Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Evelyn is a 48-year-old housewife who accompanies her husband, Ed, on his weekly visits to see his mother in Rose Terrace Nursing Home. Evelyn’s own mother died from cancer when she was 40, and the loss exacerbated her longstanding fear of illness, doctors, and hospitals. Even beyond this phobia, Evelyn is a timid, insecure, and sheltered woman. She grew up too early in the century to benefit from the feminist movement, and has spent most of her life obeying gender norms and deferring to her husband:

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 […] 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 (41).

Evelyn feels that her life has passed her by and she isn’t able to relate to the changed society her son and daughter. She is unhappy with her restricted existence.

After meeting Ninny Threadgoode at the nursing home, Evelyn begins a slow process of transformation and self-discovery. Inspired both by Mrs. Threadgoode’s cheerful, outspoken nature and her stories about Idgie and Ruth, Evelyn begins to stand up for herself.

Initially, Evelyn’s anger over sexist treatment causes her to daydream about a powerful alter ego named “Towanda”:

[W]hile Evelyn was cooking dinner, Towanda had just put a roomful of porno and child exploitation film producers to death. And later, as Evelyn was washing the dishes, Towanda was in the process of single-handedly bowing up the entire Middle East to prevent the Third World War. And so, when Ed yelled from the den for another beer, somehow, before Evelyn could stop her, Towanda yelled back, ‘SCREW YOU, ED!’(239–240).

This anger eventually tapers off, but she retains a newfound sense of self-confidence. By the end of the novel, she has ditched fad diets, taken concrete steps to live healthily, established herself as a distributor for Mary Kay, and found new happiness in her marriage.

As the novel opens, Ninny Threadgoode is an 86-year-old widow recovering from surgery at Rose Terrace Nursing Home. She begins sharing her thoughts, opinions, and memories with Evelyn when she stops by the visitor’s lounge. Over time, the two women become friends, bonding over their shared love of sweets and the stories about Whistle Stop that Ninny tells Evelyn.

These stories date back to the time when Ninny became an orphan at a young age, and the Threadgoode She eventually married one of the Threadgoode sons—a chiropractor named Cleo—and after years of struggling to conceive, had a son named Albert. She devoted much of her adult life to caring for Albert, who suffered cognitive impairments due to brain damage. Although both Cleo and Albert have died by the time Ninny and Evelyn meet, Mrs. Threadgoode’s upbeat nature in spite of her many hardships makes an impression on Evelyn, as does her outspokenness. Over the course of their friendship, Ninny encourages Evelyn to be more outgoing and confident, advising her to seek hormonal treatment for menopause and telling her she could be a Mary Kay distributor. When Mrs. Threadgoode dies, she leaves a box of keepsakes for Evelyn, including photos of her family and the other Threadgoodes, a menu from the Whistle Stop Cafe, Albert’s birth certificate, and an envelope full of Sipsey’s recipes.

Idgie Threadgoode is the youngest of William and Alice Threadgoode’s children. From an early age, she reveals herself to have a stubborn, mischievous, and independent streak. She stuffs berries in her nose and ears, puts poker chips in the church collection basket, and delivers love letters for her older brother Buddy, whom she idolizes. She’s also a tomboy who flouts female gender norms, refusing to wear dresses, cutting her hair short, and spending her free time climbing trees and fishing. Buddy’s death causes her to become even wilder, and it’s only after she falls in love with Ruth that she once again begins to take part in family life. She’s devastated when Ruth returns to Georgia to be married. When she learns that Ruth’s husband is abusing her, Idgie threatens to kill Frank before helping Ruth escape. After bringing Ruth back to Whistle Stop, Idgie settles into domestic life, opening the cafe to provide for her new family and serving as a second parent to Stump: “Ruth was a good mother, and [Stump] adored her. We all did. But Stump and Idgie were special. They’d take off hunting or fishing and leave us all behind” (110).

