Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

  “So we never did know the baby’s real name. Sipsey said since he came off the train, she would just call him George Pullman Peavey, after the man that invented the pullman car. But whoever his real daddy was, he must have been a big man, because George grew up to be a six-foot-four, two-hundred-fifty-pounder.

  “When he was a little boy, Poppa took him over to the store and taught him how to be a butcher. He was slaughtering hogs when he was only ten, and Sipsey was so proud of him … she couldn’t have loved him any more if he had been her very own. She used to hug him and she would say, ‘Honey, just ’cause we ain’t no kin don’ mean you don’ belong to me.’

  “And later, when Big George was on trial, she dressed up and went to that courtroom, come rain or come shine … she must have been close to ninety years old. Course, you can never really tell how old colored people are.

  “She was always singing her gospel songs … ‘In the Baggage Car Ahead,’ and ‘I’m Going Home on the Morning Train’ … always singing about trains. The night before she died, she told George that she had a dream where she saw Jesus all dressed in white. He was the conductor of a ghost train and he was coming to get her and take her to heaven.

  “But I would venture to say she was still cooking over at the cafe well up into her eighties. That’s the reason most people came, because of her cooking. It sure wasn’t for the look of the place. When Idgie and Ruth bought it, it wasn’t nothing more but one big old room. It sat just across the street from the railroad tracks, down from the post office, where Dot Weems worked.

  “I remember the day they moved in the cafe. We were all down there helping, and Sipsey was busy sweeping the floor when she noticed that Ruth was hanging her picture of the Last Supper. Sipsey stopped sweeping and studied that picture for a while, and then she asked, ‘Miz Ruth, who’s that sitting up there at the table with Mr. Jesus?’

  “Ruth, who was trying to be sweet, said, ‘Why, Sipsey, that’s Mr. Jesus and the Brethren.’ Sipsey looked back at her and she said, ‘Oh. Uh-huh. I thought Miz Mary just had the one boy,’ and went on sweeping. We ‘bout died laughing. Sipsey knew exactly who that was in the picture. She just liked to play with people.

  “Julian and Cleo had built four wooden booths and built the room in the back, so Idgie and Ruth would have a place to live. The cafe part had walls that were knotty Georgia pine, and the floor was just plain old wood.

  “Ruth tried to fix the place up. She put a picture of a ship sailing in the moonlight, but Idgie came right along behind her and took it down and stuck up a picture she found of a bunch of dogs sitting around a card table, smoking cigars and playing polker. And she wrote underneath it, The Dill Pickle Club. That was the name of this crazy club that she and her friend Grady Kilgore had started. Other than the Christmas decorations they put up the first year that Idgie never did take down, and an old railroad calendar. That was it.

  “There was only about four tables and a bunch of uncertain chairs.” She laughed. “You never knew for certain if they was gonna hold you up or not. And they never did have a cash register. They just kept the money in a Roy Tan Cigar box and made your change out of that. At the counter they had potato chips and pig skins on a rack, combs and chewin’ tobacco, fishing lures and little corncob pipes.

  “Idgie opened the place at daybreak and didn’t close the place until, as she said, ‘the last dog was hung.’

  “The big L & N switching yard was only two blocks down the street, and all the railroad people ate there, colored and white alike. She’d serve the colored out the back door. Of course, a lot of people didn’t like the idea of her selling food to the coloreds, and she got into some trouble doing it, but she said that nobody was gonna tell her what she could and could not do. Cleo said she stood right up to the Ku Klux Klan all by herself, and wouldn’t let them stop her. As good-natured as she was, Idgie turned out to be brave when push came to shove …”

  MARCH 22, 1933

  Idgie was drinking coffee and talking about not much of anything with her hobo friend Smokey. Back in the kitchen, Sipsey and Onzell were busy frying up a batch of green tomatoes for the lunch crowd, due in about 11:30, and listening to the “Wings Over Jordan Gospel Hour,” over W.A.P.I. radio when Ocie Smith knocked at the kitchen door.

