Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg Read Free Book Online Page A

ship sailing in the moonlight, but Idgie came right along behind her and took it down and stuck up a picture she found of a bunch of dogs sitting around a card table, smoking cigars and playing polker. And she wrote underneath it,
The Dill Pickle Club
. That was the name of this crazy club that she and her friend Grady Kilgore had started. Other than the Christmas decorationsthey put up the first year that Idgie never did take down, and an old railroad calendar. That was it.
    “There was only about four tables and a bunch of uncertain chairs.” She laughed. “You never knew for certain if they was gonna hold you up or not. And they never did have a cash register. They just kept the money in a Roy Tan Cigar box and made your change out of that. At the counter they had potato chips and pig skins on a rack, combs and chewin’ tobacco, fishing lures and little corncob pipes.
    “Idgie opened the place at daybreak and didn’t close the place until, as she said, ‘the last dog was hung.’
    “The big L & N switching yard was only two blocks down the street, and all the railroad people ate there, colored and white alike. She’d serve the colored out the back door. Of course, a lot of people didn’t like the idea of her selling food to the coloreds, and she got into some trouble doing it, but she said that nobody was gonna tell her what she could and could not do. Cleo said she stood right up to the Ku Klux Klan all by herself, and wouldn’t let them stop her. As good-natured as she was, Idgie turned out to be brave when push came to shove …”

MARCH 22, 1933
    Idgie was drinking coffee and talking about not much of anything with her hobo friend Smokey. Back in the kitchen, Sipsey and Onzell were busy frying up a batch of green tomatoes for the lunch crowd, due in about 11:30, and listening to the “Wings Over Jordan Gospel Hour,” over W.A.P.I. radio when Ocie Smith knocked at the kitchen door.
    Sipsey came out into the cafe, wiping her hands on her apron. “Miz Idgie, there’s a colored boy who’s axing to speak wid you.”
    Idgie went to the screen door and immediately recognized Ocie Smith, a friend of hers from Troutville, who worked at the railroad yard.
    “Well hey there, Ocie. How are you?”
    “I’s fine, Miz Idgie.”
    “What can I do for you?”
    “Miz Idgie, they’s a whole bunch of us boys over at the yard, and we’s been smelling barbecue every day for ’bout two months and it’s ’bout to drive us out of our heads, and we’s wonderin’ if you wouldn’t be willing to sell us some of them barbecue sandwiches. I’s got money.”
    Idgie sighed and shook her head. “Let me tell you something, Ocie. You know that if it was up to me, I’d have you come on in the front door and sit at a table, but you know I cain’t do that.”
    “Yes’m.”
    “There’s a bunch in town that would burn me down in a minute, and I’ve got to make a living.”
    “Yes’m, I knows you do.”
    “But I want you to go back over to the yard and tell your friends, anytime they want anything, just to come on around to the kitchen door.”
    He grinned. “Yes’m.”
    “Tell Sipsey what you want, and she’ll fix you up.”
    “Yes’m. Thank you, ma’am.”
    “Sipsey, give him his barbecue and anything else he wants. Give him some pie, too.”
    Sipsey mumbled under her breath, “You gonna get yourself in a whole lot of trouble wid them Ku Kluxes, and I’m gonna be gone. You ain’t gwine see me aroun’ no more, no ma’am.”
    But she fixed the sandwiches and got grape drinks and pie and put them in a paper sack with a napkin for him.
    About three days later, Grady Kilgore, the local sheriff and part-time railroad detective, came in all puffed up. He was a big bear of a man who had been a friend of her brother, Buddy.
    He put his hat on the hat rack, like he always did, and told Idgie he had some serious business to discuss. She brought his coffee to the booth and sat down. Grady leaned across the table and