Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (4 page)

He was a mighty appreciative man. He said, “God bless you for a saint, ma’am,” and they sat down on a log out by the shed.

While Smokey was calming his nerves, she talked to him.

“See that big plot of empty land over there?”

He looked over. “Yes’m.”

“Years ago, that used to be the most beautiful little lake in Whistle Stop … in the summer, we’d swim in it and fish, and and you could go for a boat ride if you wanted to.” She shook her head sadly. “I sure do miss it, I sure do.”

Smokey looked at the vacant land.

“What happened to it, did it dry up?”

She lit a cigarette for him. “Naw, it was worse than that. One November, a big flock of ducks, oh, about forty or more, landed right smack in the middle of that lake, and while they were sitting there, that afternoon, a fluke thing happened. The temperature dropped so fast that the whole lake froze over, as solid as a rock, in a matter of three seconds. One, two, three, just like that.”

Smokey was amazed at the thought. “You don’t mean it?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I reckon it must have killed them ducks.”

Idgie said, “Why, hell no. They just flew off and took the lake with ’em. That lake’s somewhere in Georgia, to this very day …”

He turned and looked at her, and when he realized she was pulling his leg, his blue eyes crinkled up and he started laughing so hard that he started to cough at the same time, and she had to bang him on the back.

He was still wiping his eyes when they went back in the cafe, where his dinner was waiting. When he sat back down to eat, it was warm. Someone had kept it in the oven for him.

Mrs. Biddie Louise Otis announced today that she was going to take the meteorite that came through her roof last week down to the cafe so people would stop calling her up about it, because she is busy moving. She said that it is nothing but a big gray rock, but if anyone wants to look at it they can.

Idgie says to come on in the cafe whenever you want to and she will have it on the counter.

Sorry I don’t have more news this week, but my other half, Wilbur, has the flu and I’ve had to wait on him hand and foot all week.

Is there anything worse than a man that’s sick?

We are sorry to report that our beloved 98-year-old Bessie Vick, Bertha’s mother-in-law, died yesterday, of what was thought to be old age.

 … Dot Weems …

The next Sunday, when Evelyn came to the visitors’ lounge, Mrs. Threadgoode was sitting in the same chair, wearing the same dress, waiting for her.

Happy as a lark, she continued the conversation about the Threadgoode house as if they had never been apart, and there was nothing Evelyn could do about it but unwrap her Almond Joy candy bar and sit there for the duration.

“The front yard had a great big old chinaberry tree. I remember, we’d pick those little chinaberries all year long, and at Christmas, we’d string them and wrap them all around the tree from top to bottom. Momma was always warning us not to put chinaberries up our nose, and of course the first thing Idgie did, as soon as she learned to walk, was to go out in the yard and put chinaberries up her nose and in her ears as well. To the point that Dr. Hadley had to be called! He told Momma, ‘Mrs. Threadgoode, it looks like you’ve got yourself a little scalawag on your hands.’

“Well, of course Buddy just loved to hear that. He encouraged her every step of the way. But that’s how it is in big families. Everybody has their favorite. Her real name was Imogene,
but Buddy started calling her Idgie. Buddy was eight when she was born, and he used to carry her all over town, just like she was a doll. When she got old enough to walk, she’d paddle around after him like a little duck, dragging that little wooden rooster behind her.

“That Buddy had a million-dollar personality, with those dark eyes and those white teeth … he could charm you within an inch of your life. I don’t know of a girl in Whistle Stop that wasn’t in love with him at some time or another.

“They say you never forget your sweet sixteen party, and that’s true. I still can remember that pink-and-white cake with the carousel on top, and that pale lime-green punch Momma had in her crystal punch bowl. And those paper lanterns hanging all around the yard. But what stands out the most in my mind was Buddy Threadgoode stealin’ a kiss from me, over behind the grape arbor. Oh, he did! But I was just one of the many …

“Idgie was kept busy delivering love notes to and from Buddy, night and day. We even started calling her Cupid. Idgie was a towhead; had short, curly blond hair, blue eyes, and freckles. She took after Momma’s side of the family. Momma’s maiden name had been Alice Lee Cloud. She’d always say, ‘I was a Cloud before I married.’ She was the sweetest thing. Almost everybody in the family had blue eyes, except Buddy and poor Essie Rue, who had one brown eye and one blue one. Momma told her that was the reason she had so much musical talent. She saw the good in everything. One time, when Idgie and Buddy stole four big watermelons from old man Sockwell, they hid them in her blackberry patch. And, honey, the next morning, before they could get out there and get them, Momma found them and was convinced they had grown overnight. Cleo said there wasn’t a year that went by she wasn’t disappointed they didn’t grow back. Nobody had the heart to tell her those melons had been stolen goods.

