Ninny, who was usually quiet, piped up, "That's right, Cleo."

Cleo ate a peanut. Idgie got up and grabbed him around the neck, playing with him. "Listen, you old bone cracker, you've never turned a hungry man away from your door in your life."

"I never had to. They were all over here," he said and cleared his throat. "Now, seriously, Idgie, I'm not trying to run your business or anything, but I just want to know if you're saving any money, that's all."

"What for?" Idgie said. "Listen, money will kill you, you know that. Why, just today, a man came here and told me about his uncle, who had a good-paying job working up in Kentucky at the national mint, making money for the government, and everything was going fine until one day he pulled the wrong lever and was crushed to death by seven hundred pounds of dimes."

Ninny was horrified. "Oh no. How awful."

Cleo looked at his wife like she was crazy. "Good Lord, woman, I think you'd believe anything this nutty sister of mine told you."

"Well, it could have happened, couldn't it? Was he really killed by dimes, Idgie?"

"Sure was. It was either dimes or three hundred pounds of quarters, I forget which, but in any case, he was killed all right."

Cleo shook his head at Idgie and had to laugh.

JANUARY 29, 1986.

Every Sunday on visiting day, Ed Couch and his mother, Big Momma, would just sit in her cramped little room all afternoon and look at television. Today, Evelyn thought if she didn't get out of there soon, she would scream. She excused herself and said she was going to the bathroom down the hall. She had really planned to go sit in the car but had forgotten that Ed had the car keys; so there she was-back again ... in the lounge with Mrs. Threadgoode, unwrapping a package of coconut Sno Balls from the Hostess company while Mrs. Threadgoode was telling her about last night's dinner at Rose Terrace.

"So there she was, honey, sitting at the head of the table ... all puffed up and braggin'."

"Who?"

"Mrs. Adcock."

"Mrs. Adcock?"

"Mrs. Adcock! You remember Mrs. Adcock-with the fox furs-Mrs. Adcock!"

Evelyn thought for a minute. "Oh, the rich one."

"That's right, Mrs. Adcock, with the dinner rings."

"That's right."

Evelyn handed her the open package.

"Oh, thank you. I love a Sno Ball." She took a bite and after a while she said, "Evelyn, don't you want a Coca-Cola to wash it down with? I've got some change in my room, and I'll get you a cold drink if you want one. They've got a machine down the hall."

Evelyn said, "No, Mrs. Threadgoode, I'm all right, but would you like one?"

"Oh no, honey. Normally I would, but today I've got a kinda gassy-like feeling, so I'd just as soon have some water, if you don't mind."

Evelyn went outside the door and got them both little white cone cups of cold water.

"Thank you kindly."

"What about Mrs. Adcock?"

Mrs. Threadgoode looked at her. "Mrs. Adcock? Do you know her?"

"No, I don't know her, you were just saying that she was bragging about something."

"Oh, that's right, I was ... well, Mrs. Adcock was telling us at the dinner table last night that everything in her house is a genuine antique ... over fifty years old ... said everything she owned was worth a lot of money. I told Mrs. Otis, 'Here I started out in life not worth much of anything, and I've turned out to be a priceless antique. Probably worth a fortune on the market.' " She laughed, tickled at the idea, and then thought for a moment.

"I wonder whatever happened to all those little china-doll dishes and that little goat cart we used to play with?

"On Saturdays, we'd go for a ride in this goat cart that Poppa had made for us girls, and we thought it was better than a trip to Paris. I wouldn't be surprised if that old goat was still alive. His name was Harry ... Harry the goat! He'd eat anything!" She laughed. "One time, Idgie fed him a whole jar of Leona's Mum underarm deodorant, and he lapped it up just like it was ice cream ...

"We played all kinds of games-but nobody loved to play dress-up any more than the Threadgoodes. One year, Momma dressed us four girls up as the four different suits in a pack of cards for the contest they were having over at the church. I was the clubs, the twins were hearts and diamonds, and Essie Rue was spades, and here comes Idgie, tagging along after us, as the joker in the pack. We took first prize!

"I remember one Fourth of July, all of us girls had on our stars-and-stripes dresses, with our paper crowns. We were all out in the backyard, having our dish of homemade ice cream, waiting for the fireworks to start, when here comes Buddy Threadgoode down the back stairs, all dressed up in one of Leona's middy dresses, with a big bow tied on his head, and he commenced to prissing and mincing. He was imitating Leona, don't you see? Then, to make matters worse, Edward or Julian or one of the boys had carried the Victrola out in the yard and was winding away on it, playing 'The Sheik of Araby' while Buddy hootchy-kootchied all around the yard. We've laughed over that four years. Later, Buddy gave Leona a big kiss. You could forgive Buddy anything.

