Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe Read Online Free PDF Page B

track, tipped his hat, and flashed his lady’s smile at her; just as the whistle blew. They say he never even heard the train that was coming up behind him. Oh, how I wish to this day Cleo had never lent him that straw hat.”
    She shook her head. “You just don’t know, it liked to have killed us all. But the one that took it the hardest was Idgie. She must have been twelve or thirteen at the time, and had been over in Troutville playing ball when it happened. Cleo had to go over and get her.
    “You never saw anybody hurt so much. I thought she would die right along with him. It would break your heart to look at her. She ran away the day of the funeral. Just couldn’t stand it. And when she did come home, all she did was go upstairs and sit in Buddy’s room for hours on end, just sit up there in the dark. And when she couldn’t bear to be home any longer, she’d just take off and go stay with Sipsey over in Troutville
     … but she never did cry. She was too hurt to cry.… You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.
    “Momma Threadgoode was worried sick over her, but Poppa said to let her go and do what she had to do. Course, she was never the same after that, not until she met Ruth, then she started getting back to her old self. But I know she never really got over Buddy … none of us did.
    “But, I don’t want to dwell on sad times. That wouldn’t be right. Besides, just like Idgie meeting Ruth, God never shuts a door unless he opens another, and I believe He must have sent Ruth over to stay with us that summer for a reason … ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow, so I Know He Watches Me.’ ”

DECEMBER 1, 1931
Radio Star in Whistle Stop
    Hollywood has nothing on us. Our own Essie Rue Limeway, who is the organist for the Baptist church and the accompanist for the Jolly Belles Ladies’ Barber Shop Quartet, can be heard every morning at 6:30, this month, on “King Biscuit Time,” on W.A.P.I. radio, playing the piano on a commercial that she made for the Stanley Charles Organ and Piano Company. When Mr. Charles says, “Remember, folks, I’ll hold your organ or piano till Christmas,” that’s Essie Rue playing “Jingle Bells” in the background. So be sure and listen.
    Essie told me that Stanley Charles has entirely too many organs and pianos in stock this year, and needs to sell them in a hurry. Essie says, if you go in and mention her name that he will give you a discount. The store is located in downtown Birmingham, right at the streetcar stop, across from Gus’s Hot Dogs.
    By the way, the
O
fell off Opal’s Beauty Shop sign, and just missed hitting Biddie Louise Otis in the head. Opal says she is glad that she wasn’t hurt, but wasn’t it a coincidence that Mrs. Otis’s name started with an O too? Julian says he is fixing it sometime this week, but Biddie says she is going in the back door from now on.
     … Dot Weems …
    P.S. Opal says she’s just got in a consignment of human hair ringlets … So if you have any place that needs a little more hair … she says to come on in …

JANUARY 5, 1986
    Evelyn Couch had locked herself in her sewing room and was eating a second pint of Baskin-Robbins chocolate chip ice cream and staring at the table, piled high with the Butterick sewing patterns she had not touched since the day she had bought them in a fit of good intentions. Ed was in his den, busy watching his football game, and that was fine with her because, lately, he always looked at her whenever she had anything fattening to eat and said in mock surprise, “Is that on your diet?”
    She had lied to the boy at Baskin-Robbins. She told him the ice cream was for a party for her grandchildren. She didn’t even have grandchildren.
    Evelyn was forty-eight years old and she had gotten lost somewhere along the way.
    Things had changed so fast. While she had been raising the required two children—“a boy for him and a girl for me”—the world had become a