by Fannie Flagg
Jessie asked Michael if he was going to marry me when we grew up. I told him my daddy wouldn’t let me marry an Italian boy because he didn’t want me to work in a grocery store, and Jessie laughed so hard he shook the whole room. Then he started to sweat a lot and asked Connie to put his leg down. His leg was the size of a truck tire and didn’t have any knees. Laughing must have tired him out because he was breathing real heavy.
We had to go, so I told him good-bye and it was nice meeting him. Michael never did stop staring at him. At least I looked at the room. Connie told us Jessie weighed more than 500 pounds and can’t get through the door of the room or get up at all anymore. His momma has to feed and bathe him there. Every week two or three men come to turn him over on his side so he won’t get sores. All he cares about is his radio, his momma and food. If I ever catch elephantiasis, I am going to get a bigger room.
We were in the “Dashes from Dot” column this week. “William Harper at the new Harper’s Malt Shop is busy preparing for a successful summer and little Daisy Fay Harper is going to be the newest member of the Jr. Debutantes’ Club that will have its first meeting of the summer season in two weeks at the live bait store.” Mrs. Dot also reported that Kay Bob Benson was still up in the air over her plane trip to visit her grandparents in Columbus, Georgia, where she had attended a pajama party.
Mrs. Dot’s husband, Mr. Dot, is mad at me. When we were coming home with them from the dog races at Pensacola, I tried to throw what was left of my hot fudge sundae out the window and accidentally hit him with it. He’s the one who wanted to stop at the Tastee Freeze in the first place.
Mrs. Romeo told Momma that Mrs. Dot married beneath herself and comes from a very wealthy family in Memphis, Tennessee. When they lost all their money, she had to marry Mr. Dot. She used to go to cotillions and everything.
Did you know that the dogs at the racetrack caught the rabbit once because it was too slow and when they found out that they had been chasing a stuffed rabbit all those years, they were so disgusted they all retired right there, never to race again? Mrs. Dot was there the night it happened.
Daddy hired a waiter for the summer, Hank Turner. Hank is about twenty years old and has a crew cut and green eyes and the biggest muscles I have ever seen. On top of that, he’s got real tattoos, an American flag on his right arm and the Statue of Liberty on his left arm, and when he flexes his arm, the flag waves. A map of the entire state of Minnesota, where he comes from, is on his chest. He and his twin brother were famous football players for the university there. When he got in the Navy, he developed his muscles and entered a Mr. Universe contest. He came in second.
He can pick me up with one arm and walk around with me that way. I bet he can kill a person with one blow. Momma says I have to quit pestering him so much. I can’t wait until someone says something smart to me and I can get Hank after them.
Momma finally gave in and Daddy got a beer license. To celebrate, Daddy, the Romeos and some more people drank seventy-eight draft beers, and we played the jukebox all night. Momma even had some beers and jitterbugged and sang “Blue Champagne.”
Some people are starting to come down to the beach already. I can’t wait. Everything is going to be great. Daddy already has a dead flamingo and a fox that died of rabies in the ice cream freezer to stuff in the fall. Michael and I are looking for dead animals all the time, but they can’t be dead too long, they lose their shape.
Oh, and guess what? A man named Roy Grimmett is going to rent the land on the side of the malt shop from Daddy and put in an archery range and bring his wife and live in a trailer, right on the property.
Momma says anybody that lives in a trailer is trash, but I have never been in a trailer myself.
It doesn’t look like I am going to get my pony soon. Daddy has to build a stall for it and he doesn’t have time right now.
I have to go eat some cheeseburgers.…
June 30, 1952
The malt shop opened and I got so sunburned my nose almost peeled off. Momma took me to some hillbilly doctor that scared her to death about skin cancer and gave her some white junk out of a navy survival kit. She mashes that stuff on my face every day. It looks like lard, and you can’t get it off for anything. The thing that makes it so bad is that other kids come down here for a week and tan like crazy.
I am staying inside most of the daytime because nobody will play with me. I have done every number painting they put out and the one of the Persian kitten twice. I sent one of them up to the crippled girl, Betty Caldwell.
Momma and Daddy are busy all day and night until they close up at ten. I have to go into the shop and get my breakfast like a customer. Hank takes my order and Daddy fixes it, only I don’t have to pay for it Momma is working at the cash register. Our place is always full and she is raking in the money, so I guess we will be rich. I never get to see Michael because his daddy has him working at the store. Those Italians start them early.
