Free Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

tell me
that
name came out of the Bible!”
    Mrs. Threadgoode laughed. “Oh, Lord no, honey. Sipsey used to say that she looked like a skinny little bird, and when she was little she would always run in the kitchen and steal a couple of those buttermilk biscuits her mother was making andrun under the cafe and eat them. So Sipsey started calling her Naughty Bird. Come to think of it, she did look like a little blackbird.… But, there they were, two black ones and two light ones, in the same family.
    “It’s funny, now that I think about it, there aren’t any colored people here at Rose Terrace at all, except the ones that clean up and some of the nurses … and one of them is just as smart, she’s a full-blown registered nurse. Geneene’s her name, a cute and sassy little thing, and talks as smart and big as you please. She reminds me a bit of Sipsey, independent-like.
    “Old Sipsey lived at home by herself until the day she died. That’s where I want to be when I go, in my own house. I don’t ever want to go back into the hospital. When you get to be my age, every time you go in, you wonder if you’re ever gonna get back out. I don’t think hospitals are safe, anyway.
    “My neighbor Mrs. Hartman said she had a cousin in the hospital over in Atlanta that told her that a patient there went out of his room to get a breath of fresh air, and they didn’t find him until six months later, locked out on the sixth-floor roof. Said by the time they found him, there wasn’t anything left but a skeleton in a hospital gown. Mr. Dunaway told me that when he was in the hospital, they stole his false teeth right out of the glass when he was being operated on. Now, what kind of a person would steal an old man’s teeth?”
    “I don’t know,” Evelyn said.
    “Well, I don’t know either.”

JUNE 2, 1917
    When Sipsey handed Onzell the twin boys she had just given birth to, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The oldest son, whom she named Jasper, was the color of a creamy cup of coffee, and the other one, named Artis, was black as coal.
    Later, when Big George saw them, he about laughed his head off.
    Sipsey was looking inside Artis’s mouth. “Lookie here, George, dis baby done got blue gums,” and she shook her head in dismay. “God help us.”
    But Big George, who was not superstitious, was still laughing …
    Ten years later, he didn’t think it was so funny. He had just whipped Artis within an inch of his life for stabbing his brother Jasper with a penknife. Artis had stabbed him five times in the arm before an older boy had pulled him off and thrown him across the yard.
    Jasper had gotten up and had run down to the cafe, holding his bleeding arm and calling for his momma. Big George was out in the back, barbecuing, and saw Jasper first and carried him down to the doctor’s house.
    Dr. Hadley cleaned him up and bandaged him, and when Jasper told the doctor that his brother had been the one who had done it, Big George was humiliated.
    That night, both boys were in pain and couldn’t sleep. They were lying in bed, looking out the window at the full moon and listening to the night sounds of frogs and crickets.
    Artis turned to his brother, who looked almost white in the moonlight. “I knowed I shouldn’ta done it … but it felt so good, I jes couldn’t stop.”

JULY 1, 1935
Bible Group Meets
    The Whistle Stop Baptist Church Ladies’ Bible Study Group met Wednesday morning, last week, at the home of Mrs. Vesta Adcock and discussed ways to study the Bible and make it easier to understand. “Noah and the Ark,” was the topic, and “Why Did Noah Let Two Snakes on the Boat When He Had a Chance to Get Rid of Them Once and for All?” If anyone has an explanation, they are asked to please call Vesta.
    Saturday, Ruth and Idgie had a birthday party for their little boy. All the guests enjoyed pinning the tail on the donkey and eating cake and ice cream, and they all got glass locomotives with little candy pellets