"I remember it just like it was yesterday, but then I don't think there's anything about the Threadgoode family I don't remember. Good Lord. I should, I've lived right next door to them from the day I was born, and I married one of the boys.
There were nine children, and three of the girls, Essie Rue and the twins, were more or less my own age, so I was always over there playing and having spend-the-night parties. My own mother died of consumption when I was four, and when my daddy died, up in Nashville, I just stayed on for good. I guess you might say the spend-the-night party never ended . . .
OCTOBER 8, 1929
Meteorite Hits Whistle Stop Residence
Mrs. Biddie Louise Otis, who lives at 401 1st Street, reported that on Thursday night a two-pound meteorite crashed through the roof of her house and just missed hitting her, but did hit the radio she was listening to at the time. She said that she was sitting on the couch because the dog was in the chair, and had just turned on "Fletschmann's Yeast Hour," when it happened. She said that there is a four-foot hole in her roof and that her radio is broken in half.
Bertha and Harold Vick celebrated their anniversary on the front lawn for all the neighbors to see. And congratulations to Mr. Earl Adcock Sr., an executive for the
L N Railroad, who has just been named Grand Exalted Ruler of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, Order No. 37, of which my other half is a member.
By the way, Idgie said that if you want something barbecued, to send it over to the café and Big George will do it for you. Chickens for 10c and hogs according to your size.
. . . Dot Weems . . .
DECEMBER 15, 1985
One hour later, Mrs Threadgoode was still talking. Evelyn Couch had finished three Milky Ways and was in the process of unwrapping her second Butterfinger, wondering if the old woman beside her was ever going to shut up.
"You know, its a shame the Threadgoode house has fallen into such disrepair. So much happened there, so many babies born, we had so many happy times. It was a great big two-story white-frame house with a big front porch that wrapped all the way around to the side . . . and all the bedrooms had rose-patterned wallpaper that looked so pretty when the lamps were turned on at night.
The railroad tracks ran right across the backyard, and on summer nights that yard would be just full of lightning bugs and the smell of honeysuckle that grew wild, right alongside the tracks Poppa had the hack planted with fig trees and apple trees, and be had built Momma the most beautiful white lattice grape arbor that was full of wisteria vines . . . and little pink sweetheart roses grew all over the back of the house. Oh, I wish you could have seen it.
"Momma and Poppa Threadgoode raised me just like I was one of their own, and I liked all the Threadgoodes. Especially Buddy. But I married Cleo, his older brother, the chiropractor and wouldn't you know it, later on I turned out to have a bad back, so it worked out just fine.
"So you can see I've
been keeping up with Idgie and the Threadgoodes all my life. And I'll tell you, it's been better than a picture show ... yes it has. But then, I was always a tagalong sort of person. Believe it or not, I never did talk much until after I hit my fifties, and then I just couldn't stop. One time Cleo said to me, 'Ninny'my name is Virginia but they called me Ninnyhe said, 'Ninny, all I hear is Idgie said this and Idgie did that' He said, 'Don't you have anything better to do than to hang around that cafe all day?'
"I thought long and hard and said, 'No, I don't'. . . not to downgrade Cleo in any way, but it was the truth.
"I buried Cleo thirty-one years ago last February, and I often wonder if I hurt his feelings when I said that, but I don't think so, because after all was said and done, he loved Idgie as much as the rest of us, and always got a good laugh out of some of her doings. She was his baby sister, and a real cutup. She and Ruth owned the Whistle Stop Cafe.
"Idgie used to do all kinds of crazy harebrained things just to get you to laugh. She put polker chips in the collection basket at the Baptist church once. She was a character all right, but how anybody ever could have thought that she killed that man is beyond me."
For the first time, Evelyn stopped eating and glanced over at the rather sweet-looking old lady in the faded blue flower- print dress, with the silver-gray fingerwaves, who didn't miss a beat:
"Some people thought it started the day she met Ruth, but I think it started that Sunday dinner, April the first, 1919, the same year Leona married John Justice. I can tell you it was April the first, because Idgie came to the dinner table that day and showed everybody this little white box she had with a human finger inside of it, resting on a piece of cotton. She claimed she'd found it out in the backyard. But it turned out to be her own finger she had poked through a hole in the bottom of the box. APRIL FOOL!!!