Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

“This morning, Smokey Phillips was on a mixed train from Georgia, headed for Florida. He had not eaten anything for two days and remembered that his friend Elmo Williams had told him there were two women running a place right outside of Birmingham who were always good for a meal or two. On the way down he’d seen the name of the cafe written on the walls of several boxcars, so when he saw the sign WHISTLE STOP, ALABAMA, he jumped off.” 

The above passage is significant for several reasons. For one, it’s an early indication of the symbolism surrounding trains; the railroads serve not only as a conduit for business, but also for the chance encounters and events that can change the course of a person’s life. For instance, Smokey Lonesome meeting and falling in love with Ruth. The passage also serves as a reminder of the Whistle Stop Cafe’s social importance as a gathering place. It reveals that the cafe is at the center not only of the town’s community, but also of a nationwide community of freight hoppers. Finally, Flagg once again underscores Idgie’s willingness to help those who, like herself, live outside societal norms; Smokey is frequently penniless, lives an itinerant lifestyle, and socializes freely with people of color (i.e. riding a “mixed” train). 

“[Buddy] had been flirting around with that pretty Marie Miller that day, and as the train pulled away, he’d stepped on the 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.” 

Buddy’s death is a turning point in the novel, particularly where Idgie is concerned. Although most of the other Threadgoodes accept Idgie’s tendency to buck social norms, Buddy fully embraces Idgie for who she is from a young age. When Idgie gets in trouble for picking up head lice from the children in Troutville, Buddy “took her down to the football game and let her sit right on the bench with the rest of the players” (35). As a result, Idgie takes Buddy’s death particularly hard, and isolates herself until she meets Ruth several years later. The circumstances of Buddy’s death are also significant, highlighting both his personality (specifically, his flirtatiousness) and the association between trains and life’s journey. This accident demonstrates that life often brings unexpected challenges and misfortunes.

“[Evelyn] had been a good girl, had always acted like a lady, never raised her voice, always deferred to everybody and everything. She had assumed that somewhere down the line there would be a reward for that; a prize. But when her daughter had asked if she’d ever had sex with anyone but her husband and she’d answered, ‘No, of course not,’ her daughter’s reply had been, ‘Oh Mother, how dumb. You don’t even know if he’s any good or not. How awful.”

The sources of Evelyn’s unhappiness are complex: she is insecure about her weight, terrified of doctors and illness, and bullied by her mother-in-law. Underneath all of this is a broader disappointment with her life and a sense of having been cheated. As the passage notes, Evelyn has lived her entire life obeying gender norms that demand that women be modest, quiet, and accommodating, only to discover that she’s no better off than women who flouted those norms: “[I]n the long run, it didn’t matter at all if you had been good or not. The girls in high school who had ‘gone all the way’ had not wound up living in back alleys in shame and disgrace, like she thought they would; they wound up happily or unhappily married, just like the rest of them” (42). In fact, Evelyn is in some ways worse off than these women, because—as her daughter indicates—she has little to compare her current circumstances to. This is one reason why her friendship with Mrs. Threadgoode, and the stories Mrs. Threadgoode tells her, are so transformative; they offer Evelyn a window into what her life could be like if she acted on her own desires more often.

“But all the other women there were just as confused as she was, and held on to their husbands and their drinks to keep themselves from disappearing.” 

Evelyn’s sense that she and her former classmates are in danger of “disappearing” is telling and speaks to the novel’s dialogue on what it means to age as a woman. Since society values women most when they are young and capable of having children, the middle-aged women Evelyn sees at her high school reunion are in some sense invisible, unrepresented by the media, and generally overlooked by those around them. The fact that Flagg describes them as “holding on to their husbands” is also significant. To a stay-at-home wife, a husband with a prestigious job is potentially the only link to the outside world and social relevance.

“Ruth, I wish you could have seen that big ox, down at the river for three days, drunk as a dog, crying like a baby, ‘cause Joe, that old colored man that raised him, died. I swear, I don’t know what people are using for brains anymore.” 