"After it got dark, Poppa would hire these fireworks people to come and put on a show for the whole town ... and all the colored people from Troutville would come. What a sight! Those fireworks would explode and light up the whole sky. And, of course, all the boys would go crazy popping their firecrackers. Then, after it was all over, we'd go back in and sit in the parlor and listen to Essie Rue pound away on the piano. She'd play 'Listen to the Mockingbird,' 'Nola,' or whatever song was popular that year ... while Idgie sat in the tree and howled at her.

"Seems like Idgie was always in overalls and barefooted. It's a good thing, too. She would have ruined any nice dresses, going up and down trees like she did, and she was always going hunting or fishing with Buddy and her brothers. Buddy said that she could shoot as good as any of the boys. She was a pretty little thing, except after Buddy got her hair all bobbed off, you'd swear she was a little boy.

"But all the Threadgoode girls were pretty. Oh, not that they didn't work at it. Especially Leona. She was the vainest one of the girls, and she didn't have a sense of humor about it, either.

"Course, my looks were always just passing, because I was so tall. I used to want to hunch over a little because of it, but Momma Threadgoode used to say, 'Ninny, the good Lord made you tall so you could be closer to heaven ...' But I'm not as tall now as I used to be. When you get old, you shrink.

"Isn't hair a funny thing? So many people are just crazy about their hair. Of course, I guess it's just natural. The mention of hair runs all through the Bible: Samson, and that Sheba woman, and that girl that washed Jesus' feet with her hair.... Isn't it odd, the colored want straight hair and we're always wanting curly hair. I had brown hair at one time, but now I use Silk and Silver Number Fifteen ... I used to use Number Sixteen, but it made my hair too dark, and it looked kinda dyed-lookin'.

"Back then, I just twisted it up in a knot and went on about my business. Not Miss Leona. Her hair was always a sore spot between her and Idgie. I guess Idgie was around nine or ten, and she'd been over in Troutville, playing with the children there, and came home with a case of head lice. So we all had to wash our hair with this mixture of sulphur, kerosene, and lard. I never heard so much screaming and hollering. You would have thought that Leona was being burned at the stake. Leona wouldn't speak to poor Idgie after that.

"During that time, Buddy came home from school and saw that Idgie was pretty low. He had a football game to go to and when he was leaving the house that night, he said, 'Come on, Little Bit,' and he took her down to the football game and let her sit right on the bench with the rest of the players. That was Buddy for you ...

"I don't think Leona ever really forgave Idgie until after she married. Leona was vain about her looks until the day she died. One time, she read an article in the McCall's magazine that said anger and hate could cause wrinkles. She was always threatening Idgie she was going to kill her, but she kept a smile on her face while she was doing it.

"Of course, Leona did get the richest husband, and her wedding was exquisite. She had been so scared that Idgie was going to ruin her wedding, but she needn't have been, because Idgie spent most of the day with the groom's family and charmed them so, that by the end of the day, they thought she was the grandest thing on bush or tree. Even at that age, she had that Threadgoode charm. And nobody in the world had charm like Buddy Threadgoode."

Mrs. Threadgoode stopped for a moment to take a sip from her cup, and reflected, "You know, this little coconut cake reminds me of the picnic, that awful day.

"I was already engaged to Cleo, so I must have been seventeen at the time. It was a Saturday afternoon in June, and we had just had the best time at our BYO church picnic. The young people's group from the Andalusia Baptist Church had ridden the train over for the day, and Momma and Sipsey had baked about ten coconut cakes for the occasion. The boys were wearing their white summer suits and Cleo had just gotten himself a brand-new straw hat from Poppa's store, but for some reason, Buddy had talked Cleo into letting him wear his new hat on that day.

"After the picnic, Essie Rue and I came home with the cake plates, and all the Threadgoode boys went down to the train station to see the group from Andalusia off, like they always did. Momma was out in the backyard with a pan, picking figs off her tree, and I was out there with her when it happened ...

"We heard the train start up, and just as it pulled out, the whistle blew. Then we heard the train screech and grind to a halt, and at the same moment we heard the girls screaming.

"I looked at Momma, who all of a sudden clutched at her heart and fell down on her knees and cried out, 'Oh no, not one of my babies! Dear God, not one of my babies!'

