from four years at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, were spent growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota. Currently, I’m growing up in Säffle. Sweden.

I’ve been in retirement for the past 16 years, but I still write articles for suppliers to the pulp and paper industry. My wife Inger is a retired schoolteacher. My two sons live in Göteborg with their respective partners.

I like to write. What else is there for an old fart to do to pass the time away before it’s time to pass away? But I write only when the spirit calls me, and if I can imagine an audience out there. Clearly, I need your help whether you’re real or imaginary. Writing for the wastebasket doesn’t hold any attraction for me. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy reading my tomes as much as I enjoy writing them.

David Brooks, a columnist at the New York Times, requested essays from readers over 70 years old. I never sent mine to him but nonetheless it follows his outline. He suggested writing about career, family and faith.

Career

Growing up in a middle-class family in the 1940s and 1950s, meant that pursuing a career was a given. In what field? Any field, just pursue a career. Doing so meant going on to college, which I did at Gustavus  Adolphus College, a small liberal arts college affiliated with the Lutheran church.

At college, the question remained: in what field? I thought perhaps a profession, but understood quickly that I had neither the intellectual tools nor enough interest to pursue a career in medicine or the law. I toyed with the idea of the ministry, but a self-evaluation of myself and my interests, put me too close to emulating Elmer Gantry if I were to become a man of the cloth. My potential parishioners deserved better.

After I graduated with a major in history and English, I had not the slightest idea of what to do with myself. I had experience from editing and writing for the college weekly newspaper. So for lack of anything better to do, I went to the University of Missouri to study for a career in journalism. I didn’t care much for Columbia, Missouri or the classes I was taking there so after few weeks I stuck out my thumb and headed home to Minnesota.

Arriving there, I was greeted by a draft notice. This was 1961 and Berlin Wall was being erected and JFK was looking for able-bodied men. How interesting I thought. Now I could postpone my thoughts concerning career until I had finished serving my country. Except it didn’t work out that way. The Army rejected me because of collapsed metatarsals and inadequate hearing.

Inadequate hearing? Well, yes and no. Hearing was the station after the urine check, which I had trouble fulfilling, if you get what I mean? So I was the last man into the long, narrow hearing test chamber. When I arrived, the test had already started. A soldier at the far end of the room sat with a beeper, which he activated every now and then. Having no idea of what was going on, I kept saying what, what, what. That took care of that.

What to do? So I tried enlisting in the Navy and the Marines. They checked my eyes and expressed their condolences. Collapsed metatarsals, poor hearing and bad eyesight. On the streetcar on the way home Helen Keller came to mind. However, without eyesight and the ability to hear, Helen contributed to society.

According to Wikipedia, Keller was a prolific author, well-traveled, and outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Wobblies, she campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.

Obviously, my problems never came even close to Helen’s. Nor did I ever come close to her accomplishments in terms of career. But as I now look back, there are other similarities.

Although not a prolific author, I’ve made a living by utilizing my writing skills. I consider myself as very well-travelled and I oppose war. In 1968, I supported Eugene McCarthy’s campaign for the presidency and even partook in the anti-war demonstrations during the Democratic Party nominating convention in Chicago that year.

I’ve never campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights or socialism, but after many years of enjoying and benefiting from life in a social democracy in Sweden, I’m probably politically further to the left now than any of my lefty pals in the USA. But now, back to the original storyline.

Shortly after the physical examination for military service, I received a call from the Admissions Director at Gustavus Adolphus College asking me to join his staff of recruiters. Without hesitation, I accepted his offer. The Midwest was my territory and recruiting suited me well as I’m a person requiring instant reward and signing up potentially good students to attend college was in this sense very satisfying.

An example. Bill Holm. Billy, as I always called him, I recruited from Minneota, Minnesota. A very tall, corpulent, but brilliant, yes genius, he was exceptional. He could have named his school anywhere in the USA. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, you name it, he had the credentials. He wasn’t much for science, but he knew enough about it to score excellently on the college entrance exams. The humanities were his ticket. His tenor voice resonated. His skills at the keyboard included not only piano, but also organ, clavichord and whatever else involved the black and whites.

Billy went on after Gustavus Adolphus to be a real credit to the college. And that’s exactly the kind of person I was out after while working at this job. He continued his education after his Bachelor’s degree at Gustavus Adolphus, taught English at a number institutions of higher learning but mostly at a state university in Minnesota nearby his beloved Minneota.