When Grady Kilgore learns that Idgie is serving black customers out the back door of her cafe, he expresses disapproval and asks her to stop. Idgie makes this remark after Grady leaves, underscoring the complicated ways racism operates within the novel. In the early 20th-century South, there was close contact between races, with black servants often raising their white employers’ children. Despite these personal relationships, however, legal segregation remained in place, and many white people (like Grady) espoused racist beliefs about the black population.

“No, it wasn’t death [Evelyn] was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room.” 

Given how frightened Evelyn has been of illness since her mother developed cancer, it may seem surprising that she begins contemplating suicide. Over the course of the novel, however, it becomes clear that Evelyn’s obsessive fear of death and aging is a form of living death. The above comparison of Evelyn’s life to the “gray intensive care waiting room” underscores this point, since Flagg has previously described this place as a kind of limbo where relatives simply wait for their loved ones to die. 

“When Idgie had grinned at [Ruth] and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with all her heart. That’s why she had been crying, that day. She had never felt that way before and she knew she probably would never feel that way again.” 

The fact that Ruth realizes her feelings for Idgie when Idgie brings her a jar of honey is an example of the role that food plays in social bonding, particularly between women. All humans need food to survive, making it a point of commonality between people who might otherwise be very different, and because women are often responsible for preparing food, it holds particular significance as a symbol of female caretaking. The fact that Idgie brings Ruth honey further underscores this point, since female worker bees produce honey to feed the hive. This passage is also one of several that strongly imply the relationship between Idgie and Ruth is romantic in nature, as it’s unclear why Ruth would have been “trying to hold back” her feelings for Idgie unless those feelings were subject to social condemnation, conflicted with her promise to marry Frank, or both.

“He was here—Slagtown on a Saturday night—and just one block away, white Birmingham was completely unaware that this exotic sepia spot even existed. Slagtown, where the Highland Avenue maid of that afternoon could be tonight’s Queen of the Avenue, and redcaps and shoeshine boys were the leaders of Slagtown’s after-dark fashion show. They were all here, with black shiny patent-leather slick hair and gold teeth that glistened and sparkled as they passed under the colored lights that flashed and traveled around the signs […] all dressed in suits of lime green and purple, sporting two-toned yellow-and-tan brogans and thin red-and-white silk ties, while the ladies, with gleaming deep maroon and tangerine lips and swinging hips, were promenading in spectator pumps and red fox furs.”

Artis is 17 the first time he visits Birmingham, and he immediately falls in love with the city—specifically, the black neighborhood of “Slagtown…Birmingham’s own Harlem of the South” (118). Although Artis is undeniably drawn to Slagtown’s music, clothes, and women, the neighborhood’s most significant attraction is perhaps the fact that, as Flagg puts it in this passage, “the Highland Avenue maid of that afternoon could be tonight’s Queen of the Avenue.” Slagtown has its own social structure entirely separate from the outside world of racial segregation and discrimination. By immersing himself in Slagtown, Artis is able to become a “well-known fellow around town” at the top, rather than the bottom, of the social ladder (223). 

“‘Besides Big George, I’d have to say that your mother was one of the bravest people I know’

[…]

‘Oh, I don’t believe that. Why she’s scared of everything, even a little bug. What’d she ever do?’

‘Something. She did something once.’” 

In describing Ruth as brave, Idgie is clearly thinking of her decision to leave her abusive husband and start a new life in Whistle Stop. Her remarks challenge the traditional view of courage as a masculine virtue associated with physical fearlessness. Though Ruth’s actions in leaving Frank obviously involve some physical risk, they also expose her to social condemnation or even ostracism. Besides participating in a taboo relationship with Idgie, any woman who left her husband in that era was likely to be judged harshly for it. As Mrs. Threadgoode tells Evelyn, “Back then, if you were married, you stayed married […] [E]verybody was always treating Ruth like a china doll, but you know, she was a lot stronger than Idgie in many ways” (191).

“‘Some of your best people are murderers.’ [Grady] pushed his hat off his forehead and said sincerely, ‘Yes sir. I wouldn’t give you a nickel for a thief. Now, a murder is usually just a one-time thing—mostly over some woman, not a repeat crime. But a thief is a thief until the day he dies.’” 

