Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

  In the sweet by and by … there’s a land that’s fairer by day

  And by faith we can see it afar …

  For the Father waits over the way

  To prepare us in a dwelling place

  There in the sweet by and by … we shall meet on the beautiful shore

  In the sweet by and by …

  Onzell had her eyes closed as she was singing, but she felt the room fill up with sunlight that had broken through the clouds. The warmth of the sun made her cry tears of joy. As she covered the mirror and stopped the clock by the bed, she thanked her sweet Jesus for taking Miss Ruth home.

  FEBRUARY 10, 1947

  Beloved Citizen Passes

  The cafe will be closed tomorrow, due to the death of Mrs. Ruth Jamison, who passed away over the weekend.

  Funeral services will be held tomorrow at the Baptist church. Call Reverend Scroggins for the time. She will be at John Rideout’s Funeral Home in Birmingham until then.

  We will miss her sweet ways and smiling face, and everyone who knew “Miss Ruth” will be at a loss. Our special love and sympathy goes out to Idgie and Stump.

  … Dot Weems …

  SEPTEMBER 13, 1986

  On Saturdays, when Evelyn Couch went shopping, she always drove Ed’s big Ford LTD, because there was more room, but it was hard to park; so she had been sitting waiting for the parking place on the end for five minutes while the old man loaded the groceries into his car, took another three minutes to get in, find his keys, and finally backed out. Just as she was about to pull in, a slightly battered red Volkswagen came around the corner and shot right in the space she had been waiting for.

  Two skinny, gum-chewing teenage girls, wearing cut-off jeans and rubber flip-flops, got out and slammed the door and started to walk right past her.

  Evelyn rolled down her window and said to the one in the ELVIS IS NOT DEAD T-shirt, “Excuse me, but I was waiting for that space and you pulled right in front of me.”

  The girl looked at her with a smirk and said, “Let’s face it, lady, I’m younger and faster than you are,” and she and her friend flip-flopped into the store in their rubber-thonged shoes.

  Evelyn was left sitting there, staring at the Volkswagen with the I BRAKE FOR REDNECKS bumper sticker on the back.

  Twelve minutes later, the girl and her friend came out, just in time to see all four of their hubcaps fly across the parking lot as Evelyn crashed into the Volkswagen, backed up, and slammed into it again. By the time the two hysterical girls had reached the car, Evelyn had almost demolished it. The tall one went berserk, screaming and pulling her hair. “My God! Look what you’ve done! Are you crazy?”

  Evelyn leaned out her window and calmly said, “Let’s face it, honey, I’m older than you are and have more insurance than you do” and drove away.

  Ed, who worked for an insurance agency, did have plenty of insurance, as it turned out, but he could not understand how she could have run into someone six times by mistake.

  Evelyn told him to calm down and not to make a big thing out of it; accidents happen all the time. The truth was, she had enjoyed wrecking that girl’s car too much. Lately, the only time she wasn’t angry and the only time she could find peace was when she was with Mrs. Threadgoode and when she would visit Whistle Stop at night in her mind. Towanda was taking over her life, and somewhere, deep down, a tiny alarm bell sounded and she knew she was in sure danger of going over the edge and never coming back.

  MAY 9, 1949

  Tonight, Grady Kilgore, Jack Butts, and Smokey Lonesome were in the cafe, giggling. This was the seventh week in a row that they had managed to put a whiz bomb in Reverend Scroggins’s car. But when Stump came out of the back room, all dressed up in his blue suit and blue bow tie, they stopped and decided to razz him for a while.

  Grady waved at him. “Oh, usher, where’s my seat?”

  Idgie said, “Come on, boys, let him alone. I think he looks handsome. He’s got a date with Peggy Hadley, Doc’s girl.”

  Jack called out in a silly voice, “Oh, Doctor …”

  Stump got himself a Coca-Cola and gave Idgie a dirty look. If it hadn’t been for her, he would not be stuck having to go to the Sweetheart Banquet with Peggy Hadley, a little girl he once had a crush on but had now outgrown. Peggy was two years younger than he was and wore glasses, and he had ignored her his entire high school career. But the minute she found out he was back from Georgia Tech for the summer, she went over and asked Idgie if she thought Stump would go to her Senior Sweetheart Banquet with her, and Idgie had graciously accepted.

