North Star Writers Group

When I was growing up in Flint, Michigan in the 1940s, Aunt Gertrude was one of my favorite relatives. She was a large, friendly woman who played a cut-throat game of five-card stud poker, wore her hair in a bun and often smelled like moth balls. At family gatherings, Aunt Gertrude would hoist me onto her lap and tell me stories.

“How about a nice story, Billy?” she’d say.

“My name’s Bobby,” I’d tell her.

“Whatever,” she’d reply. Then she’d launch into a tale that usually dated to the days when she was a child.

Many years later, when I was much too old to sit on her lap, I discovered something else about Aunt Gertrude. I discovered she had a way of saying things that made no sense whatsoever.

Aunt Gertrude is the woman who told my grandfather, “You can’t blame me for making a mistake. After all, none of us are human.”

Another time, when she was talking about a certain movie she really liked, she said, “It’s a great picture. Don’t miss it if you can.”

Aunt Gertrude had a special knack for turning even the simplest sentences inside out until they almost made sense. “It’s so dark outside tonight that you can hardly see your face in front of you,” she once observed.

Another time, after almost joining a senior citizens organization, she said, “It would be a nice club to belong to if there weren’t so damned many old people in it.”

After the postal rates were increased, Aunt Gertrude told my mother, “Now that stamps cost more, I’ll just have to write longer letters to get my money’s worth.”

She once described her least-favorite breakfast cereal by saying, “I never cared for that stuff and I always will.”

Another classic Gertrude-ism surfaced when a member of her church asked her to name her favorite hymn. She thought for a moment, then replied, “I guess maybe it’s ‘When the Rolls Are Served Up Yonder.’”

Then there was the day Gertrude’s husband - my Uncle Fred - told her he was going hunting. She told him, “Couldn’t you go fishing instead because all we have in the house is white wine?”

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