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First Sight

My mother was fourteen and my father was sixteen when he first saw her at a Keen Time dance. She was slim and tan with a blonde ducktail. My father asked a friend for her number. He called, but she was the wrong girl. She was a redhead, not a blonde. My father asked, ‘Who’s the girl with the blonde ducktail?’ ‘That’s my friend Linda,’ she said. My father got her number and called. He introduced himself saying, ‘I play football for Lincoln High.’ She thought, ‘Whoopee do.’ But it worked.

Sand Pit

When my mother and father first dated, they went to a large lake created from a sand pit. My father suggested they race to the other side. My mother swam out and back like a motor boat and smoked him. She wasn’t even out of breath when she was done. He decided to never challenge her again.

Little Princess

In a childhood photo by a professional, my mother wore a long baby blue dress, a black choker and bracelet, and sweet buns on top of her head. Ostrich feathers fanned out behind her. She looked like a little princess.

Miss Johnson

My mother spotted Miss Johnson having a beer at Parker’s Tavern near my grandfather’s farm. She was my mother’s third grade teacher. My mother was shocked to see Miss Johnson with a beer. Once, my mother saw the owner at Parker’s Tavern take out a hankie from her bra, wipe her armpits, then put it back in her bra.

Go-kart Designer

My mother was in elementary school when she watched Donny Parker, Gene Frederick, and Jimmy Hershberber making go-karts. She wanted to design go-karts, too. She worked in a shed attached to the garage at my great grandmother’s house. She used orange crates, clothesline rope, scrap wood, and wagon wheels. When she was done, she tested her go-kart in the driveway. It rode well.

Coyotes

My mother and her friend Kathie O’Brien went camping on the O’Brien’s ranch, using their saddles as pillows while they slept. When coyotes scared their horses away, Kathie tried to wake my mother. She kept sleeping, so her friend had to corral the horses alone.

Diamond Jim

Diamond Jim was my grandfather’s quarter horse who was not well broken. He bucked my mother off and she called him a Son of a Bitch. Once, Diamond Jim took off while my mother’s little sister Judy was riding him. Diamond Jim headed for the barn door, and Judy leaped. She was plastered against the barn door like a cartoon character and slid down.

Honeymoon

My mother married my father on her 19th birthday in November 1961. The following August, they drove out west on their honeymoon and camped in Yellowstone. They left their food in the car and rolled up their windows to keep the bears at bay. They also went to the World’s Fair in Seattle and camped by the ocean. They dug up razorback clams but gave them away to a family of campers because they didn’t know how to cook clams. The campers gave my mother and father a Japanese glass fishing float to thank them. On the drive home, they got stuck in a freak summertime blizzard in the Rocky Mountains, sleeping overnight in their car until they got plowed out.

Orange Melbas

My mother studied math at the University of Nebraska, packing candy for Russell Stover at night and going to school during the day.

My mother would buy a five pound box of seconds for a dollar. She and my father knew times were tough when they would go to the refrigerator to get something to eat and the only thing left was the box of seconds, and the only thing in box were the orange Melbas, which they both hated. But they had to eat them anyway.

Programmer

Working nights took a toll. My mother began to fall asleep in class, and after her second year in college, she dropped out to support my father through his last two years of engineering school, taking a full-time job in the agricultural school’s computer statistics lab, programming a mainframe computer in Fortran to analyze marbling, weight gain, and other beef cattle data, finding that the fattier, the tastier.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoirs Raising the Price of the House, Walking A&P, and Black Elephants and three poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poem “This New Manhattan” was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in the Gorko Gazette, Guernica, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere.

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