  Being a gentleman, he had figured that one night wouldn’t kill him—although at the moment he was not sure.

  Idgie went over to the icebox in the kitchen and handed him a bouquet of tiny sweetheart roses. “Here, I went up to the big house today and cut some out in the backyard. Take these to her. Your mother loved those little things.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh God! Aunt Idgie, why don’t you just go instead of me? You’ve planned the entire evening anyway.”

  Stump turned to the gang at the table. “Hey, Grady! You wanna go?”

  Grady shook his head. “Wish I could, but Gladys’d kill me if she ever caught me with a younger woman. But then, you don’t know anything about that. Just wait till you’re an old married man, like I am, boy. Besides, I ain’t the man I used to be.”

  “Or ever was, for that matter,” Jack interjected.

  They laughed, and Stump went out the door. “Well, I’m off. Guess I’ll see you afterwards.”

  Every year, after the banquet, all the kids wound up at the cafe; and tonight was no exception. When Peggy came in, looking so pretty in her white eyelet dress, with her pink sweetheart roses pinned at the shoulder, Idgie said, “Thank God you’re all right. I’ve been worried to death about you.”

  Peggy asked her why in the world would she be so worried.

  “Didn’t you hear about that girl over in Birmingham, last week?” Idgie said. “She was so excited at her Sweetheart Banquet that while she was posing for her picture, all of a sudden she burned right up. A case of spontaneous combustion. In seconds she was gone. Nothing was left of her but her high heels. Her date had to take her home in a Dixie cup.”

  Peggy, who had believed the story up to a point, said, “Oh, Idgie, you’re playing with me!”

  Stump was glad when the evening was over and they were headed home. The fact that he had been a football hero the year before made him still subject to a lot of younger boys standing around staring at him and girls squealing and giggling when he said hello, or anything, for that matter.

  He stopped the car in front of Peggy’s house and was getting ready to get out and go around and open her door when she took her glasses off, leaned over, and looked up at him with those big brown myopic Susan Hayward eyes of hers and said, “Well, good night.”

  He looked down into those eyes, realizing that he had never seen them before: pools of velvet brown that he could have dived into and had a swim in. Her face was now a quarter of an inch from his, and he smelled the intoxicating scent of her White Shoulders perfume; in that moment she became Rita Hayworth in Gilda; no, Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice. And when he kissed her, it was the most passionate moment he had ever known.

  That summer, the blue suit was trotted out regularly, and that fall it wound up in Columbus, Georgia, when they went over to the courthouse to get married. All Idgie ever said to him was “I told you so.”

  After that, all Peggy ever had to do was take off her glasses and look up at him, and he was a goner.

  MAY 24, 1949

  Birmingham’s black middle- and upper-class society was at its peak, and the Slagtown News was kept busy reporting on the doings of over a hundred social clubs; the lighter the skin, the better the club.

  Mrs. Blanche Peavey, Jasper’s wife, who was as light in color as he was, had just been named president of the famous Royal Saxon Society Belles Social and Saving Club, an organization whose
members were of such fair coloring that the club’s annual group picture had wound up in the white newspaper by mistake.

  Jasper had just been reelected as Grand Vice Chancellor of the prestigous Knights of Pythias, so it was only natural that his oldest daughter, Clarissa, was a leading debutante that year and was being presented to the Carnation Coalition.

  With her red-gold, silky hair, her peaches-and-cream complexion, and her green eyes, she was considered the deb you would most want to be with.

  On the day of the Debutante Ball, Clarissa went downtown to buy some special perfume for the affair. She had ridden up to the second floor on the main white elevator, as she had done a few times before when she had been downtown alone, knowing that other members of her race rode the freight elevator.

  She knew her mother and daddy would kill her if they knew she was downtown passing, for although she was encouraged to mingle only with the lighter-skinned people, passing for a white was an unpardonable sin. But she was tired of the stares of the other blacks when she rode the freight elevator before; and besides, she was in a hurry.