Poor Lassie bit the garbage man and we had to give her away to a farm that has lots of children and land for her to play, but isn’t that what they always tell you?
Roy Grimmett’s archery range is wonderful. He made it out of a big wall of straw. He said I could have the straw to feed my pony when the summer is over. I went into his trailer and their air conditioner sure works good. It’s like living in an icebox. He has taught me to shoot the bow and arrows. At the archery range you get ten arrows for a quarter and if you can hit three balloons, you can win yourself a free hamburger or a hot dog at my daddy’s place. The trick is people will buy a cold drink to go with it
Roy’s wife, Mava, has the biggest bust I’ve ever seen. She says it’s so big from shooting those bows and arrows for so many years.
Mr. Grimmett pulls a seventy-five-pound bow that he made himself. It has a sight on it like a gun. He uses special steel arrows and never misses. He went up the road to the Mississippi state park and shot a wild boar in the head. Now it is in our ice cream freezer.
Sometimes he lets me help him attract business by shooting balloons out of my mouth. That was a great business getter until my momma looked out the window and saw me do it. She got real mad and told Mr. Grimmett to shoot balloons out of his wife’s mouth.
I am spending most of my time digging tunnels in the sand under the malt shop. I have four tunnels dug so far. I never get to play with Hank Turner. He is too busy, but I’m glad he’s here because of onions.
Daddy is allergic to onions. When he was little, he had a bad case of the measles and his mother fed him too much onion tea. So if anyone orders onions on their hamburger, Daddy comes out of the kitchen and has an argument with them. It’s good to have Hank stand behind him because Daddy is so little.
I have been making money taping Angel Pistal’s ears back before she goes to sleep. Her daddy lets me go into the lounge, have a Coca-Cola and see the acts.
The Blue Gardenia Lounge is dark blue with white flowers on the wall. There’s a live band and a microphone, a spotlight and everything. I saw Bean Curd Butler, a comedian who talks country, and Miss Mary Kay Hurt, a one-woman band, but the act that’s here now is a singer named Sheila Ray. She is famous. Her ad says she has appeared in night spots in Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi.
She is real skinny and has white hair and black eyebrows. I think she dyes one or the other. Her big number is “Tweedlee Dee.” She uses a lot of personality in that one. I like her all right, but as far as I’m concerned, nobody can touch Doris Day for singing and personality. I have a record of her singing “It’s Magic,” which in my opinion is one of the finest recordings ever made.
If truth be known, Sheila Ray is trying to copy Doris Day’s style and looks, but she can never compare to Doris Day. I understand Doris Day is a natural beauty.
Pretty soon, Pegleg Johnson is coming. He tap-dances with one leg missing. I can’t wait to see him.
I love the acts. The only bad part about going up there is that Claude Pistal, Angel’s uncle, is back from Detroit. A
nd boy, is he mean and ugly. You should see him. He has bad skin and greasy hair and pop eyes, a real Peter Lorre type, only taller and skinnier.
He hates me. I was up there one night and I saw a group of men sitting in one of the back rooms playing poker. I went in and asked if I could play a hand or two. They said fine, so I sat down and ordered a Coke.
You may not know this, but I happen to be an expert poker player. Daddy taught me all his tricks. I was sitting there, minding my own business, working on an inside straight, when Claude Pistal came in and picked me up by the back of my shirt and threw me out the door and slammed it right in my face, just when I was winning, too. On top of that, when I got home, I smelled so bad of cigar smoke Momma found out where I had been and threatened to cut my heart out if I ever did it again. Too bad, I could win a fortune.
I told Angel what Claude had done and she said that Claude hates everybody in the world except her, including her daddy, and not only that, he carries a gun.
Claude bought her a real live miniature grand piano and all kinds of things from Detroit. She even has a dollhouse you can sit in. She said he would buy her a pony if she wanted it.
We are selling those shells in plaster of paris with the cross on them so fast we can hardly keep them in stock.
Everyone says Daddy has the best hamburgers on the beach if you don’t like onions. He sells a lot of beer and at night, when the malt shop closes, he drinks a lot of it, too.
