Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

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.”

“I know there’s good and bad in everything,” Evelyn said, “but I still can’t help but envy them, somehow. I just wish I could be free and open like they are.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Mrs. Threadgoode said. “I just wish I had me a barbecue and a piece of pie, and I’d be happy.”