When Ruth dies from cancer, Idgie continues to raise Stump. In 1955, Idgie closes the cafe and leaves Whistle Stop, adopting a more itinerant lifestyle. In the novel’s final chapter, set in 1988, she is running a roadside stand in Florida with her brother, Julian. In fact, Idgie had never entirely lost her taste for freedom, which sometimes caused problems in her relationship with Ruth. Arguably, however, it’s that same free-spiritedness that makes her one of the novel’s most forward-thinking characters on issues like race. Idgie’s disregard for what others will think of her plays a role in her decision to serve black customers at her cafe and also in her guise as Railroad Bill, the thief who raids supply trains for the benefit of the black community in Troutville.

Ruth Jamison is a gentle, devout Sunday school teacher from Valdosta, Georgia, who first comes to Whistle Stop to help Alice Threadgoode with summer church activities. As Ninny Threadgoode describes her, “She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old. She had light auburn hair and brown eyes with long lashes and was so sweet and soft-spoken that people just fell in love with her on first sight” (80). One person who falls in love with her is the then-teenaged Idgie. Ruth is drawn to Idgie’s sense of humor and mischief and eventually reciprocates. Nevertheless, she feels honor-bound to follow through on her promise to marry Frank Bennett, and she returns to Georgia when summer ends. Flagg also hints that a sense of internalized homophobia motivates Ruth’s actions; she was raised “real strict-like,” and “pray[s] to God and beg[s] Him to take such thoughts [of Idgie] out of her head” so that she can be a “good, loving wife” (80, 194).

Ultimately, the abuse Ruth suffers at Frank’s hands pushes her over the edge, and with Idgie’s help, she runs away to Whistle Stop. Idgie describes this as one of the bravest actions she’s ever known anyone to undertake, and the decision does seem to be a turning point for Ruth, strengthening her sense of self-worth and confidence. Once in Whistle Stop, she and Idgie live openly as a couple, even raising Ruth’s child, Buddy Jr, together. Ruth is even willing to stand up to Idgie, turning her out of the house at one point for spending too much time drinking at Eva Bates’s bar. She remains a sweet, somewhat shy, and conventionally feminine woman until her death from cancer in 1947.

Buddy Jr. is the biological son of Frank Bennett and Ruth Jamison. He later marries Peggy Hadley, and together they have a daughter named Norma. Ruth and Idgie raise Buddy Jr together, and both his last name and his first name derive from Idgie’s family, with “Buddy” honoring Idgie’s older brother. From the time Buddy Jr. is six, however, he’s more commonly known as “Stump,” a nickname Idgie gives him when he loses his arm in a railway accident: “Idgie said it was the best thing, so nobody would call him anything about it behind his back. She thought he might as well face up to the fact that he had an arm missing and not be sensitive about it” (109).

Idgie’s strategy works. She raises Stump to be tough from a young age, and he generally accepts his injury with good humor and learns to compensate for it. By the time he’s in high school, he is a star football player. Nevertheless, the accident does cause him some sensitivity where women are concerned, and he eventually admits to Idgie that he’s afraid that women will find him ugly or comical, and that he might accidentally hurt a woman because of his disability. This sensitivity reflects well on Stump, particularly in comparison to how abusive his father was in his relationships with women. Although Mrs. Threadgoode describes Stump as a “manly little fella,” and although he enjoys traditionally masculine hobbies like fishing and football, he is gentle and compassionate at heart.

Sipsey is a black woman who begins working as a nanny for the Threadgoode family at roughly ten years old. She later cooks for the Whistle Stop Cafe. According to Ninny Threadgoode, no one knew much about Sipsey’s background beyond the fact that her mother had been a slave: “[Y]ou never know where colored people come from” (47).

Sipsey has a number of superstitious beliefs and habits. Most notably, she insists on burying the head of any animal that’s been slaughtered, fearing that if she doesn’t “the spirit of that animal would enter your body and cause you to go completely insane” (48). This ultimately proves to be a plot point, since Sipsey cuts off and buries Frank Bennett’s head after killing him, leading to the discovery of his glass eye decades later.

