Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

NOVEMBER 18, 1931

By now, the name of the cafe was written on the walls of hundreds of boxcars, from Seattle to Florida. Splinter Belly Jones said he had seen it as far away as Canada.

Things were especially bad that year, and at night the woods all around Whistle Stop twinkled from the fires at the hobo camps, and there wasn’t a single man there that Idgie and Ruth had not fed at one time or another.

Cleo, Idgie’s brother, was concerned about it. He had come over to the cafe to pick up his wife, Ninny, and their little boy, Albert. He was having a cup of coffee and eating peanuts.

“Idgie, I’m telling you, you don’t need to feed everybody that shows up at your door. You’ve got a business to run here. Julian told me that he came by here the other day and there were seven of them in here eating. He says he thinks you’d let Ruth and the baby go without to feed those bums.”

Idgie dismissed the thought. “Oh Cleo, what does Julian know? He’d starve to death himself if Opal didn’t have the beauty shop. What are you listening to him for? He doesn’t have the sense God gave a billy goat.”

Cleo couldn’t disagree with her on that point.

“Well, it’s not only Julian, honey. I worry about you.

“I know.”

“Well, I just want you to be smart and not be a fool and give away all your profits.”

Idgie looked at him and smiled. “Now, Cleo, I know for a fact that half the people in this town have not paid you for five years. I don’t see you throwing them out the door.”

Ninny, who was usually quiet, piped up, “That’s right, Cleo.”

Cleo ate a peanut. Idgie got up and grabbed him around the neck, playing with him. “Listen, you old bone cracker, you’ve never turned a hungry man away from your door in your life.”

“I never had to. They were all over here,” he said and cleared his throat. “Now, seriously, Idgie, I’m not trying to run your business or anything, but I just want to know if you’re saving any money, that’s all.”

“What for?” Idgie said. “Listen, money will kill you, you know that. Why, just today, a man came here and told me about his uncle, who had a good-paying job working up in Kentucky at the national mint, making money for the government, and everything was going fine until one day he pulled the wrong lever and was crushed to death by seven hundred pounds of dimes.”

Ninny was horrified. “Oh no. How awful.”

Cleo looked at his wife like she was crazy. “Good Lord, woman, I think you’d believe anything this nutty sister of mine told you.”

“Well, it could have happened, couldn’t it? Was he really killed by dimes, Idgie?”

“Sure was. It was either dimes or three hundred pounds of quarters, I forget which, but in any case, he was killed all right.”

Cleo shook his head at Idgie and had to laugh.