Chapter 8 - Gertrude

Gertie, as I have said, was a different kind of Taylor altogether. She did not care about excelling in school. She was content to do OK in basic courses. She didn’t bother to join our sorority. She just wanted to have a good time. She would lower her lashes and smile until her dimples showed and make everyone around her feel, with happy certainty, that some flirty mischief was about to take place.
In childhood she played the same things we all did. She was best friends with the two younger sisters across the street and usually did not bother to tag along with Felicity and me. She liked “jump rope” and “hopscotch” and “Mother-May-I”. She liked roller-skating and dresses.
As soon as puberty hit she got a shape that was designed to make boys crazy, with large breasts and a tiny waist. She wasn’t perfect. She had the bad complexion we all had either from heredity or poor nutrition.
Gertie’s best friends after puberty were not the popular kids, they were the rebels, the James Deans, the hood types, the boys with leather jackets and duck tail haircuts, the girls with reputations for being fast. They didn’t do wild and anti-social acts, but they were into action. They loved to play records and dance and probably smooch, although I can’t be sure because I didn’t hang out with them very often. Smithvale had grown into the type of small town where teens took long evening walks and met friends or went to the little league ballpark to hang out near the Babe Ruth game. Gertie met her friends at street corners, enjoying herself so much that she didn’t want to come inside. Her gifts were social.
Gertie was also very earthy, didn’t mind coming home with a hickey now and then, or talking to anyone about every detail of her bodily functions. Probably Mom and Dad worried about Gertie the most. She was the most likely candidate in the family so far to end up in the dreaded “pregnant out of wedlock” state. They didn’t worry too much though because, for the most part, it looked like she just knew how to party, something the rest of us were not particularly good at.
We all had our little square cases with musical notes on the sides to organize and carry our 45’s- our “Teen Angel”, “Bye-Bye Love”, Wake Up Little Suzie”, Blue Suede Shoes”, and “Love Me Tender”. Felicity kept hers in alphabetical order. No two records could go in the same space and every title was written into the appropriate space on the index card inside the cover of the box. The front section held those little plastic adapters that had to be snapped into each record so it could be placed on the skinny record player spindle. I wasn’t quite so neat about my little record box, but I was neater than Gertie. She put her records in order from most favorite to least favorite, but since the order was always changing, she couldn’t write anything in the index or on the tabs at the top of the dividers. You could never find anything in her 45 box, but she knew all the new dance steps. She knew how to slop and jitter bug, and how to do the mashed potatoes, and the jerk, and the twist. And she knew how to do the dog, which Felicity and I considered too gross to even look at.
Gertie’s values were somewhat different from the rest of us also. Once amid a succession of older station wagons, Dad, in an attempt to find a car that would fit the whole family comfortably, fell heir to an antique extended-body Packard in black. It had about 3 feet of carpet between the front seat and the back seat. On the back of the front seat were two small, upholstered seats that folded down and held extra passengers. This car had obviously once graced a life of affluence and luxury. It still looked really good. Most of us appreciated the luxurious provenance of the car and enjoyed riding in it. Especially since we didn’t have to have two layers of kids in the back seat and for some reason throwing up was no longer an issue. This voluptuous old Packard, however, mortally embarrassed Gertie. To her it was just a monstrosity. The car did have one serious flaw. It had a cracked engine block, which soon made its presence known. If we went too far or climbed too many hills the car would overheat and we would have to pull over and wait until the engine cooled before we could complete our outing. Then we would all pile out of that car like clowns from a Volkswagen. Gertie knew what was cool, and this humiliating routine, on top of the unusual look of the thing was too much for her to accept. After my father had to order her into the car a few times, and after several episodes of impassioned, tearful refusal, Dad gave up on the Packard, which would never have made it through the winter anyway, and got a more conservative and more modern junker. A few of us were quite disappointed to see the old Packard go though.
Gertie married right out of high school. She “picked up” her husband-to-be at a downtown movie theater. He was stationed at the local air base, which still existed, but was much smaller than it had been just after World War II. He was with a friend and he started pestering my sister and her girlfriend. I made the two of them move to another seat. The young men followed. Finally I left the four of them giggling and chatting and sat in another part of the theater. After the movie we waited out on Main Street. Gertie was still at it, flirting and dancing the dog, right there on Main Street. I told Dad when he came to pick us up. I’m sure Gertie did not love me very much at that moment. Jason, the young air force guy, invited himself to dinner at our house and proceeded to charm Dad, who never did feel he had enough sons. They had a fairy tale marriage through fourteen years and two sons until Jason’s philandering ways became too obvious to ignore. He broke Gertie’s heart, big time. Actually he broke all of our hearts.
Gertie never smoked, (well she may have tried it once or twice). Jason did.