Karen Swenson my first girlfriend, 1956

[jack hamilton]

Karen Swenson,
my first girlfriend, 1956


There was a girl named Karen Swenson in my first grade class,
Mark Twain elementary school 1956, and she had a pony tail.
Karen’s long, blond pony tail really caught my eye as the sun shone on it in class or as it bounced along behind her as she walked down the hall at school, it was beautiful.
I went over to her house a few times and remember drinking cokes her Mom gave us and I gave her a quarter I found on the black top at school. But she gave it back the next day saying, her Mom had told her: “don’t take money from men”.

During Christmas evening 1956
My parents, sister and I were hit head on by a drunk driver and I caved in the dash board of a 1956 Chevrolet with my mouth. I still have the picture of the metal dashboard with a dent 10” across and 2” deep.
{No seat belts in cars back then}
The doctor said if I were a few inches shorter I would have been killed.
It knocked out my front teeth, top and bottom and knocked me out for a little while.
When I went back to school several weeks later I had a bandage wrapped around my whole head.
School can be embarrassing even if everything goes right but with ones head in a cast it is not easy. I finished the first grade and the second was not fun. Rather than ‘Miff. Smiff’
my teacher was Mrs. Carraco, a red headed bxxxx who made our lives miserable every second of every day.
In the third grade my teacher was Miss. Cathy and she was nice and had enormous breasts, but one day I walked in the room and was stunned to see the entire multiplication tables written on the black board. I just stood there and stared at them. Needless to say the third grade was not fun either. In fact I am 59 years old and I am still working on the multiplication tables.

Then came the 4th grade and the skinny librarian was my home room teacher,
not like Mff. Smiff at all, her name was Miss. Smith.
She made Miss. Caraco look sweet and was the meanest bxxxxx of all.
She even made me and my friends stay in after school and study ettiquette.
I was just ‘doing my time’ waiting to get out of school so I could move to the mountains and build a cabin. Trap bear, hunt deer and eat deer meat and beans.
School, parents, teachers, city life in general did not have any appeal for me.
Rather than the duty, pain, punishment, and boredom that I experienced in school
my life was to be one of freedom and fun.
School had ceased to be, from the 2nd grade on, a refreshing learning experience
with things to do which were fun, and a nice loving teacher.
It had become a horrible prison and all I thought about was escape.
I never saw Karen again.

Fifty years later I am a disabled {former} coma patient
living alone on 25 acres and one night I went somewhere with a friend,
he left the room and I just sat down and waited.
There were two girls there and the host said:
“ Jack, this is so and so and this is Karen Swenson”!
I turned and saw my girlfriend from the first grade.
I recognized her immediately.
“Excuse me I said, is your name Karen Swenson?
The girl said yes it is, and I said:
“My name is Jack Hamilton and you were my girl friend in the first grade”
But, but, where is your pony tail?
“I cut it off in the second grade” she said.
I was agast and said: but, why?
I forget what she said but I asked if she kept it?
“No”.
“They just swept it out with the trash”?
“Yes”.
I almost cried saying:
“I would have given you $200.for it, “I loved your pony tail and now it’s gone.”
I cried.
“I could have had it all these years.
”I could have hung it on my den wall, well… next to all those fish,
Coon hides and Bobcat pelts… your little pony tail hanging up there…
No, it would have been disrespectful.”
Karen laughed out loud and said:
“You think?”
And I told her I didn’t remember seeing her in second, third,
or fourth grade and did her and her family move?
No, after your wreck you never spoke to me again”.
I paused and after a moments thought said:
“School can be embarrassing when everything goes right.”
“Coming to school with my head in a cast…
I may not have wanted to embarrass you but I really don’t remember.
The last half of the first grade was taken up with just trying to live down
coming to school with my head all wrapped up and my front teeth all knocked out.
I really wasn’t into chasing chicks. In the second grade I never saw you again.

I told her:
Karen, I just realized that it was your pony tail I was in love with.
I am sorry, I know men are crude and insensitive but this is really bad.
I would never consciously or deliberately do anything to hurt your feelings.
You are a beautiful chick and your hair is beautiful,
I never saw you again but it was your pony tail I was looking for.
I just haven’t seen it since the first grade.
But in my own defense let me say that your pony tail
was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life up to that time.
And still, to this day, ranks very highly with all of the most beautiful things
I have ever seen in my life.
I only loved your pony tail, but it was YOUR Pony tail that I loved, no one else’s.
And it was the 4th grade before I saw another pony tail that caught my eye
and that was Janice Bates.
Her brother knows my friend Don, who I am riding with tonight.
“Yes, we know her” Karen’s friend said.
“Karen’s married”, her friend kept saying,” but I am not”.
I ignored her and went on, That’s pretty good for a first grader…
I searched Karen’s face for a response but she was looking down.
Then her friends face, looking for a cue.
Back and forth from Karen to her friend, and said to her friend
kind of under my breath and behind my hand but real loudly:
“Did she go for that one”?
Karen’s friend laughed out loud and Karen looked at her friend without smiling.
{I don’t remember her name}
But Karen’s friend said:
“Yes she did, and I don’t think any woman alive could not have
‘gone for that one’”, laughing very loud and long.