The above exchange takes place in 1940, when Peggy and Stump go to the train station hoping to see Pinto’s casket as it passes through Whistle Stop. Although the scene is mostly comical, culminating in Peggy dropping her camera onto Pinto’s face and breaking his nose, Grady’s words are an important instance of foreshadowing. Later in the novel, Flagg reveals that some of the “best” characters have killed, if not exactly murdered: Onzell gives Ruth an overdose of morphine to prevent her from dying a slower and more agonizing death from cancer, and Sipsey hits Frank over the head with a skillet to stop him from kidnapping Stump.

“When Frank Bennett was growing up, he had adored his mother, to the point that it had disgusted his father, a bull of a man who thought nothing of knocking Frank out of a chair or kicking him down the stairs. His mother had been the only softness and sweetness he had known as a child and he loved her with all of his heart” 

As unsympathetic a character as Frank Bennett generally is, the novel doesn’t go so far as to suggest that he was born evil. In fact, far from being a misogynist, Frank suffered abuse as a child for being too close to his mother and therefore too “feminine” in his father’s eyes. This abuse makes him idolize his mother even more, and when he discovers that she’s having an affair and isn’t the perfect woman he believed her to be, he can’t cope. Frank’s later cruelty to women is as much a product of sexism as it is an example of it.

“Poppa Threadgoode sat Idgie down and told her that now that she was going to be responsible for Ruth and a baby, she’d better figure out what she wanted to do, and gave her five hundred dollars to start a business with.” 

The above passage is one of many instances in the novel where the residents of Whistle Stop treat Ruth and Idgie as if they are a married, heterosexual couple. In this case, Idgie’s father gives her the kind of speech that would traditionally be fora husband about supporting a wife and child. This raises the question of how much the relationship between Idgie and Ruth resembles a stereotypical heterosexual marriage. Although Idgie often acts in ways conventionally thought of as masculine (e.g. going out drinking, much to Ruth’s displeasure), Ruth is an equal partner where business is concerned, which would be unusual for a heterosexual relationship at the time.

“And while Evelyn went about her business with a smile, Towanda was busy poking child molesters with electric cattle prods until their hair stood on end. She placed tiny bombs inside Playboy and Penthouse magazines that would explode when someone opened them. She gave dope dealers overdoses and left them in the streets to die; forced that doctor, who had told her mother she had cancer, to walk down the street naked while the entire medical profession, including dentists and oral hygienists, jeered and threw rocks. A merciful avenger, she always waited until he finished his walk and then beat his brains out with a sledgehammer.” 

After being hit and insulted by a young man at the grocery store, Evelyn develops the fantasy of a super hero figure called “Towanda” as an outlet for her anger. Up until this point, Evelyn has spent her entire life trying to satisfy the often contradictory demands society places on women, “stay[ing] a virgin so she wouldn’t be called a tramp or a slut […] fak[ing] orgasms so she wouldn’t be called frigid” and so on (236). Given how long she has spent stifling her frustration, it’s not surprising that her anger eventually takes such an extreme form. However, while Evelyn in this passage does pinpoint many overarching societal problems, it’s worth noting that these are mixed together with personal fantasies of revenge. The doctor, for instance, was at worst guilty of insensitivity; the anger Evelyn feels has more to do with the situation in general, which wasn’t anyone’s fault. For this and other reasons, Evelyn’s “Towanda” persona is ultimately a step toward a more fulfilling life rather than an endpoint. The figure is Evelyn’s first outlet for voicing her opinion and establishing her independence. Later, she’ll be able to stand up for herself in realty rather than in fantasy, though in a much less violent way.

“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.” 

Mrs. Threadgoode’s remarks here raise the question of whether her view of the past (and perhaps the novel’s as well) is romanticized. As she says, her happiest memories of Whistle Stop are from a period when many people were struggling to survive. They also date to an era of racial segregation, which is significant in light of the fact that a few sentences later Mrs. Threadgoode says, “the colored people on the TV now are not near as sweet as they used to be” (249). Arguably, Mrs. Threadgoode is sugarcoating the past here, since being kind and deferential to white people would have been a matter of survival at a time when the KKK was actively lynching black people.