  The beautiful woman in the royal blue wool dress behind the counter was so considerate and polite to Clarissa. “Have you ever tried White Shoulders?”

  “No ma’am, I don’t think so.”

  She bent down under the counter for the display bottle. “Try a little of this. Shalimar is very popular, but I think it’s going to be a little too heavy for you, with your fair skin and all.”

  Clarissa smelled it on her wrist. “Oh, this is wonderful. How much is it?”

  “It’s on special, eight ounces for two ninety-eight. That should last you at least six months.

  “I’ll just get this, then.”

  The lady was pleased. “I think it suits you perfectly. Cash or charge?”

  “Cash.”

  The woman took the money and went off to wrap the box.

  A black man wearing a checked hat and coat had been staring at Clarissa. He remembered a picture in the paper. He walked over.

  “ ’Scuse me, ain’t you Jasper’s baby?”

  Terror-struck, Clarissa pretended not to hear him.

  “I’m your Uncle Artis, your daddy’s brother.”

  Artis, who had had a few drinks and didn’t know Clarissa was passing for white that day, put his hand on her arm. “It’s me, your Uncle Artis, honey … don’t you know me?”

  The perfume saleslady came around the corner, saw Artis and shrieked, “YOU GET AWAY FROM HER!” She ran to Clarissa and held her. “YOU GET AWAY FROM HER … HARRY! HARRY!”

  The floor manager came running. “What’s the matter?”

  Still holding on to Clarissa to protect her, she shouted for the entire floor to hear, “THIS NIGGER WAS PAWING MY CUSTOMER! HE WAS GRABBING AT HER! I SAW HIM!”

  Harry yelled, “GUARD!” and turned on Artis with slits for eyes. “Did you touch this white woman, boy?”

  Artis was shocked. “Naw suh, that’s my niece.”

  Artis tried to explain, but by that time, the guard had spun him around like a top and had his arm behind him and he was on his way out the back door.

  The saleswoman comforted Clarissa. “It’s okay, honey, that nigger’s either drunk or crazy.”

  The group of lady shoppers who had gathered around offered sympathy. “Just another drunk Negro … See what happens when you’re nice to them?”

  Artis, who had skinned his hands and knees when he was thrown out in the concrete alley behind the store, caught the south-side streetcar and walked back behind the wooden sign that said COLORED. He sat down, wondering if that girl had been Clarissa, after all.

  Years later, after Clarissa was married and had children, she came into Brittling’s Cafeteria, where he was working carrying trays, and tipped him a quarter; but she didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t recognize her.

  AUGUST 10, 1954

  Mishaps Galore

  Must be getting old or crazy … my other half, Wilbur, came home three days in a row, complaining of a headache … and is there anything worse than a man who has a little pain? Guess that’s why we have the babies …

  I, myself, was having a terrible time reading the paper, so yesterday morning, I went to Birmingham to get my eyes checked, and, lo and behold, I had on Wilbur’s glasses and he had on mine. We are getting different colored ones next time.

  I don’t feel too bad. I heard there was a fire the other day over at Opal’s beauty shop, and Biddie Louise Otis, who was hooked up to the permanent wave machine at the time, started screaming bloody murder because she thought it was her head that was on fire. But it was just some old hair in the wastepaper basket that was burning. Naughty Bird, Opal’s shampoo girl, put out the fire and it was fine.

  Don’t forget to vote. Nobody is running against Grady Kilgore, but it makes him feel good, so do it anyway.

  By the way, Jasper Peavey got another write-up in the Railroad News, and we know Big George and Onzell must be proud.

  … Dot Weems …

  P.S. The Dill Pickle Club had its annual Icebox Follies again and it was hilarious as usual. My other half sang “Red Sails in the Sunset” again. Sorry, folks … I just cain’t get him to learn a new one.

  SEPTEMBER 14, 1986

  Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode were taking a walk out behind the nursing home when a flock of Canada geese flew over, honking happily through the fall sky.

  “Oh Evelyn, wouldn’t you love to be going with them? Wonder where they’re going?”