Although he wrote several books consisting of prose essays, poetry was his great love. One day, long after our days at Gustavus Adolphus, I asked what he liked most to read. Poetry, he said instantaneously. I countered. Why? He turned to me, his blue Icelandic eyes flashing in harmony with his white long hair and Santa Claus beard and said, “Somebody has to.” Too bad. Billy left the planet for a place in poets’ heaven at too early an age. Those of us who knew him, miss him.

Into the second year as a recruiter, I understood that it wasn’t anything that I’d consider doing for any length of time. Consequently, I went back to school to earn a Teaching Certificate.

Finally. Career possibilities. I taught Social Studies for two years in the St. Paul, Minnesota suburbs, a couple of years at the University of Minnesota Laboratory High School and a couple more at the University of Minnesota’s General College. I enjoyed teaching a lot, but always wondered while teaching if I could identify with students as I became older.

Then 1968 came along, the year I turned 30 years old. The mantra then was: “If your 30 you’re irrelevant.” I took this seriously and left the Ivory Tower, but not only for this reason, but because I was having trouble coping generally after a very turbulent divorce. My next stop was the Community Health and Welfare Planning Council in St. Paul.

This was a good job for me as it allowed me to apply my writing skills and the background I acquired from teaching social studies and studying for a PhD in Sociology, which I never completed.

About two years into the job, someone informed me of an opening at a private consulting company in San Francisco. I got in touch with them and got the job. I was elated. My task there was doing research on federally financed health-care centers. This job went along smoothly until Richard Nixon got into trouble and the consulting company’s federal contract for completing this task was one day suddenly terminated. The next day 52 of us were out and on the street.

Unemployed. What to do? I got in touch with a one-man consulting company or two and was able to land an occasional assignment, but nothing permanent. So I tried to land a teaching job. I found out quickly that unless I was a black woman with a Chicano surname, it would be very difficult to land a teaching position. Affirmative action. Career? Up to this point in my life, I was on the career rails. Now I had crashed.

This meant giving up my flat on Telegraph Hill fitted with a waterbed in exchange for sleeping on a mattress on the floor in another flat I shared with a girlfriend and two other men. Was this a big change for me? You bet! But the way Janice, Richard, Kendric viewed life altered my way of looking at it. Take it easy. Let it happen. Don’t worry. Maintain your dignity. Respect yourself and regard others as worthy of esteem.

Returning to Minnesota and attempting to get back on the middle-class rails hardly ever crossed my mind. I loved San Francisco and California. I was enchanted with “California Living.” This meant not only enjoying the amenities of living in “The City” as the natives call San Francisco, but also becoming seriously interested in road biking, mountaineering and photography. I still take pictures and cycle a lot.

The humiliation, perhaps even shame, of collecting unemployment was a problem for me, which I quickly got over. Nonetheless, living on the dole was not acceptable. I had to find work. One day while my mother was visiting me, we sat down and addressed envelopes to every third property owner listed in the San Francisco telephone book’s Yellow Pages. The content of the envelopes was a note advertising my house painting skills, which to be perfectly honest were at best minimal. But the campaign worked and for the next five years my business grew.

And talk about instant rewards. Paint an apartment, stand back, look at it. Satisfied? Of course. Then stick out your hand in front of your employer for an instant cash payment. Wow! I loved it. What’s more, my time was my own. As probably the world’s worst employee, I spared any future employee the likes of me. The business experience gained from painting houses in San Francisco is as important or even more important than any formal education I’d ever received.

All good things end for one reason or another. Painting with oil-based paints isn’t the healthiest work. Among other things, a beer or three after work was too satisfying. One night I sat on my stool at Spec’s, my favorite North Beach joint and looked across the bar at another regular. I asked the guy next to me how old the object of my glance was. He said around 50 years. He looked a lot older. Immediately, at the age of 36 years, I decided I had to get out of this lifestyle. Or else.

My savior was a long-legged, blond, blue-eyed Swede. She was in San Francisco specifically to meet me, believe that or not. Why? Because her friend she was visiting before leaving for Los Angeles from Minneapolis, who was also my friend, suggested we should get together even though there are some 400 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

We got along well, so well that we decided that I should move to Säffle, Sweden. Career now was the furthest thing from my mind. All that was really necessary now was using whatever skills I had attained in my 37 or so years of life to earn enough moola to contribute to my and Inger’s well-being. Inger, by the way, is the name of the long-legged, blond, blue-eyed Swede I mentioned earlier.