I told them that I lived on 25 acres alone but for my horse, my saddle mule,
two 50 Lb hounds and 50 chickens and that’s about the only company I keep.
And that I lived on disability, food stamps and $300. I get from a trust every month.
I grow a big garden, 30’ X 100’, raise poultry, make knives,
hunt coon and tan the fur myself, and make my own beer.
I am an amateur gourmet chef and have been making Pizza from scratch for 35 years.
Write poetry and short stories.
And that I have written a book!
Written and edited and ready to go to the publisher but for the next to last chapter,
the trial chapter, and I can’t write that till they finish the trial.
I started writing seriously after my wreck and coma at the request of the head Doctor of Baylor Hospital severe, traumatic, brain injury rehab ward, my disability Judge,
therapists, and the whole class.
Coming home from the Hospital I was glad I was basically familiar with computers,
and started writing down every story I had in me.
I started with the first bird I ever shot, the first Possum I ever caught in the fourth grade and after 6 years writing, I am still writing.
I mentioned my teachers Miff Smiff, Miss Caraco, and Miss. Cathey.
Miss Smith, and went on to tell about my fifth grade teacher Edith Pulley.

Mrs. Pulley lived across the alley from me and her sons Richard and Tommy were my friends.
I knew Mrs. Pulley well and she would read Mark Twain to the class when we got our work done.
It was 30-40 more years before I realized the reason she read Mark Twain,
was that was the name of our school.
One day the class was sitting there in our desks and Mrs. Pulley came in the room.
I described the room as so:
Door to the right front, teacher’s desk to the left front, long row of windows on our left side and the hall was to our right side. Mrs. Pulley came in the room and walked to her desk. About to her desk she stopped and turned looking at the class with this look like something was wrong and she was determined to find out what.
She slowly walked back to the door and stood there looking at the class.
Then {I just caught this out of the corner of my eye} walked down the first row and up the second. Very slowly and suspiciously, down the third and up the fourth, looking at everybody very closely but no one noticed but me.
Down the fifth row and Mrs. Pulley stopped at my friend Randy Gibson’s desk.
Randy!
I should have known!
Karen and her friend were listening and looking back and forth at each other,
but had no idea what was going on in the story.
“I knew somebody had been playing with a little ‘Pole Kitty’ this morning”!
And Karen’s friend said: “A Skunk”!
And they both laughed.
Randy said:
“I am sorry Mrs. Pulley but I caught a skunk in one of my traps this morning
and my pellet gun is ‘broke’ so I had to beat it to death”.
Mrs. Pulley never hesitated for a second but said:
Come on, I’ll take you home to take a bath and change clothes”.
They left and
were back in 10-15 minutes. No one else had noticed anything.
No one else had smelled Randy but trying to sneak a skunked kid past Edith Pulley was like trying to sneak daylight past a rooster. She smelled him before she even got to her desk. Edith and her family moved to Florida years later.
“That was the fifth grade”, Karen and her friend were still there and listening so I went on.

“Do y’all remember Superman Davis”?
“No”.
“Karen he lived right in between our houses,
on Moss Point down the hill from my house and on the east side of the street,
away from Mark Twain, that orange brick house with the long drive that curved in towards the garage”. Remember T. W. Brown Jr. high school, three stories and white brick with the American flag in front? Well, one day,
{I wasn’t there that day and don’t remember where I was but I heard about this from a friend} But one day,
{every body in school heard this}
A guy yelled:
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHGG!!!!!!!
I hate you Mrs. Cope!

“And this kid jumped out the window on the second floor”!
I pretended to be looking out of a window and down,
then back at Karen and her friend with a shocked expression!
This got a laugh from Karen’s friend.
And said: “Thereby earning the subrique of Superman Davis”.
This got even a bigger laugh.
Yeah, I said: old Superman did what Superman does, you know,
“like, when in doubt jump out of the window”.
He couldn’t fly, they just called him Superman because he jumped
out the window.
There were two big heel marks in the dry dirt outside the flower bed 6” – 8” deep.
Karen’s friend said: “I had Mrs. Cope”.
I asked her “what did Mrs. Cope teach”?
Math was the reply and I groaned and said:
Well, that explains it then, must have been the multiplication tables.
I had Mr. Cook for 8th grade Math and as math teachers go he was a real nice guy.
No one ever got in trouble and he never got mad.
His son was a Dallas cop and was writing a ticket and got killed by a hit and run driver,
poor old Mr. Cook.
Mr. Cook was teaching his 8th grade math class when this kid came by the window.
I made the motions of speaking to a class and dropping my hand like something falling.
Turned my head and looked out 'the window' and down as if I were Mr. Cook.
Acting like I pumping my arms and said:
Mr. Cook ran out there and captured him and took him to the office.
So poor old Superman,
after getting his mind blown by Mrs. Cope and surviving a two story fall,
‘got beat’ and expelled too, all in the same day.
I said that I didn’t remember Superman’s real name, and I wasn’t the one who named him Superman.
That was what every body called him and I imagine he carried that name for the rest of his life.
I went on:
“Ladies and gentlemen we are here today to pay our last respects to the family of Superman Davis. He has bellied up and kicked the bucket”.
Karen's friend laughed out loud and when she had started to get her breath
I leaned over and said:
“Bought the farm he has…”
This brought on another laughing fit and when she quieted,
I leaned over and said: "he’s like, history you know”.
Resulting in laughing fit #3

Superman lived at the end of my street till we moved years later
but he never came outside, especially after that,
‘and he just ‘kinda’ kept to himself’,
I said with a ‘far off storytellers look’.
Karen said: “That kid had mental or emotional problems”
shaking her head sympathetically.
Don came in the room and said let’s go Jack.
I said my good bye’s to my first grade girlfriend and her friend.
And I never saw Karen again.
Good bye Karen.


Thank you…♪


Jack the Knife
www.wordcounttool.com/