Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

FEBRUARY 2, 1986

When Evelyn walked in, her friend said, “Oh Evelyn, I wish you had been here ten minutes earlier. You just missed seeing my neighbor Mrs. Hartman. She came out and brought me this.” She showed Evelyn a tiny mother-in-law tongue plant in a small ceramic white cocker-spaniel pot.

“And she brought Mrs. Otis the prettiest spider lily. I wanted you to meet her so bad, you would just love her. Her daughter’s the one that’s been watering my geraniums for me. I told her all about you …”

Evelyn said that she was sorry she’d missed her, and gave Mrs. Threadgoode the pink cupcake she had gotten over at Waites Bakery earlier this morning.

Mrs. Threadgoode thanked her kindly and sat there eating and admiring her planter.

“I love a cocker spaniel, don’t you? There’s nothing in the world happier to see you than a cocker spaniel. Ruth’s and Idgie’s little boy used to have one, and every time he’d see you, he’d zigzag and bang his tail all over the place like you’d been gone for years, even if you had just been to the corner and back. Now, a kitty will act like they don’t care a thing in the world about you. Some people are like that, you know … run from you, won’t let you love them. Idgie used to be like that.”

Evelyn was surprised. “Really?” she said and bit into her cupcake.

“Oh yes, honey. When she was in high school, she gave everybody fits. Most of the time she wouldn’t even go to school, and when she did, she would only wear that ratty old pair of overalls that had belonged to Buddy. But half of the time she would be off in the woods with Julian and his friends, hunting and fishing. But you know, everybody liked her. Boys and girls, colored and white alike, everybody wanted to be around Idgie. She had that big Threadgoode smile, and when she wanted to, oh, she could make you laugh! Like I said, she had Buddy’s charm …

“But there was something about Idgie that was like a wild animal. She wouldn’t let anybody get too close to her. When she thought that somebody liked her too much, she’d just take off in the woods. She broke hearts right and left. Sipsey said she was like that because Momma had eaten wild game when she was pregnant with Idgie, and that’s what caused her to act like a heathen!

“But when Ruth came to live with us, you never saw a change in anybody so fast in all your life.

“Ruth was from Valdosta, Georgia, and she had come over to be in charge of all the BYO activities at Momma’s church that summer. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old. She had light auburn hair and brown eyes with long lashes, and was so sweet and soft-spoken that people just fell in love with her on first sight. You just couldn’t help yourself, she was just one of those sweet-to-the-bone girls, and the more you knew her, the prettier she got.

“She’d never been away from home before, and at first she was shy with everybody and a little afraid. Of course, she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Her mother and daddy had been real old when they had her. Her daddy had been a preacher, over there in Georgia, and I think she was raised real strict-like.

“But as soon as they saw her, all the boys in town, who never went to church, started going every Sunday. I don’t think she had any idea how pretty she was. She was kind to everybody, and ol’ Idgie was just fascinated with her … Idgie must have been around fifteen or sixteen at the time.

“The first week Ruth was there, Idgie just hung around in the chinaberry tree, staring at her whenever she went in or out of the house. Then, pretty soon she took to showing off; hanging upside down, throwing the football in the yard, and coming home with a huge string of fish over her shoulder at the same time that Ruth would be coming across the street from church.

“Julian said she hadn’t been fishing at all and had bought those fish off some colored boys down at the river. He made the mistake of saying that in front of Ruth, and it cost him a good pair of his shoes that Idgie filled with cow manure that night.

“Then, one day, Momma said to Ruth, ‘Will you please go and see if you can get my youngest child to sit down like a human being and have her supper?’

“Ruth went out and asked Idgie, who was in the tree reading her True Detective magazine at the time, if she wouldn’t please come and have supper at the table tonight. Idgie didn’t look at her, but said she’d think about it. We’d been seated and had already finished saying grace when Idgie came in the house and went upstairs. We could hear her upstairs in the bathroom running water, and in about five minutes, Idgie, who almost never ate with us, started down the stairs.

“Momma looked at us and whispered, ‘Now, children, your sister has a crush, and I don’t want one person to laugh at her. Is that understood?’

“We said we wouldn’t, and in comes Idgie, with her face all scrubbed and she had her hair all slicked down with some old grease that she’d found up there in the medicine cabinet. We tried not to laugh, but she was a sight to see. All Ruth asked her was if she cared for some more string beans, and she blushed so bad that her ears turned as red as a tomato.… Patsy Ruth started it first, just a snicker, then Mildred. And like I say, I always was a tagalong, so I started and then Julian, who couldn’t control himself a minute longer, spit his mashed potatoes all over poor Essie Rue, who was sitting across from him.

“It was terrible to have that happen, but it was just one of those things. Momma said, ‘You may be excused, children,’ and all of us ran in the parlor and fell on the floor and about killed ourselves laughing. Patsy Ruth peed her pants. But the really funny thing is Idgie was struck so dumb at sitting next to Ruth that she never even knew what we’d been laughing at, because when she passed by the parlor, she looked in and said, ‘That’s a fine way to act when we have company.’ And of course, we all just collapsed again …

“Pretty soon after that, Idgie started acting like a tame puppy. I think Ruth was lonesome, herself, that summer … Idgie could make her laugh, and, oh, Idgie would do anything to entertain her. Momma said it was the only time in Idgie’s life that she could get her to do anything she wanted—all she had to do was to ask Ruth to get her to do it. Momma said Idgie would have jumped off a mountain backwards if Ruth had asked her to. And I believe that! It was the first time since Buddy died that she even went to church.

“Everywhere Ruth was, that’s where Idgie would be. It was a mutual thing. They just took to each other, and you could hear them, sittin’ on the swing on the porch, gigglin’ all night. Even Sipsey razzed her. She’d see Idgie by herself and say, ‘That ol’ love bug done bit Idgie.’

“We had a fine time that summer. Ruth, who tended to be a little reserved, at first learned to cut up and play games. And pretty soon when Essie Rue would play the piano, she joined in the singing just like the rest of us.

“We were all happy, but Momma said to me one afternoon that she dreaded what was going to happen when the summer ended and Ruth went back home.”