  Sipsey came out into the cafe, wiping her hands on her apron. “Miz Idgie, there’s a colored boy who’s axing to speak wid you.”

  Idgie went to the screen door and immediately recognized Ocie Smith, a friend of hers from Troutville, who worked at the railroad yard.

  “Well hey there, Ocie. How are you?”

  “I’s fine, Miz Idgie.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Miz Idgie, they’s a whole bunch of us boys over at the yard, and we’s been smelling barbecue every day for ’bout two months and it’s ’bout to drive us out of our heads, and we’s wonderin’ if you wouldn’t be willing to sell us some of them barbecue sandwiches. I’s got money.”

  Idgie sighed and shook her head. “Let me tell you something, Ocie. You know that if it was up to me, I’d have you come on in the front door and sit at a table, but you know I cain’t do that.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “There’s a bunch in town that would burn me down in a minute, and I’ve got to make a living.”

  “Yes’m, I knows you do.”

  “But I want you to go back over to the yard and tell your friends, anytime they want anything, just to come on around to the kitchen door.”

  He grinned. “Yes’m.”

  “Tell Sipsey what you want, and she’ll fix you up.”

  “Yes’m. Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Sipsey, give him his barbecue and anything else he wants. Give him some pie, too.”

  Sipsey mumbled under her breath, “You gonna get yourself in a whole lot of trouble wid them Ku Kluxes, and I’m gonna be gone. You ain’t gwine see me aroun’ no more, no ma’am.”

  But she fixed the sandwiches and got grape drinks and pie and put them in a paper sack with a napkin for him.

  About three days later, Grady Kilgore, the local sheriff and part-time railroad detective, came in all puffed up. He was a big bear of a man who had been a friend of her brother, Buddy.

  He put his hat on the hat rack, like he always did, and told Idgie he had some serious business to discuss. She brought his coffee to the booth and sat down. Grady leaned across the table and started his unpleasant task.

  “Now, Idgie, you ought not to be selling those niggers food, you know better than that. And there’s some boys in this town that’s not too happy about it. Nobody wants to eat in the same place that niggers come, it’s not right and you just ought not be doin’ it.”

  Idgie thought it over for a moment and shook her head in agreement.

  “You’re right, Grady, I know better and I just ought not be doing it.”

  Grady sat back and seemed pleased.

  She continued, “Yeah, Grady, it’s funny how people do things they ought not to do. Take yourself, for instance. I guess a lot of people might think that after church on Sunday you ought not to go over to the river and see Eva Bates. I reckon Gladys might think you ought not be doing that.”

  Grady, who was at the present time a deacon in the Baptist church and had married the former Gladys Moats, who was known to have a temper, got flustered.

  “Oh come on, Idgie, that’s not funny.”

  “I think it is. Just like I think a bunch of grown men getting liquored up and putting sheets on their heads is pretty damn funny.”

  Grady called out to Ruth, who was behind the counter, “Ruth, will you come over here and try to talk some sense into her? She ain’t gonna listen to me. I’m just trying to keep her out of trouble, that’s all. Now, I’m not saying who, but there’s some people in town that don’t like her selling to niggers.”

  Idgie lit her Camel and smiled. “Well, Grady, tell you what. The next time those ‘some people’ come in here, like Jack Butts and Wilbur Weems and Pete Tidwell
, I’ll ask ’em if they don’t want anybody to know who they are when they go marching around in one of those stupid parades you boys have, why don’t they have enough sense to change their shoes?”

  “Now, wait a minute, Idgie—”

  “Oh hell, Grady, y’all ain’t fooling anybody. Why, I’d recognize those size-fourteen clodhoppers you got on anywhere.”

  Grady looked down at his feet. He was losing this battle in a hurry.