Her other defining trait is her love of children, having cared for the Threadgoodes and the children of Troutville. She finally gets a child of her own when she hears about a woman at the train station trying to give away her baby. Sipsey hurries over, returning with the “fattest, blackest little baby boy,” whom she names George Pullman (49). 

Big George is the adopted son of Sipsey. He was born out of an affair, and his biological mother gave him to Sipsey while passing through Whistle Stop to avoid her husband’s questions. Because Sipsey got him at a train station, she decided to name him after the inventor of the pullman car. He then grew into “a six-foot-four, two-hundred-fifty-pounder,” earning him his nickname (49).

Big George runs the barbecue at the Whistle Stop Cafe and has a reputation as such a good chef that people travel from Birmingham to try his cooking. He marries a woman named Onzell and has four children with her: Jasper, Artis, Willie Boy, and Naughty Bird. He has a soft spot for Naughty Bird. He is also deeply loyal to Idgie. When the pair is jointly accused of Frank Bennett’s murder, he “beg[s] her not to stand trial” just for the sake of providing him with an alibi (341). In reality, it was George’s mother who killed Frank, but George helped to cover up the death by boiling the body in the vat he uses to cook pigs. He and Onzell eventually move to Birmingham to live with Jasper.

Onzell is a woman from Troutville who marries Big George. The couple have four children: Jasper, Artis, Naughty Bird, and Willie Boy. Onzell is a “pecan-colored […] with red hair and freckles,” and her family disapproves of her marriage to the much darker-skinned George, once again underscoring the different ways racism and colorism manifest in the novel (73).

Onzell works as a cook alongside her mother-in-law, Sipsey, at the Whistle Stop Cafe, where she becomes particularly devoted to Ruth. As Mrs. Threadgoode puts it: “Ruth was her special pet, and she let you know it, too. She wouldn’t allow anybody to bother Ruth […] But she was gentle as a lamb where Ruth was concerned” (284). In fact, Onzell insists on nursing Ruth during her final illness and—unbeknownst to Idgie and Stump—gives Ruth an overdose of morphine to end her suffering. 

Jasper is one of Big George and Onzell’s firstborn twins. Like his mother, Jasper is fair-skinned, and it’s likely that the societal advantages this confers are part of the reason his life goes in a very different direction than his twin brother’s. Most obviously, his complexion wins over his wife Blanch’s parents, which in turn ensures his own “admitt[ance] to the exclusive, upper-middle-class black society” they belong to: “[I]f Blanch’s father had been disappointed in Jasper’s lack of formal education and background, Jasper’s color and manners more than made up for it” (319). Jasper’s success is also the result of his own hard work and thrift. He spends years working as a railroad employee, gradually working his way up the ranks: “[H]e has been cook, freight trucker, station porter, dining car waiter, parlor car porter, and was promoted to pullman porter in 1935. He became president of the Birmingham branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1947” (314).

Throughout his career, Jasper maintains a “courteous, helpful and efficient” demeanor, even in the face of frequent racism, in the hopes of securing a better life for his children and grandchildren (315). His efforts pay off, and he is able to send all his children to college. In an ironic twist, he one day overhears his grandson expressing embarrassment over “the way [Jasper] bowed and scraped to white people” (320). There is a bittersweet element to Jasper’s story, as he—like the trains he considers “old friends”—eventually becomes a relic of an earlier era (320).

Artis is one of Big George and Onzell’s twin sons, but unlike his brother Jasper, he’s “so black he [has] blue gums” (73). He is also high-spirited and rebellious from a young age, perhaps in part because he participated in covering up Frank Bennett’s death at age 11, giving him a sense of invincibility. After stabbing Frank’s corpse, Artis reflects that, “He had a secret. A powerful secret that he would have as long as he lived […] He would never have to feel the anger, the hurt, the humiliation of the others, ever again. He was different. He would always be set apart. He had stabbed himself a white man” (366).

