Fried Green Memories

Food Narrative

Essay 1

What’s sweet, sour, and fried all over? I bet there are so many combinations of wonderful things the many cultures of the world could think of to answer that riddle but none quite this irresistible. Fried green tomatoes are the delectable little southern side dish that I speak of. Almost every restaurant in the south offers the fried green tomato in some form but there are places that specialize. One such place that I speak of is known as the Whistle Stop Café and that, is where I enjoyed my first fried green tomato.

My great-grandfather, Papa Dobbs as I used to call him, was one of my favorite people to visit as a child. He was a cantankerous old man but I loved him and so did my whole family. It was a normal thing for me to take a ride down to visit my Papa Dobbs with my grandparents and we normally went out to eat on these little excursions. One late afternoon we decided to go and pick up my Papa Dobbs to eat at a restaurant he had suggested, The Whistle Stop Café. I remember the day vividly, the trees’ leaves where slowly creeping into fall and the air smelled like freshly burned fire wood. Once we picked up Papa Dobbs we set out to the Café and he told us all how long it had been since he had bitten into a good fried green tomato. “Fried green tomato?” I asked him. “Yes son,” he said. “A fried green tomato.” I was very puzzled by this because I had never heard of anyone frying a tomato or a tomato being green. Little did I know how much I would love what seemed strange to me. After I had my first tomato at the restaurant the paradox of a fruit/vegetable had drawn me in hook, line, and sinker.

The tomatoes were about the size of a coaster and a light golden brown. As I carefully bit into my first tomato I remember how crunchy the outside was, but how juicy and sweet the inside was. The following bites of the little treats were equally as good and I noticed how much I enjoyed the subtle sour bite the tomatoes also had. I think that day rekindled a tradition in my grandparents. They spent the whole trip talking about how their mothers always made fried green tomatoes for them and how their guests always loved them. My Papa Dobbs just smirked over the fact that he had suggested we all go and eat there. He’s long past gone from this world, but I still remember that broad smile he had when he had to explain to me what a fried green tomato was. After that simple trip to the restaurant I noticed a change in our Sunday dinners or special meals, we always had the tomatoes. Everyone in my family loved them then and still loves them now.

The prospect of fresh fried green tomatoes even lured me and my grandfather into cultivating a garden. It wasn’t as if the tomatoes that we had already weren’t good enough, it was just the thought and satisfaction we got in knowing that we grew and cooked at least one of the many foods we ate. I remember plenty of weekends I spent with my grandparents where I toiled away the afternoon behind the rusty maw of a hand tiller. The dirt behind my grandparents house was filled with rocks and clay, but that was not going to keep us down. After a few days of churning us a nice plot my grandfather said we were going to visit Mr. Perrin. Mr. Perrin owned one of the oldest and most run down gas stations on Highway 280, but that station was a diamond in the rough for anyone who planned on farming or fishing. Mr. Perrin was an old man with a huge gray bushy beard that laughed a lot. He sold any variety of bait you could think of, but what we wanted was manure and topsoil. After borrowing my father’s truck we took several trips down to the gas station and picked up quite a few 50 pound bags of rich topsoil and manure that we would use just to enrich our poor soil. As a young boy some of my fondest memories will always be of slowly but surely getting that soil ready for planting. It may not have been that big of a spot we had procured but it was still hard work. Planting was the fun part I couldn’t wait to do after we had finished with all the hard tilling. It was always such a joy to buy the little seedlings and plant them in their little mounds while my big house cat wove a trail of footprints in between my legs.

For many years after that first summer of gardening I helped my grandfather with those tomato plants, eventually to add other veggies like rattlesnake beans, cucumbers, banana peppers, squash, and even corn one year. That little spherical fruit will always bring back many fond memories for me. Every time I bite into a good fried green tomato I think of my Papa Dobbs, my grandparents, family gatherings, and the sense of value for ones own labor I received growing up. They may not seem like very much, and many people may think they sound odd, but until the day I die they will hold a special corner of my heart.