  “Aw now, Idgie, I’ve got to tell them something. Are you gonna stop it or not? Ruth, come over here and help me with this stubborn mule.”

  Ruth went to the table. “Oh Grady, what harm can it be to sell a few sandwiches out the back door? It’s not like they’re coming in and sitting down.”

  “Well, I don’t know, Ruth … I’ll have to talk to the boys.”

  “They’re not hurting anybody, Grady.”

  He thought for a minute. “Well … okay for now, I guess.” He pointed his finger at Idgie. “But you make sure you keep them at the back door, you hear me?”

  He got up to leave and put his hat on, and then turned back to Idgie.

  “We still playing polker Friday?”

  “Yep. Eight o’clock. And bring plenty of money, I feel lucky.”

  “I’ll tell Jack and them … ‘bye, Ruth.”

  “ ’Bye, Grady.”

  Idgie shook her head as she watched him go on down the street.

  “Ruth, I wish you could have seen that big ox, down at the river for three days, drunk as a dog, crying like a baby, ’cause Joe, that old colored man that raised him, died. I swear, I don’t know what people are using for brains anymore. Imagine those boys: They’re terrified to sit next to a nigger and have a meal, but they’ll eat eggs that came right out of a chicken’s ass.”

  “Oh, Idgie!”

  Idgie laughed. “I’m sorry, but it just makes me mad sometimes.”

  “I know, honey, but you shouldn’t get yourself so upset. That’s just the way people are and there’s not a thing in the world you can do to change them. That’s just how it is.”

  Idgie smiled at her and wondered what would happen if she didn’t have Ruth to let off steam with. Ruth smiled back.

  They both knew they had to make a decision about what to do. And they did. After that day, the only thing that changed was on the menu that hung on the back door; everything was a nickel or a dime cheaper. They figured fair was fair …

  APRIL 6, 1933

  Change of Menu at Cafe

  Patrons of the cafe got quite a surprise when they read the menu last week that featured, among other things: Fillet of Possom … Prime Rib of Polecat … Goat’s Liver and Onions … Bull Frog Pudding and Turkey Buzzard Pie Ala Mode.

  An unsuspecting couple, who had come all the way from Gate City for dinner, read the menu and were halfway down the block when Idgie opened the door and yelled April Fool’s at them.

  The couple from Gate City then ordered from the regular menu and got some free coconut cream pie.

  By the way, my other half let one of his old hunting dogs in the house the other day, and he brought his bone with him, and wouldn’t you know it, I tripped on it and broke my toe. Doctor Hadley wrapped it up for me, but I’m having to wear house shoes to work and can’t get out and gather news, like I want to. So if you have any news, just bring it on over to me at the post office.

  … Dot Weems …

  JANUARY 19, 1986

  It was Sunday again. Evelyn and Ed Couch were getting ready to leave for the nursing home. She turned off the coffeepot and wished that she didn’t have to go, but Ed was so sensitive where his mother was concerned that she dare not refuse to go and at least say hello to her whiny, demanding mother-in-law. Going out there was like torture to her; she hated the smell of sickness and Lysol and death. It reminded her of her mother, of doctors and hospitals.

  Evelyn had been forty when her mother died, and after that, the fear started. Now, when she read the morning paper, she turned immediately to the obituary column, even before she read her horoscope. She was always pleased when the person who had died had been in their seventies or eighties, and she loved it when the dear departed had been over ninety; it made her feel safe somehow. But when she read that they had died in their forties or fifties, it disturbed her all day, especially if, at the end of the obituary, the family had requested that a donation be sent to the cancer society. But what disturbed her the most was when the cause of death was not listed.

  A short illness of what?

  Died suddenly of what?

  What kind of accident?

  She wanted all the details in black and white. No guessing. And she loathed it when the family asked that a donation be made to the humane society. What did that mean? Rabies … dog bite … cat fever?