For the first year or so I taught English as a Foreign Language and even Chinese cooking in the adult evening classes in Säffle. My experience with Chinese cooking came from having lived in San Francisco with Janice, a delightful Chinese-American as well as from a very authoritative Chinese cookbook. Teaching English was an extension of my teaching experience in Minnesota.

Soon, I started teaching English to workers in companies around Säffle. One day one of the men who had hired me as a teacher asked me if I could write a customer magazine for his company, which was Electrolux Constructor, a member of the Electrolux Group. I edited an All-America weekly newspaper in college. So, never one to say no, I said yes. I was more than happy to help him out.

What an opportunity to combine my writing skills with my business experience to start my own company. With an Electrolux company as a reference, growing the company would be a piece of cake. It certainly was. Pulp and paper is an important business around Säffle and the companies here were fertile ground for the services I had to offer them. My company grew and grew, and I was my own boss. Perfect! As mentioned earlier, I was probably the world’s worst employee.

The services my company offered involved writing and publishing customer magazines, helping companies with other presentations in English and some English translation and teaching. My customers were and still are some of the leading suppliers to the pulp and paper industry as well as some of the largest producers of pulp and paper in the world. This work brought me to all of the continents in the world except the Antarctic. Granted pulp and paper mills aren’t always in the most exciting places in the world. On the other hand, I always had very gracious hosts who were more than happy to show me the most interesting any country had to offer.

Today I’m in my late 70s and more or less retired, but living comfortably with my lovely wife who has retired from teaching school. I still do a little work if some company requests my services.

Operating my own business in Sweden has been very successful. It has left me with no worries about managing my life during retirement. Put it this way. I’ve lived the American Dream in Sweden.

Career? John Lennon said: “Life is what is happening to you while you’re busy making other plans.” As I look back on my life these words take on importance.

Based on my experience, my advice for young people pursuing careers would include the following: Look around you. Notice what’s happening. Assess your skills. Build on them. Do what makes you happy. Recognize opportunity when it pops up in front of you. Listen to people you respect and can help you with whatever you’re pursuing. Take chances. Live with failure. Work for success. Deal with chance. Don’t ever count it short. Coincidence has been a significant factor in my life.

Steve Jobs and Apple are an example of the part chance has played in my life. As the result of an impulse purchase, the Macintosh and the Apple laser printer became the basic tools of my successful publishing business. These devices, and later PageMaker software, gave me complete control over the production of my publications. In fact, because Apple could use my business as a reference, they gave me a 1Gb external hard disk in the late 1980s. That was a big deal for us, and what a difference it made in our work!

I learned the importance of these things as I moved through life. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have it any other way. The sum of what I’ve done over the years to earn a living could hardly be called a traditional career. Call it what you may. I’ve enjoyed living it!

Family

I’m the fourth child in a family of five children. My sister Punky, now deceased, was nine years older and the twins, Charles and Caryl, seven years older than I. Peter was two years younger than I. He and Charles are also deceased.

My father, like his father sold caskets in the west of Wisconsin where he met my mother in Ellsworth. My mother was a registered nurse who, unusual in her day, always worked. The life of a housewife either wasn’t her ticket or my father didn’t make enough moola every month to put food on the table for five kids. The truth is probably a mixture of both for Big Anne as we called her.

Growing up in a large family had its advantages and disadvantages. The advantages probably circle around having to share, which also has to do with the disadvantages – hand-me-downs.

I was 38 years old when I arrived in Sweden on 12 September 1976 and ready to start a family. My significant other, the long-legged, blond, blue-eyed Swede, was 26 years and didn’t object to my life style or my desire for a family.

A year later, on 16 September our first son Josef was born. Peter joined the family about a year and a half later, more specifically on 12 February 1979. Two kids per family were just about the national average in Sweden then, so Inger and I apparently strove to comply with the norm. We got married in Minnesota in 1980. Our kids were in attendance at the event as the kids of the betrothed are at many Swedish weddings.