“Why was Ed so scared that someone was out to get his balls? What were they, anyway? Just little pouches that carried sperm; but the way men carried on about them, you’d think they were the most important thing in the world. My God, Ed had just about died when one of their son’s hadn’t dropped properly. The doctor said that it wouldn’t affect his ability to have children, but Ed had acted like it was a tragedy and wanted to send him to a psychiatrist, so he wouldn’t feel less of a man.” 

The above passage is a response to Ed describing a female coworker as a “real ball breaker” (275). The more Evelyn thinks about this, the more she sees it as symptomatic of an unhealthy obsession with masculinity that, among other things, makes it difficult for women to exercise any kind of authority. A woman who isn’t “ballsy” enough won’t be taken seriously, but one who “step[s] over the line of having just enough balls to having too much” will be seen as overly aggressive (276). The passage is also significant in light of the novel’s depiction of male violence, which it suggests often stems from a sense of insecurity—that is, “feeling less of a man.” The best example of this is Frank Bennett, whose father abused him as a child for being too close to his mother (and therefore too feminine), and whose missing eye can be read as a symbolic form of castration.

“Naughty Bird tried them all, and more, but after a month she was still the coal-black, nappy-headed shampoo girl from Whistle Stop, and Le Roy was still in New Orleans with his high yellow girl friend.” 

Naughty Bird’s attempts to win back her former lover Le Roy are a good example of the novel’s depiction of colorism—that is, discrimination based on skin tone. Because Le Roy’s new girlfriend is mixed-race and fair-skinned, Naughty Bird tries a number of products marketed to black women attempting to conform to European beauty standards: “White’s Specific Face Cream” to lighten her skin, “NO-KINK” to straighten her hair, etc. (305). These attempts fail, and when Naughty Bird learns of Le Roy’s death, she once again embraces her own looks, with “a little Dixie Peach hair oil […] [and] a triple coat of tangerine-orange rouge and lipstick to match” (306).

“[I]n the sixties, when the troubles began, she, along with the majority of whites in Birmingham, had been shocked. And everyone agreed that it was not ‘our colored people’ causing all the trouble, it was outside agitators who had been sent down from the North […] Years later, Evelyn wondered where her mind had been and why she hadn’t realized what had been going on just across town.” 

The above passage illustrates the complexity of racism in the novel. Just as characters who embrace racist beliefs may make exceptions for those they know personally, characters like Evelyn, who “consider[s] herself to be a liberal,” can be capable of unthinking racism (307). In this case, Evelyn recalls how she once assumed that the black population of Birmingham was content with segregation and viewed calls to end segregation as “trouble” rather than justice. 

“Of course, we are all so sad to hear that the railroad yard is closing. Now that we have lost most of our trains, we seem to be losing a lot of our old friends, who are moving on to other places.” 

The nearby presence of the railroads and railroad yard is central to Whistle Stop’s existence. Many residents of the town (and the neighboring town of Troutville) are directly employed by the railway companies, and those who aren’t often depend on traffic from the trains to stay in business. The closure of the railroad yard marks the beginning of the town’s disintegration, as Dot Weems notes in this 1955 bulletin. Because of the association between trains and life’s journey in the novel, the decline of the railways and the community they sustain also has symbolic significance and parallels the sense many aging characters have of being “out of date” and “past the prime” (320).

“[Jasper] had endured years of ‘Hey, Sambo,’ ‘Hey, boy,’ ‘Hey, George,’ emptied cuspidors cleaned bathrooms, lined shoes, and lifted so much luggage that he couldn’t sleep from the pain in his back and shoulders. He had often cried in humiliation when something was stolen and the railroad officials searched the pullman porters’ lockers first.” 