Not long after Frank’s death, Artis begins sneaking into Birmingham, where he falls in love with the sights and sounds of the city’s black neighborhood, Slagtown. As an adult, he immerses himself in the “fast, racy set down on 4th Avenue North, where the jazz was hot and dice rolled night and day” (318). He buys expensive, flashy clothes and has reckless affairs with many women, often getting himself into trouble in the process: “Every living female was his particular domain, and because of that lack of respect for territorial rights, he had often been forced to search his own body for stab wounds and broken bones” (225–26). He marries several times, including to a woman who had threatened to kill him, and spends some time in jail. He is jailed for cutting a dog loose so it wouldn’t be taken to the pound, and he kills a man in retaliation for his brother Willie Boy’s murder. Despite his tumultuous life, a part of Artis always seems to miss the town where he grew up. When he dies in 1979, he is thinking about being “out in the back of the cafe, helping his daddy barbecue” (373).

Naughty Bird is the daughter of Big George and Onzell. She is a small and mischievous child and earns her name by sneaking into the kitchen and stealing her mother’s cooking. She is dark-skinned and takes after her father, who dotes on her: “She could twist him around her little finger like he was the red on a barber pole” (152). After nearly dying from pneumonia as a child, she grows up to work in Opal’s beauty shop. At sixteen, she falls in love with a railway cook named Le Roy Grooms, and together they have a child. Le Roy then leaves her for a “high yellow octoroon woman in New Orleans” (304). This devastates Naughty Bird, and when her attempts to lighten her skin and straighten her hair fail, she falls into depression and alcoholism. However, as soon as she learns that Le Roy has died, she recovers and finds a new boyfriend. 

Smokey Phillips (or, as he’s known in Whistle Stop, Smokey Lonesome) is a drifter from Tennessee. His mother became involved with a group of “Holy Roller snake handlers,” resulting in his father abandoning the family and in Smokey’s mother’s death (18). His uncle raised him until he left home at thirteen.

Like many other homeless, unemployed men during the Depression, Smokey uses the railroads to travel around the country looking for food and odd jobs. He comes to Whistle Stop because he’s heard that the local cafe will serve men for free. Once there, however, he falls in love with Ruth and decides to settle in Whistle Stop, becoming good friends with Idgie and doing occasional work for her and Ruth. He never manages to shed either his drinking habit or his restlessness, however, and when the Whistle Stop Cafe closes, he returns to wandering the country with no real sense of hope. He dies in 1969 when he freezes to death along the railroad tracks heading toward Whistle Stop.

Throughout his difficulties, Smokey retains his sense of decency and morality, never resorting to theft or violence, and finding in his unspoken love for Ruth a sense of purpose:

He had loved her every night, lying in his bed at the mission, on the thin used mattress from some closed-down hospital, watching the green neon JESUS SAVES signs blink on and off, and listening to the sounds of the drunks downstairs, crashing bottles and yelling to come in out of the cold. All those bad times, he would just close his eyes and walk into the cafe again and see her standing there, smiling at him (350).

Eva is the daughter of a “part-time bootlegger” named Big Jack Bates, who runs a makeshift bar down by the river a few miles outside of Whistle Stop (95). Flagg describes her as a “big, buxom girl with a shock of rust-colored hair and apple-green eyes” who “always [wears] colored beads and bright red lipstick, even when she [goes] fishing” (94). She also takes part in other activities traditionally seen as inappropriate for a woman, including drinking heavily and sleeping with whomever she chooses. She has a long-running affair with the married sheriff, Grady Kilgore, and the novel implies that she sleeps with Idgie when Idgie is heartbroken over Ruth’s return to Valdosta.

As this latter example suggests, Eva’s freedom with her body is as much a reflection of her kindness and generosity as it is her own desires. She habitually cares for stray dogs and cats and generally “can’t stand to see anything hurt” (98). Nevertheless, her habits make her a disreputable woman in Whistle Stop, so the fact that Buddy, her only real love, takes her to have dinner with his family is an indication of his willingness to flout convention. Although Eva outwardly recovers from Buddy’s death, flirting and having sex with her patrons and partying with the Dill Pickle Club, Flagg implies that she never really gets over the loss. When Ruth turns Idgie out of the house for spending too much time drinking, Eva cautions Idgie not to lose sight of how lucky she is to have a family, saying Idgie should “think long and hard before […] flying off” (258).