  “Oh, Florida or Cuba, maybe.”

  “You think so?”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind going to Florida, but I don’t care a thing in the world about going to Cuba. Smokey used to say those geese were his pals, and when we’d ask him where it was that he’d go off to, he’d say, ‘Oh, I just go where the wild geese goes …’ ”

  They watched them fly out of sight, and continued on their walk.

  “Don’t you love ducks?”

  “They’re pretty, all right.”

  “I just love ducks. I guess you could say that I was always partial to fowl.”

  “What?”

  “Fowl. You know—poultry, things with feathers, birds, chickens, roosters.”

  “Oh.”

  “Cleo and I would have our coffee out on the back porch every morning and watch the sun come up and listen to the birds … we’d always have about three or four good old hot cups of Red Diamond coffee and toast with peach or green pepper jelly, and we’d talk—well, I’d talk and he’d listen. We had so many pretty birds come to the house; redbirds, robins, and the prettiest doves … you don’t see birds like you used to, anymore.

  “One day, Cleo was going out the door and he pointed up to where all the old blackbirds were sitting on a telephone wire in front of our house, and he’d say, ‘Be careful what you say on the phone today, Ninny, you know they’re up there listening to what you say. They can hear through their feet.’ ” She looked at Evelyn. “Do you believe that’s true?”

  “No. I’m sure he was just kidding you, Mrs. Threadgoode.”

  “Well, he probably was, but whenever I had a secret to tell, I’d look out the door and make sure they weren’t sitting up there. He should have never told me that, knowing how much I love to jaw on the phone. I used to talk to everybody in town.

  “I guess at one time we had upwards to two hundred fifty people living in Whistle Stop. But after they stopped most of the trains coming through, people just scattered all over like birds to the wind … went to Birmingham, or wherever, and never came back.

  “Where the cafe was, they’ve put a Big Mac, and they’ve got some supermarket out on the highway that Mrs. Otis liked to go to because she clipped coupons. But I never could find anything I was looking for in there, and the lights hurt my eyes so bad, so I just walk over to Troutville to Ocie’s grocery store to pick up whatever little bit I need.”

  Mrs. Threadgoode stopped. “Oh Evelyn, smell that … somebody?
??s cooking barbecue!”

  Evelyn said, “No honey, I think that’s somebody just burning leaves.”

  “Well, it smells like barbecue to me. You like barbecue, don’t you? I love it. I’d pay a million dollars for a barbecue like Big George used to make, and a piece of Sipsey’s lemon icebox pie. He made the best barbecue.

  “He cooked it in a big old iron drum, out in the back of the cafe, and you could smell it for miles around, especially on a fall day. I could smell it all the way over to my house. Smokey said he was coming in on the train one time and he smelled it ten miles up the tracks from Whistle Stop. People drove all the way from Birmingham to get it. Where do you and Ed get your barbecue?”

  “We get it over at the Golden Rule or Ollie’s, mostly.”

  “Well, they’re all right, but I don’t care what you say, colored people can make barbecue better than anybody in the whole world.”

  Evelyn said, “They can do most everything better. I wish I was black.”

  “You mean colored?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Threadgoode was completely baffled. “Lord, honey, why? Most of them want to be white; they’re always trying to bleach their skin and straighten their hair.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Well, maybe not now, but they used to. Just thank the good Lord He made you white. I just cain’t imagine why anybody would want to be colored when they don’t hafta be.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, they just seem to fit in with each other … have more of a good time, or something. I’ve always felt … well … stiff, I guess, and they always look like they’re having so much fun.”

  Mrs. Threadgoode thought about it for a minute. “Well now, that may be true, they do have a lot of fun, and they can let go when they want to, but they have their sorrows, just like the rest of us. Why, you’ve never heard anything sadder than a colored funeral. They scream and carry on just like somebody was tearing the very heart out of them. I think pain hurts them more than it does us. It took three men to hold Onzell when Willie Boy was buried. She went crazy and tried to jump in the grave with him. I don’t ever want to go to another one of those for as long as I live.”