My Last Ride on Galloping Gertie

by Charlotte (Hartt) Griffiths
 

     It was fall of 1940 and we had recently moved from Spokane to Bremerton, WA.   And that new slender steel ribbon across Puget Sound called the Tacoma Narrows Bridge now connected us in Bremerton more directly to Tacoma, where my father’s mother, Mrs. Wm Charles Hartt, his sister Katherine, and brothers Paul and Frank lived.  Now the bridge would save us the more expensive way by ferry to Seattle then the long drive down to South Tacoma whenever visiting them.   Only the Narrows Bridge bridge wiggled and wobbled so much in the constant wind there on any ordinary day, that many drivers nicknamed it “The Galloping Gertie.”

     On November 6^th my parents (Roy and Jennie Hartt), my younger brother Joe (8 yrs) and I (10yrs)  had gone over for a day of visiting relatives in Tacoma, and were returning late that night in a wind storm.  The bridge complex’s bright lights awakened Joe and me in the back seat, but the toll both clerk’s admonition to my Dad for caution to keep a safe distance behind the car ahead (because of the severe wind on the bridge because of the storm) made us alert as well.  So Dad changed gears on our 1936 Ford sedan and slowly moved onto the bridge.

     That was a ride to end all rides.  Galloping Gertie became Bucking Gertie as my father fought to maintain control of the car both sideways and moving forward as the wind tossed us around.  He kept his eye carefully on the winking red taillights ahead.  About half way across, my Dad said, “Oh-oh!” and stopped, for the front car’s taillights had disappeared. Dad privately thought the bridge had snapped in two and feared to move forward.

     Suddenly we saw taillights again, only they rose higher than we were, and then we were the ones rising above the taillights ahead.   Dad kept moving the car forward slowly, the wind blowing us sideways and the bridge itself tilting sideways one way, then the other.  It seemed like hours before the ordeal was over as Dad fought to maintain control of the car against the wind and the twisting bridge, inching ahead, inching ahead…until once again we were on solid ground, safely on the Bremerton side!

     Dad pulled the car to the roadside, wrapped his arms around the steering wheel and in broken sobs thanked God for preserving our lives through such danger.  I knew that my Dad had done a superb job driving, but when the continuing storm snapped and destroyed Galloping Gertie the very next morning, I better understood the danger we had been in and the deliverance God gave.  I was in awe of God’s power (this bridge was considered an engineering marvel, the 3^rd longest suspension in the world) and never once regretted that I would never ride Galloping Gertie again!