Buddy is the oldest of William and Alice Threadgoode’s sons. Ninny describes him as charismatic and good-looking, and implies that she (as well as many other local girls) had a crush on him at one point: “[He] had a million-dollar personality, with those dark eyes and those white teeth…he could charm you within an inch of your life” (25). He has a fun-loving and rebellious nature, playing pranks that include putting on his sister Leona’s dress and “prissing and mincing” in imitation of her (34). He’s a favorite of his younger sister Idgie, and he accepts and indulges her, taking her on fishing trips and helping her cut her hair short.

Buddy dies young and unexpectedly, accidentally stepping in front of a train while “flirting around with that pretty Marie Miller” (36). Idgie is devastated by the loss and withdraws from the rest of her family, spending most of her time in the woods until she meets Ruth. His death also hits Eva Bates—his only serious girlfriend—hard: “It was true that she had slept with whomever she pleased, whenever she pleased; but no matter what anybody thought or said, when she loved you, she was strictly a one-man woman. Eva belonged to Buddy, and as much as Buddy liked to flirt around, he belonged to Eva” (95).

Frank Bennett is Ruth’s fiancé and later husband, as well as Stump’s biological father. At the time of their marriage he’s 34 and good-looking, although he wears a glass eye having lost his eye during WWI. Though vain about his appearance, he strikes those who don’t know him as a friendly and charming man. With women, however, he is cruel, demanding, and abusive. He seduces or outright rapes “just about every available girl around” before abandoning them, as well as any children he fathers (175). This misogyny stems from an unhappy childhood; Frank’s father beat him, causing him first to idolize his mother’s “softness and sweetness” and then to violently reject her when he walked in on her having sex with her brother-in-law (174). He’s also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a racist who “prefer[s] […] black girls he would take by force while his friends held them down” (175).

Frank’s abuse of Ruth begins the night of their marriage, when he “take[s] her with so much violence—almost as if he were punishing her” (195–196). He continues to hurt and cheat on Ruth for the next four years, and even tracks her down after she leaves him. It’s at this point that he disappears, causing suspicion to fall on Idgie. Frank was actually killed by Sipsey while he was trying to kidnap Stump, and Big George disposed of his body by boiling it in the pot he uses to cook slaughtered hogs.

Ed Couch is Evelyn’s husband. Although not abusive or intentionally cruel, he is set in his ways and often casually sexist and prejudiced as a result. He makes offhand jokes about Evelyn’s weight and interferes with his wife’s attempts to raise a “sensitive” son, “telling her that he would turn out to be a queer” (41). He also had an affair roughly ten years before the novel opens, and is implied to be going through his own midlife crisis, spending more time watching TV and burying himself in traditionally masculine activities:

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 [Evelyn] began to suspect that he, too, was just playing a part (44).

Ed’s mother is a resident of Rose Terrace Nursing Home, and it is while visiting her that Evelyn first meets Ninny Threadgoode. As time goes on, Evelyn gains confidence from this new friendship, which in turn seems to improve her marriage; she begins enjoying sex, for example, and at one point has “an enormous orgasm that nearly scare[s] poor Ed to death,” prompting him to join a gym (359). Evelyn’s breakthroughs seem to pull Ed out of his rut as well, further underscoring the fact that they both have felt stifled by norms and expectations surrounding marriage and gender roles.

Grady Kilgore is the Whistle Stop sheriff who was friends with Buddy and later befriends Idgie. Although married, he has a longstanding affair with Eva Bates who, like him, is a member of the Dill Pickle Club. He also used to work for the railroad and is consequently in charge of the investigation into “Railroad Bill”—a person who raids government trains and throws off cans of food for the residents of Troutville.