Clearly, the Swedish language was a problem for me. English wasn’t for Inger. Part of my problem was that I was very tired of classrooms and couldn’t entertain the idea of sitting in one even to learn Swedish. What’s more, I was interested in watching the process of learning a language without formal instruction.

Being English speaking was another problem I had with learning Swedish. Swedes generally speak good English and want to practice it. I was their chance to do it. Furthermore, my work involved speaking English. To this day my Swedish is not what it should after be after having spent more than half of my 70 plus years here.

Also, I spoke only English to our boys. Both are now fluent not only because of my input and Inger’s, but also because of good English education in the local schools. Every even year we traveled to visit my brothers and sisters and their children in the USA as well as visited with friends in California.

During the summers of the odd years, we traveled to the Austrian Alps. It really didn’t matter where we were headed, when we left Sweden, the boys spoke English. In Minnesota, old Swedes who could still speak Swedish would coax the boys to speak with them. Mum was the word!

At the outset, Sweden and the extensive welfare system here was somewhat of a conundrum for me. In terms of family life, it meant regular visits to the free-of-charge children’s’ doctor, extended child-care leave from her teaching job for Inger, very low cost daycare for the boys after she returned to work and a monthly government financed child-care subsidy. Universal health care was, of course, available for the whole family. These benefits are available to all citizens and persons with residence permits in Sweden regardless of their financial circumstances.

Having lived the American lifestyle didn’t really prepare me mentally for such benefits. As time went on, it all started to make sense. The welfare state, or socialism, as many Americans refer to it derogatorily, is in my view, an expression of civilized society. Individualism isn’t snuffed here, but solidarity is encouraged. Over the years I’ve grown to understand that that’s the way it should be.

The welfare state has also provided both of my boys good university educations. Josef is doing well in sales and Peter is successfully managing the implementation of an advanced quality control system at the Volvo Truck factories in Sweden and the rest of Europe.

Inger and I and our two boys over the years have lived comfortably on our two incomes, which, if I’m not mistaken, never equaled the level of income of any of my close friends in the USA. On the other hand, our life style has been enhanced by frequent travel throughout Europe and the USA during the extensive holiday time the welfare system affords.

We have a comfortable, but not ostentatious, villa to live in. We’ve always had only one car and one garage, not a three-car garage with an attached house as we’ve so often witnessed in the USA. Family life in Sweden and life in general has been much more than satisfactory for us.

Faith

I grew up in a good Lutheran family. I was baptized, confirmed and even married twice in the Lutheran church. I attended Sunday school and church services regularly. As if that isn’t enough, I taught Sunday school and sang in the church choir as a teenager and even read the liturgy at services at my church in St. Paul. To this, I can add that I attended a Lutheran college, and as mentioned earlier, I toyed with the idea of the ministry.

I’ve always contemplated moral and ethical issues. As I grew older, my view of the church’s stance on these issues seemed too rigid, too thou shall not. For me, it seemed that certain behaviors that the church discouraged were often simply the ingredients of a decent and enjoyable life.

For instance, my class at Gustavus Adolphus was the first the college allowed to hold a dance. Alcohol in any way shape or form was out of the question. By the way, wine was served at my fiftieth college reunion at Gustavus Adolphus. May wonders never cease?

Therefore, the more secular, humanistic, liberal, if you will, view of moral and ethical issues became more important for me than those of the church.

As I became older, I came to the realization that Christianity is not at odds with but shares with humanists and liberal’s similar views on moral and ethical issues. Life in Sweden made this particularly apparent to me. Sweden is perhaps the most secular, liberal and at the same time Lutheran countries in the world. This is not to say that the country is particularly religious.

In my view, the Lutheran church has provided the moral and ethical traditions that are the foundation for Sweden’s current secularism and liberalism. So in this sense, I consider myself back in the fold. It’s too bad, however, that religion can also provide the moral and ethical foundation for religious fanatics.

I appreciate the social, economic and political values my adopted home represents. The welfare state is humane, perhaps, even very Lutheran. Let’s face it. Luther’s strain of Protestantism has left an indelible mark on Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries as well. And on me.

I joined the Lutheran Church of Sweden a while ago and now I even sing in the church choir. Apart from matters of faith, there are very practical reasons for my turnabout as well. Members of the Lutheran church in Sweden are afforded various economic favors when it comes time for a funeral. Plus! I enjoy singing in the church choir, immensely.