This whole literary enterprise shines with honesty, gallantry, and love of perfect details that might otherwise be forgotten. Happily for us, Fannie Flagg has preserved in a richly comic, poignant narrative that records the exuberance of their lives, the sadness of their departure.

Praise for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop CafeĪ real novel and a good one the busy brain of a born storyteller. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again. Her tale includes two more women - the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth - who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter - even an occasional murder. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Together they started the 'Original Whistle Stop Café.Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. The store played a major role as 'The Whistle Stop Café'.Īfter the filming, Robert Williams, who had inherited the building, decided to make it into a real café and formed a partnership with friend Jerie Lynn Williams. The store was rented out for a while as a timber consultant/real estate office and then as an antique shop before the filming of 'Fried Green Tomatoes'. An antique file system loaded with old yellow tickets from the past along with the meat block, cash register, meat scales, wood heater, safe, and other smaller items remain in the café today. The store was probably one the last of it's kind that delivered the groceries and also allowed folks to 'charge' them keeping a running tab. It was based on a book by Fannie Flagg about a friendship between two women at the turn of the century in Irondale, AL, a small town outside of Birmingham. All of the children helped in the store until they went off to school or to the service. THE REAL WHISTLE STOP CAFE The Fried Green Tomatoes movie starred Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Mary-Louise Parker and Mary Stuart Masterson. Williams, known to most as 'Miss Lillian', helped run the store and also raised five boys and a girl. Williams words, 'everything from the cradle to the grave.' He called everyone 'Cuz' and was known to roll the dice to see who paid for the Coca-Colas™. While in business, the store sold groceries, pantry staples, gasoline, cattle feed, medicines, clothing and hardware.

He ran a general merchandise store there for 45 years and finally closed the doors for good in 1972 simply stating, 'I have had enough.' The Whistle Stop Café building was built in 1927 by Edward L.

Whistle stop fried green tomatoes