  But lately, it had been mostly donations to the cancer society. She wondered why she had to live in a body that would get old and break down and feel pain. Why couldn’t she have been living inside a desk, a big sturdy desk? Or a stove? Or a washing machine? She would much rather have an ordinary repairman, like an electrician or a plumber, than a doctor work on her. While she had been in the throes of labor pains, Dr. Clyde, her obstetrician, had stood there and lied to her face. “Mrs. Couch, you’re going to forget these pains as soon as you see that baby of yours. So push a little harder. You won’t even remember this, trust me.”

  WRONG! She remembered every pain, right down the line, and would not have had the second child if Ed had not insisted on trying for a boy.… Another lie exposed: The second one hurt as much as the first, maybe even more, because this time she knew what to expect. She was mad at Ed the whole nine months, and thank God she had Tommy, because this was it, as far as she was concerned.

  Her whole life she’d been afraid of doctors. Then, wary, but now she hated, loathed, and despised them. Ever since that doctor had come swaggering into her mother’s hospital room with his chart that day …

  This little tin God in the polyester suit and the three-pound shoes. So smug, so self-important, with the nurses fluttering around him like geisha girls. He had not even been her mother’s doctor; he was only making some other doctor’s rounds that morning. Evelyn had been standing there, holding her mother’s hand. When he came in, he did not bother to introduce himself.

  She said, “Hello, Doctor. I’m her daughter, Evelyn Couch,”

  Without taking his eyes off the chart, he said in a loud voice, “Your mother has a rapidly progressing cancer of the lung that has metastasized itself in the liver, pancreas, and spleen, with some indication of invasion into the bone marrow.”

  Up until that very moment, her mother had not even known that she had cancer. Evelyn had not wanted her to know because her mother had been so scared. She would remember the look of sheer terror on her mother’s face as long as she lived, and that doctor, who continued on down the hall with his entourage.

  Two days later, her mother went into a coma.

  She could also never forget that gray, sterile, concrete-walled intensive care waiting room where she had spent all those weeks, frightened and confused, just like the rest of the ones waiting there; knowing that their loved one was lying just down the hall in a cold, sunless room, waiting to die.

  Here they were, perfect strangers, in this small space, sharing what was probably the most intimate and painful moment of their lives, not knowing how to act or what to say. There were no rules of etiquette. Nobody had prepared them for this ordeal. Poor people, terrified like herself, trying to be brave, chatting on about their everyday lives, completely in shock, pretending everything was all right.

  One family had been so frightened that they couldn’t bring themselves to accept the fact that the woman down the hall, dying, was their mother. They would always refer to her as “their patient,” and ask Evelyn how “her patient” was doing: to put the truth as far away from them as possible and try to ease the pain.

  Every day they waited together, knowing the moment would come, that awful m
oment when they would be called upon to make “the decision” whether or not to turn the machines off …

  “It’s for the best.”

  “They’ll be much better off.”

  “It’s what they would want.”

  “The doctor says they’re already gone.”

  “This is only a technicality.”

  A technicality?

  All those calm, adult discussions. When all she really wanted to do was scream for her momma, her sweet momma, the one person in the world who loved her better than anyone ever would or ever could.

  That Saturday the doctor came to the waiting room and looked in. All eyes were on him and the conversation stopped. He glanced around the room.

  “Mrs. Couch, may I see you in my office for a moment, please?”

  As she gathered her purse with shaky hands and pounding heart, the others looked at her in sympathy, and one woman touched her arm; but they were secretly relieved that it had not been them.

  She felt as if she were in a dream and listened carefully to what he said. He made it seem so simple and so natural. “No point in prolonging it …”

  He made perfect sense. She got up like a zombie and went home.

  She thought she was ready to accept it, to let her go.

  But then, nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother’s machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a light and leaving a room.

  She could never forgive herself for not having the courage to go back over to the hospital and be with her mother. She still woke up crying over the guilt, and there was not a way in the world she could ever make up for it.