Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (29 page)

She would stop the construction of all condos, especially ones with red tile roofs; and Van Johnson would be given a show of his own … he was one of Towanda’s favorites.

Graffiti offenders were to be dipped in a vat of indelible ink. No more children of famous parents could write books. And she’d personally see to it that all the sweet men and daddies, who had worked so hard, would each receive a trip to Hawaii and an outboard motor to go with it.

Towanda went to Madison Avenue and took control of all the fashion magazines; all models weighing under 135 were fired, and wrinkles suddenly became sexually desirable. Low-fat cottage cheese was banned from the land forever. Ditto, carrot sticks.

Why, just yesterday, Towanda had marched into the Pentagon, taken all the bombs and missiles away, and had given them toys to play with instead, while her sisters in Russia were doing the same thing. Then she went on the six o’clock nightly news and gave the entire military budget to all the people in the United States over sixty-five. Towanda would be so busy all day that Evelyn was exhausted by bedtime.

No wonder. Tonight, while Evelyn was cooking dinner, Towanda had just put a roomful of porno and child exploitation film producers to death. And later, as Evelyn was washing the dishes, Towanda was in the process of single-handedly blowing up the entire Middle East to prevent the Third World War. And so, when Ed yelled from the den for another beer, somehow,
before Evelyn could stop her, Towanda yelled back,
“SCREW YOU, ED!
”

He very quietly got up from his recliner and came into the kitchen.

“Evelyn, are you all right?”

My other half is working two shifts, along with just about everyone else over at the railroad, since the iron and steel industry is working overtime, and I’m one lonesome gal these days. But if he’s helping out Uncle Sam and our boys, I guess I can take it.

Tommy Glass and Ray Limeway write from camp to say hello.

By the way, has anybody seen Idgie’s and Ruth’s victory garden, by the old Threadgood place? Idgie said that Sipsey grew butterbeans the size of silver dollars. I can’t get anything but a few sweet potatoes, over at my place.

Three of the members of the Jolly Belles Ladies’ Barber Shop Quartet, me and Biddie Louise Otis and Ninny Threadgoode, went to Birmingham and had dinner at Brittling’s Cafeteria, and then went to see our own Essie Rue Limeway. The picture playing
was not half as good as the show in between. We are mighty proud. We wanted to tell everyone in the theater that she was our friend. Ninny did turn to the person next to her and inform him that Essie Rue was her sister-in-law. By the way, don’t forget to save rubber.

 … Dot Weems …

P.S. Who says we are the weaker sex? Poor Dwane Glass fainted at his own wedding last Sunday and had to be held up by his bride-to-be throughout the entire ceremony. He said he felt much better after it was over though. He leaves for the army right after his honeymoon.

In Birmingham, at the big L & N Terminal train station, a brass band and a crowd of five hundred people had gathered to welcome home the returning sons, husbands, and brothers; war heroes, all. The flags were waving already, waiting for the six-twenty from Washington, D.C.

But tonight, the train made its first stop twenty minutes outside of Birmingham, and down at the end of the platform was a black family, waiting for their son. Quietly, the wooden box was lifted off the baggage coach and placed on the cart that would take him over the tracks to Troutville.

Artis, Jasper, and Naughty Bird walked behind Onzell, Sipsey, and Big George. As they walked by, Grady Kilgore, Jack Butts, and all the railroad boys took their hats off and stood at attention.

There were no flags or bands or any medals, just a cardboard name tag on the box, with P.F.C. w. C. PEAVEY written on it. But across the street, in the window of the cafe, there was a flag and a service star in the window and a sign that read:
WELCOME HOME, WILLIE BOY …

Ruth and Idgie and Stump had already gone over to Troutville to wait with the others.

Sweet Willie Boy, Wonderful Counselor Peavey, the boy who had been accepted at Tuskegee Institute … the smart one, the one who was going to be a lawyer, a leader of his people, a shining light from the back roads of Alabama to Washington, D.C. Willie Boy, the one who had the chance to make it, had gotten himself killed after a bar fight by a black soldier named Winston Lewis from Newark, New Jersey.

Willie Boy had been talking about his daddy, Big George, who, whenever his name was mentioned down home, blacks and whites alike would always say, “Now, there’s a man.”

But Winston Lewis had said that
any
man working for whites, especially in Alabama, was nothing but a low-down, ignorant, stupid shuffling Uncle Tom.