The text implies that Gary is a member of the local Ku Klux Klan, and he warns Idgie early in the novel not to continue serving the black residents of Troutville out the back door of her cafe. Idgie ignores the warning, and the two remain on friendly terms thanks to their shared love of drinking, playing cards, and telling tall tales; in fact, he’s a cofounder of Idgie’s Dill Pickle Club and participates despite the fact that the club has a black member, Sipsey. He is also reluctant to arrest Idgie and Big George for Frank Bennett’s murder. This makes him a morally ambiguous character, as he is friendly in his interactions with the local black population but seems to embrace racist ideology. 

Cleo is one of Idgie’s brothers, and the eventual husband of Ninny. Ninny explains that while she was initially drawn to men offering “dash and sparkle and romance,” she’s happy she ended up with a kind, smart, and dependable man like Cleo:

I couldn’t have asked for a better husband. Didn’t have a roving eye, didn’t drink, and was he smart. […] I never saw anybody who wanted to be a doctor more than he did…wanted to be a surgeon. I know it like to broke his heart when Poppa died and he had to come out of medical school, but I never heard him say a word about it (144–145, 144).

Rather than becoming a doctor, Cleo put himself through chiropractic school. By the time Evelyn meets Ninny, Cleo has been dead for just over three decades.

Albert is Cleo and Ninny’s only child, although he has also died by the time Ninny is in the nursing home. It took roughly 13 years for Ninny to get pregnant, leading her to see Albert as a quite literal answer to her prayers. As Albert grew older, he had trouble learning to sit up and walk, and was eventually diagnosed with brain damage caused by a brain hemorrhage during delivery. Ninny, however, didn’t care that Albert would need lifelong care:

There wasn’t a purer soul that ever lived on this earth. And years later, whenever I would get to feeling a little down, I would just look at Albert. I had to work every day of my life to be good, and it was just a natural thing with him. He never had an unkind thought […] He just loved everybody and everybody loved him (148).

Peggy is a Whistle Stop girl two years younger than Stump. As a young boy, Stump clearly has a crush on her; he’s embarrassed when she sees him lose a mock gun fight with his friends, and later tries to impress her by taking her to see the casket of the “famous murderer” Mr. Pinto (166). By the time Stump is in his late teens, he claims he’s disinterested in Peggy, dismissing her as “just a kid” and turning down her invitation to a Sadie Hawkins dance. However, when it becomes clear that Stump is reluctant to date because of his missing arm, Idgie forces him to take Peggy to a dance, and he falls back in love with her. The two later marry and move to Atlanta.

Reverend Scroggins is a Baptist preacher in Whistle Stop. His anti-alcohol stance makes him an object of ridicule to Idgie and the other members of the Dill Pickle Club: “[E]very time some poor fool would ask where he could buy whiskey or live bait, they’d sent him over to the preacher’s house” (124–125). After years of enduring this and other practical jokes, Scroggins appears at Idgie’s trial “as pious and holier-than-thou-looking” as ever (341). To Idgie’s surprise, however, Scroggins lies on her behalf, testifying that Idgie is a devout Baptist, and was volunteering at a church revival on the evening Frank Bennett disappeared: “His son, Bobby, had heard about the trial and had called and told him about that time Idgie had gotten him out of jail [for throwing an ink-filled balloon at a city councilman’s wife]” (344).

Though the text portrays Scroggins as stuffy and overly conservative, he lies under oath in return for Idgie’s favor to his son. He is potentially covering up a murder for a person who has tormented him for years, indicating that he’s either certain of Idgie’s innocence or not as strait-laced as initially suggested. 

Willie Boy is one of Big George and Onzell’s children, having been born just after the twins Jasper and Artis. He is the first black man from the town to enlist when World War II begins and dies while serving. He is murdered by another black soldier after he punched the man for saying “any man working whites, especially in Alabama, was nothing but a low-down, ignorant, stupid shuffling Uncle Tom” (244). His actions indicate that he’s proud of his upbringing and family, a feeling that is also evident in the storylines of his siblings. 