The above passage speaks to the sacrifices and compromises Jasper has had to make in order to attain his current, respected position in society. Although his lighter skin helped secure his entry into the black middle class, it hasn’t protected him from racism. His success has hinged on tolerating racist treatment from passengers and employers. This is one reason why Jasper feels “out of date…past the prime…useless” by 1958 (320). As the Civil Rights Movement gains momentum, some members of the younger generation (including Jasper’s own grandson) come to see the way Jasper “bowed and scraped to white people” as an embarrassment, even though it was simply the “only way” Jasper knew to get by at the time (320).

“Smokey Lonesome sat alone, smoking his cigarette and looking out the window onto the cold wet street below, thinking back to a time when there had been little stars in the ring around the moon and all the rivers and the whiskey had been sweet. When he had been able to take a breath of fresh air without coughing his guts up. When Idgie and Ruth and Stump still lived in the back of the cafe, and all the trains were still running. That time, special time, so long ago…just an instant away in his mind…” 

Memory often functions as a refuge for the novel’s characters, as this passage demonstrates. By 1968, whatever stability Smokey Lonesome knew in his life as a drifter has disappeared. Ruth has died, the cafe has closed, and even the trains that he relied on to travel from place to place are going out of business; in fact, he’s sitting across from a “boarded-up terminal L & N station” at the moment this passage takes place (321). Smokey’s memories of Whistle Stop are now the only place he can feel any sense of belonging or community. These memories even seem to negate the changes that have taken place over the years. As the final sentence notes, the scenes they involve might be “long ago” in terms of time, but they’re immediate and vivid in Smokey’s mind.

“Ninny Threadgoode made her feel young. She began to see herself as a woman with half her life still ahead of her. Her friend really believed that she could sell Mary Kay cosmetics. Nobody had ever believed she could do anything before, or had faith in her; least of all, Evelyn herself. The more Mrs. Threadgoode talked about it and the more she thought about it, the less Towanda ran rampant in her mind, beating up on the world, and she began to see herself as thin and happy—behind the wheel of a pink Cadillac.”

The above passage underscores just how dramatically Evelyn has changed over the course of the novel, as well as the role her friendship with Mrs. Threadgoode has played in her transformation. When the two women first meet, Evelyn feels that her life is all but over—a belief societal views of middle-aged women tends to reinforce. From Mrs. Threadgoode’s perspective, however, Evelyn is still young, and she often reassures her friend of this. The compliments Mrs. Threadgoode pays to Evelyn’s appearance challenge the assumption that only young women can be or feel attractive and desirable. As a result, Evelyn slowly develops more self-confidence, to the point that she stops relying on “Towanda” as an outlet for her frustrations and disappointments. Now that Evelyn can actually imagine a happy future for herself “behind the wheel of a pink Cadillac,” she no longer needs fantasies of payback and revenge.

“[W]henever any white folks gave him any grief, he could smile inside. I stabbed me one of you, already…” 

Artis was hotheaded and rebellious even before his involvement in covering up Frank’s death, but the incident still has a major impact on the course his life takes. Specifically, the knowledge that he’s stabbed a white man (albeit one who was already dead) makes him resilient to the racism he encounters in life: no amount of poor treatment can alter his core sense of pride and confidence. His lifelong immersion in Slagtown’s culture is perhaps related to this. Whereas his brother Jasper seeks to assimilate, becoming “one of the first blacks in Birmingham to move into white Enon Ridge,” Artis feels no need to engage with white society (319).

1.     “Evelyn,

Here are some of Sipsey’s original recipes I wrote down. They have given me so much pleasure, I thought I’d pass them on to you, especially the one for Fried Green Tomatoes.

I love you, dear little Evelyn. Be happy. I am happy.

Your Friend,

Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode” 

Given how prominent a role food has played in Evelyn and Mrs. Threadgoode’s friendship, it’s fitting that the latter leaves Evelyn a collection of recipes when she dies. The source of these recipes, Sipsey and the Whistle Stop Cafe, is also significant. Though Sipsey is long since dead and Whistle Stop has faded since the decline of the railroads, the town’s legacy—and, in particular, the relationships that formed at and around the Whistle Stop Cafe—survives in Evelyn.