"Poppa Threadgoode had heard the noise from the store and ran over to the station. I was on the front porch with Momma when the men came up the walk. The minute I saw that straw hat Edward was carrying, I knew it was Buddy.

"He 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. 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 different place, a place she didn't know at all.

She didn't get the jokes anymore. They all seemed so mean, and she was still shocked at the language. Here she was, at her age, and she'd never said the f word. So she mostly watched old movies and reruns of The Lucy Show. When the Vietnam War was going on, she'd believed what Ed had told her, that it was a good and necessary war, and that anyone against it was a communist. But then, much later, when she finally decided that it may not have been such a good war, Jane Fonda had already moved on to her exercise class and nobody cared what Evelyn thought, anyway. She still held a grudge against Jane Fonda and wished she'd get off TV and stop slinging her skinny legs around all the time.

Not that Evelyn hadn't tried along the way. She had tried to raise her son to be sensitive, but Ed had scared her so bad, telling her that he would turn out to be a queer, she had backed off and lost contact with him. Even now her son seemed like a stranger to her.

Both her children had passed her by. Her daughter, Janice, had known more about sex at fifteen than Evelyn did at this very minute. Something had gone wrong.

When she was in high school, things had been so simple. There were the good girls and the bad girls, and everyone knew who was who. You were either a member of the "in" group or you were not. Evelyn had been in the golden circle; a cheerleader. She had not known the name of one person who was in the high school band or the boys in the pegged pants and their girl friends with the nylon see-through blouses and ankle bracelets. Her crowd had been the crew-cut, button-down madras shirt and pressed khakis for boys, and Ship 'n Shore blouses with circle pins for girls set. She and her girl friends smoked one Kent cigarette at their sorority meetings, and at a pajama party they maybe had a beer, but that was it. No petting below the neck.

Later, she had felt like a fool going with her daughter to get her fitted for a diaphragm. Evelyn had waited until her wedding night.

And what a shock. Nobody had told her how much it would hurt. She still didn't enjoy sex. Every time she would start to relax, the bad-girl image would pop into her head.

She 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 her 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."

It was true. She didn't know.

So in 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. So all that struggle to stay pure, the fear of being touched, the fear of driving a boy mad with passion by any gesture, and the ultimate fear-getting pregnant-all that wasted energy was for nothing. Now, movie stars were having children out of wedlock by the carload, and naming them names like Moonbeam or Sunfeather.

And what was the reward for staying sober? She had always heard, There's nothing worse than a woman drunk, and she never allowed herself more than one whiskey sour. Now, all the best people were waltzing into the Betty Ford Center, getting their pictures made, and having lots of parties thrown for them when they came out. She often wondered if Betty would take people who needed to lose twenty-five pounds.

Her daughter had given her a puff of a marijuana cigarette once, but after all the hot pads on the counter started walking toward her, she got scared and never tried it again. So dope was out.

Evelyn wondered where her group was, the place where she fit in ...

About ten years ago, when Ed had started seeing a woman he worked with down at the insurance company, she had attended a group called the Complete Woman, to try and save her marriage. She wasn't sure she loved Ed all that much, but she loved him just enough to not want to lose him. Besides, what would she do? She had lived with him as long as she had lived with her parents. The organization believed that women could find complete happiness if they, in turn, would dedicate their entire lives to just making their man happy.

Their leader had informed them that all the rich and successful career women out there who appeared to be so happy were, in reality, terribly lonely and miserable and secretly envied them their happy Christian homes.

It was a stretch to imagine that Barbara Walters might want to give it all up for Ed Couch, but Evelyn tried her hardest. Of course, even though she was not religious, it was a comfort to know that the Bible backed her up in being a doormat. Hadn't the apostle St. Paul said for women not to usurp power over the men but to be in silence?

So, hoping she was on the right track, she started up the ladder on The Ten Steps to Complete Happiness. She tried step number one and met Ed at the front door nude, wrapped in Saran wrap. But Ed had been horrified: He'd jumped inside the house and slammed the door. "Jesus Christ, Evelyn! What if I had been the paper boy! Have you gone insane?"

So she never tried step number two: going to his office dressed as a prostitute.

But pretty soon, the group leader, Nadine Fingerhutt, got a divorce and had to go to work, so the group just sort of fizzled out. Then, after a while, Ed stopped seeing that woman and things settled down.

Later on, still looking, she had tried to get involved with the Women's Community Center. She liked what they stood for but secretly wished they would wear just a little lipstick and shave their legs. She had been the only one in the room in full makeup, wearing pantyhose and earrings. She had wanted to belong, but when the woman suggested that next week they bring a mirror so they could all study their vaginas, she never went back.