Clarissa is the oldest daughter of Jasper Peavey and his wife, Blanch. Both of her parents are fair-skinned, and Clarissa herself has “red-gold, silky hair, [a] peaches-and-cream complexion, and […] green eyes” (295). As a young woman, she sometimes finds it easier to pass as white, and even pretends not to recognize her darker-skinned Uncle Artis when he approaches her in a store. Ultimately, she “[makes] it through” her anxieties surrounding her race; in fact, unbeknownst to Evelyn, she’s the “stunning” woman who sits next to her during her visit to Martin Luther King Memorial Baptist Church (311).

Biddie Otis is a 78-year-old resident of Rose Terrace Nursing Home and an old friend of Ninny’s from Whistle Stop. Ninny describes her as a “nervous kind of person,” and she appears regularly both in Ninny’s remarks about life in the nursing home and in flashbacks to life in Whistle Stop. Several articles in The Weems Weekly center on a meteorite that crashed into Biddie’s house and destroyed her radio. She dies a few weeks before Ninny does.

Vesta Adcock is a wealthy resident of Whistle Stop, is involved in many of the town’s social groups, and is the president of the theatre club. Her love of drama survives into old age, as she escapes Rose Terrace Nursing Home to a “love nest” where she has arranged to meet the elderly widower Walter Dunaway (392). She returns willingly, however, after Dunaway suffers a stroke, explaining that he “is not the man [she] thought he was”—a reference to his inability to perform sexually (392). 

In addition to Idgie, Buddy, and Cleo, several other members of the Threadgoode family feature in the novel. William Threadgoode and his wife Alice Cloud (“Poppa” and “Momma”) have nine children in total, and raise Ninny after the death of her own parents. In part because William owns what was once the only store in Whistle Stop, the Threadgoodes are well known and are welcoming of everyone in town. In 1922, however, William has to close the store, which Ninny attributes to his generosity: “Whatever people wanted or needed, he just put in a sack and let them have it on credit” (26). His wife is equally kind, and a devout Baptist.

The “oldest and the prettiest” of the Threadgoodes is Leona (13). As a result of her looks, she is somewhat spoiled and vain. She worries that Idgie will ruin her wedding by wearing pants and disapproves of Buddy’s relationship with Eva. She marries a wealthy man named John Justice in 1919, and the couple moves to Atlanta.

Another of the Threadgoode children, Julian, marries a woman named Opal, who opens a beauty shop next door to the Whistle Stop Cafe in 1930. According to Idgie, it’s largely this income that keeps the couple afloat during the Depression, because Julian “doesn’t have the sense God gave a billy goat” (30). Although the beauty shop eventually closes in the 1950s, Julian and Opal remain in Whistle Stop. At the very end of the novel, however, Flagg reveals that he has reunited with Idgie and is running a roadside stand with her in Florida.

Lastly, Essie Rue Threadgoode—one of Idgie’s sisters—becomes something of a local celebrity when she plays the organ for a radio advertisement. She later finds work playing the piano for radio shows and movies in Birmingham, but continues to perform for weddings, plays, and other events in Whistle Stop. 

Dot Weems is a Whistle Stop resident who runs a weekly local paper dedicated to local events and gossip. She has a dry sense of humor, and often pokes fun at her “other half,” Wilbur, for his lack of common sense and his tendency to get into various accidents and then complain about them. The Weems Weekly shuts down in 1969 when Dot and Wilbur move to Fairhope, Alabama.

Watler Dunaway is a widower living at Rose Terrace Nursing Home. According to Ninny, Dunaway “thinks he’s a Romeo” and has to be given tranquilizers to stop him from “goosing all the women” in the home (135). His family eventually removes him from the nursing home after finding out about his relationship with Vesta Adcock, but the pair run away to a hotel together; they are discovered when Dunaway has a stroke and is taken to the hospital. 

Curtis Smoote is a detective sent to Whistle Stop from Georgia to investigate Frank Bennett’s disappearance, and he later serves as the judge at Idgie’s trial. Since Frank seduced, impregnated, and abandoned his daughter, Curtis isn’t eager to see Frank’s killer punished. He first warns Idgie to dispose of Frank’s body and then dismisses the case as soon as he hears Scroggins’s testimony.