“Momma was Baptist and Poppa was a Methodist. He said he had an aversion to being dipped underwater. So every Sunday, Poppa would go off to the left to the First Methodist church and the rest of us would go off to the right to the Baptist
church. Every once in a while Buddy would go with Poppa, but he stopped after a while. Said Baptist girls were prettier.

“Everybody was always staying at the Threadgoode house. One summer, Momma had this big fat Baptist preacher, who was in town for a camp meeting, staying with us, and when he was out somewhere, the twins went into his room and got to playing in a pair of his trousers. Patsy Ruth got in one leg and Mildred got in the other. They were having a fine time, until they heard him comin’ up the stairs … They got so scared that Mildred took off in one direction and Patsy Ruth took off in the other. Split those pants right in two. Momma said the only reason Poppa didn’t give them a spanking is because that preacher was a Baptist. But it never caused a serious rift, because after church we’d all meet back home for our Sunday dinner.

“Poppa Threadgoode wasn’t rich, but it seemed to us at the time he was. He owned the only store in town. You could get anything you needed in there. You could buy a National washboard or shoestrings or get yourself a corset or a dill pickle right out of the barrel.

“Buddy used to work in the drugstore part. And I’d give all the tea in China for a strawberry ice cream soda like Buddy used to make. Everybody in Whistle Stop traded there. That’s why we were so surprised when the store closed down in ‘twenty-two.

“Cleo said the reason the store failed was because Poppa couldn’t say no to anybody, white or colored. Whatever people wanted or needed, he just put in a sack and let them have it on credit. Cleo said Poppa’s fortune had walked right out the door on him in paper bags. But then, none of the Threadgoodes could ever say no to anybody. Honey, they would give you the shirt off their backs, if you asked for it. And Cleo was no better. Cleo and I never did have a lot of fancy things, but the good Lord provided, and we had everything we ever needed. I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean … and they’d be mean even if they were rich. Most of the people who are living out here at Rose Terrace
are poor. Just have their Social Security, and most of them are on Medicaid.”

She turned to Evelyn. “Honey, that’s one thing you be sure and you get on right away, is your Medicaid, you don’t want to be caught without that.

“There’s a few rich women out here. A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. Vesta Adcock, this little bird-breasted woman I know who’s from Whistle Stop, came in, wearing her fox furs and her diamond dinner rings. She’s one of the rich ones. But the rich ones don’t seem happy to me. And I’ll tell you something else—their children don’t come to see them any more often than the rest.

“Norris and Francis, Mrs. Otis’s son and daughter-in-law, come to see her every week, rain or shine. That’s why I come back here in the lounge on Sundays, to give them a little privacy, so they can visit … but oh, it would just break your heart to see some of them waiting for their visitors. They get their hair all done up on Saturday, and on Sunday morning they get themselves all dressed and ready, and after all that, nobody comes to see them. I feel so bad, but what can you do? Having children is no guarantee that you’ll get visitors … No, it isn’t.”

Opal Threadgoode, Julian’s wife, has rented the building two doors down from me at the post office, and is opening up a beauty shop of her own. She had been fixing people’s hair in her kitchen, but Julian said for her to stop doing that because so many women were coming in and out the back door all day that it was causing their hens not to lay.

Opal said the prices would still be the same: shampoo and set for 50¢, and a permanent for $1.50.

I, for one, am delighted at the new addition to our busy street. Just think, now you can mail a letter, have a meal, and get your hair done all on the same block. All we need now is a picture show to open up, then none of us would ever need to go over to Birmingham again.

Mr. and Mrs. Roy Glass had the Glass family annual
reunion in their backyard, and all the Glasses came from all over the state to be there, and Wilma said the cake tasted better than it looked.

By the way, my other half hooked his own finger the other day when he was fishing, so I’ve had him at home again, moaning and groaning.

 … Dot Weems …