Ed said that those women were nothing but a bunch of frustrated old maids and too ugly to get a man anyway. So there she was, too bored for Tupperware parties and too scared to look at her own vagina.

The night she and Ed went to their thirtieth high school reunion, she had been hoping she'd find someone to talk to about what she was feeling. 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. Their generation seemed to be on a fence, not knowing which way to jump.

After the reunion, she would sit for hours looking at all her school pictures, and she began to drive by the places where she used to live, over and over.

Ed was no help. Lately, he had started acting more and more like his daddy, trying to behave like he thought the man of the house should. He had become more closed off as the years went by, and on Saturdays he would wander around the Home Improvement Center alone, for hours; looking for something, but he didn't know what. He hunted and fished and watched his football games like the other men, but she began to suspect that he, too, was just playing a part.

Evelyn stared into the empty ice cream carton and wondered where the smiling girl in the school pictures had gone.

NOVEMBER 2, 1932.

Whistle Stop Pig Club Started Due to the encouragement of the Alabama Extension Service, a local pig club has been formed. Anyone wanting information is to call Mrs. Bertha Vick at home. Bertha said that a Miss Zula Hight of Kittrel, North Carolina, earned a pure-bred Registered China Pig in just seven days, and Bertha said that you could do the same thing if you just put your mind to it. She said to own a pure-bred pig is a mark of distinction for you and your community and will start you on the road to prosperity. It will mean the laying of a foundation for a comfortable income for you all of your life, and when old age overtakes you.

Idgie just got her brand-new Philco radio at the cafe, and says anybody wanting to hear "Amos 'n' Andy," or any other program, is welcome to come in and need not order anything to eat. She says the sound is good at night especially.

By the way, does anybody know how to get rid of dog tracks in cement? If so, call me up or come by the post office and tell me.

... Dot Weems ...

JANUARY 12, 1986.

Evelyn opened her purse and gave Mrs. Threadgoode one of the pimiento-cheese sandwiches she had wrapped in wax paper, and brought from home.

Mrs. Threadgoode was delighted. "Oh, thank you! I love a good pimiento-cheese sandwich. In fact, I love anything to eat that's a pretty color. Don't you think pimiento cheese has a pretty color? It's so cheery. I like a red pepper, too, and I used to love candied apples, but I cain't eat them anymore, because of my teeth. Come to think of it, I like anything that's red." She thought for a minute.

"We had a red hen named Sister, once, and every time I'd go in the backyard, I'd say, 'Sister, don't you peck my toes, girl, or I'll fry you up with dumplings,' and she'd cock her head and walk sideways away from me. She'd peck everybody else except me and my little boy, Albert. We never could eat that hen, even during the Depression. She died of old age. When I get to heaven, with all my people, I hope Sister and Cookie the raccoon is gonna be there. I know old Sipsey's gonna be there.

"I don't have any idea where Sipsey came from ... you never know where colored people come from. She was about ten or eleven when she started working for Momma Threadgoode. She'd walked over from Troutville, the colored quarters across the tracks, and said her name was Sipsey Peavey and she was lookin' for a job, and Momma just kept her. She helped raise all the Threadgoode children.

"Sipsey was a skinny little thing, and funny. She had all those old-timy colored superstitions. Her mother'd been a slave, and she was scared to death of spells ... told Momma that her neighbor in Troutville had put yellow conjure powder in this man's shoes every night, and had caused him to lose his functions. But the thing she was the most deathly afraid of in the world was the heads of animals. If you brought her a chicken or a fish or if Big George killed a hog, she wouldn't touch it or cook it until she'd buried the head out in the garden. She said that if you didn't bury the head, the spirit of that animal would enter your body and cause you to go completely insane. One time, Poppa forgot and brought some hog's-head cheese in the house, and Sipsey ran home, screaming like a banshee, and wouldn't come back until the place had been conjured by a friend of hers. She must have buried hundreds of heads out in the garden. But you know, we got the biggest tomatoes and okra and squash in town because of it!" She laughed. "Buddy used to call it the fish-head garden.

"But, with all of her spooky ways, there wasn't a better cook in the state of Alabama. Even at eleven, they say she could make the most delicious biscuits and gravy, cobbler, fried chicken, turnip greens, and black-eyed peas. And her dumplings were so light they would float in the air and you'd have to catch 'em to eat 'em. All the recipes that were used at the cafe were hers. She taught Idgie and Ruth everything they knew about cooking.