In order to survive, Willie Boy had been trained not to react to insults and to disguise even the tiniest glimmer of aggressiveness or anger. But tonight, when Winston spoke, he thought of his daddy and crashed a beer bottle into the soldier’s face and sent him sprawling on the floor, out like a light.

The next night, while he was asleep, Willie Boy’s throat had been cut from ear to ear; Winston Lewis then went A.W.O.L. The army didn’t much care; they had pretty much had it with the knife fights among the colored troops, and Willie Boy was sent home in a box.

At the funeral, Ruth and Smokey and all the Threadgoodes were in the front row of the church, and Idgie spoke on behalf of the family. The preacher preached about Jesus taking only His precious children home early to be with Him, and talked about the will of the Almighty Father Who sits on the golden throne in heaven. The congregation swayed and responded with, “Yes sir, His will be done.”

Artis answered the preacher along with the rest of them, and he swayed in his seat while he watched his mother scream in agony; but after the service, he did not go to the graveyard. While Willie Boy was being lowered into that cold Alabama
red-clay grave, Artis had hopped a train and was on his way to Newark, New Jersey. He was looking for someone named Mr. Winston Lewis to cut.

 … And the congregation was singing, “Lord, don’t move my mountain, just give me the strength to climb …”

Three days later, Winston Lewis’s heart was found in a paper sack several blocks from his residence.

The Dill Pickle Club put on its annual “Icebox Follies,” and this one was the best yet.

Grady Kilgore was cast as Shirley Temple, who sang “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” I wonder if everyone knew what pretty legs our sheriff has?

And my own other half, Wilbur Weems, sang “Red Sails in the Sunset.” I thought it was good, but then, I’m no judge. I hear him every day in the shower. Ha. Ha.

The most hilarious skit was a skit depicting Reverend Scroggins, played by Idgie Threadgoode, and Vesta Adcock, played by Pete Tidwell.

Opal did all the hair and makeup, and Ninny Threadgoode, Biddie Louise Otis, and yours truly made all the costumes.

The so-called “dangerous animal” in the Mutt and
Jeff skit was none other than Dr. and Mrs. Hadley’s bulldog, Ring, in a gas mask.

All the proceeds go to the Christmas fund to aid all the needy here in Whistle Stop and in Troutville.

I wish this old war would hurry up and be over with; we sure do miss all our boys.

By the way, Wilbur tried to join the army the other day. Thank God, he’s too old and has flat feet, or we’d really be in trouble.

 … Dot Weems …

Evelyn had gained back all the weight she had lost on her diet, plus eight more pounds. She was so upset, she did not notice that Mrs. Threadgoode had her dress on inside out again.

They were busy eating a five-pound box of Divinity Fudge when Mrs. Threadgoode said, “I’d kill for a pat of butter. This margarine they serve out here tastes like lard. We had to eat so much of that stuff in the Depression, I don’t want to ever have to eat it again. So I just do without, and I have my toast dry, with plain apple butter.

“Come to think of it, Idgie and Ruth bought the cafe in 1929, right in the height of the Depression, but I don’t think we ever had margarine there. Leastways, I cain’t recall if we did. It’s odd, here the whole world was suffering so, but at the cafe, those Depression years come back to me now as the happy times, even though we were all struggling. We were happy and didn’t know it.

“A lot of nights we’d all sit around up at the cafe and just listen to the radio. We’d listen to Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos and Andy, Fred Allen … oh, I cain’t remember what all we’d listen to, but they were all good. I cain’t look at any of
these programs they put on the TV today. Just people shootin’ their guns and shoutin’ insults at each other. Fibber McGee and Molly didn’t shout at each other. Amos and Andy used to shout a little, but that was funny. And the colored people on the TV now are not near as sweet as they used to be. Sipsey would have Big George’s hide if he talked as smart aleck as some of them do.

“It’s not just TV. Mrs. Otis was over at the supermarket one day and she told this little colored boy that was passing by that she would give him a nickel if he’d lift her groceries in her car for her, and she said that he cut his eyes at her, mean-like, and just walked away. Oh, and it’s not just the colored people, either. Back when Mrs. Otis was driving, before she hit that stack of grocery carts, people would run up behind us and blow their horns something awful, and when they passed us, some of them would give us the finger. I never saw such behavior. There’s no call to be that ugly.

“I don’t even want to look at the news anymore. Everybody fighting each other. They ought to give those boys some tranquilizers and quiet them down for a while. That’s what they gave Mr. Dunaway. I think all the bad news affects people, makes them so mean. So whenever the news comes on, I just cut it off.