He has made some new friends. One is a short bald man named Billy Bundy, who is a famous radio preacher. Billy got in a lot of trouble once in the Midwest, selling autographed pictures of the Last Supper. Imagine, him thinking you could forge Jesus Christ’s signature. He promised to get me an autograph of Sue Sweetwater, who has a radio program at his station. Another friend of Daddy’s is Al the Drummer, who plays the drums at the Blue Gardenia Lounge. Momma said he looks like a weasel and that Daddy ought to put him in the freezer and stuff him in the fall!
Jimmy Snow brought Daddy a dead bobcat and do you know what Jimmy Snow told me? He said that the finest perfumes in the world were made out of bobcat pee, especially Blue Waltz perfume. No wonder it smells so bad.
My momma only uses Shalimar, which is very expensive. I think Shalimar is made out of some other kind of pee. Momma won’t fix any malts or ice cream cones because she said all those dead animals in the freezer make her sick.
Momma doesn’t like Billy Bundy, Al the Drummer and Jimmy Snow much. She said Daddy was being friendly with people he wouldn’t even talk to if it wasn’t for that beer.
The worse thing that has happened is that the Jr. Debutantes have started and I have to go to the meetings with that white stuff on my face. There’s nobody good in the club, just Kay Bob Benson and a bunch of shrimpers’ daughters that won’t talk to me on account of they are real religious and found out that Daddy is a drinker.
The first meeting Kay Bob got to stand up and explain the charms on her add-on charm bracelet. Who cares? All we did is learn to pour tea and curtsy. I already knew how to do that. We have to wear plastic barrettes in our hair with the club colors, seafoam green and oleander pink, and make ashtrays and tea plates out of shells.
We are supposed to do good deeds. Next week we are going to clean up the debris at the end of Highway 3, weather permitting. I can hardly drink my tea and eat my cookies, that live bait shop smells so bad. Those shrimper girls are used to it, but I’m not.
Mrs. Dot always ends the meeting with a thought for the day. Mrs. Dot’s thought for the day was: “You can get through life if you realize at an early age that the only two books in the world that really mean anything are the Memphis Junior League Cookbook and the Holy Bible, in that order.”
Momma and Daddy are fighting a lot and they are always tired. A carnival is coming here soon. I don’t feel well. My neck hurts and my back hurts. My legs are real stiff. I probably have polio and will have to go in an iron lung and be a crippled girl, like Betty Caldwell, or maybe it is appendicitis or TB even.
P.S. I also have been exposed to elephantiasis!
July 1, 1952
I didn’t have polio, but I did have to have an enema.
Momma is definitely not happy with Daddy’s actions this summer. The other morning I was witness to one of the greatest temper fits of all times. Daddy hadn’t been home all night because he was running up and down the road with Jimmy Snow and Al the Drummer. It was about seven o’clock in the morning when he finally did come home, and Momma and Hank were trying to get the place ready to open. I myself was trying to have a quiet breakfast.
When Daddy did come in, Momma took one look at him and saw he was still drunk. On top of that, he was wearing someone else’s clothes. All hell broke loose.
Momma was holding a white platter known as a seafood platter, but they are good to serve breakfast on, too. She took that platter and smashed it on the floor, hollering at him she was sick of him acting like a horse’s ass. Then she broke another platter and another. Every time she said something, she’d break another one. She went through every platter we own and then started through the cups and saucers, breaking two or three of them at a time. Daddy ran out the door. I didn’t move. After all, she wasn’t mad at me and I sure wasn’t going to miss this fit for anybody. I figured it was the best one I’d ever see in real life. Hank and I didn’t take a chance and say anything, though. You never can tell about these fits, she could have turned on us.
After Daddy ran out, she finished breaking everything, including the shrimp cocktail cups. She was starting on the display table and was smashing all our shell arrangements until she came to the ones with the crosses in them and she just stopped.
She went in the back and didn’t come out for a long time. The only person that can match her throwing a fit is Barbara Stanwyck.
Harper’s Malt Shop didn’t open that day or the next. It took us two days to clean up the mess and get more dishes.
The only thing left were some ashtrays under the counter that Momma didn’t see. Daddy said she cost him about $350 in dishes. I think he is going to behave himself from now on. It is too expensive otherwise. He explained to Momma why he had on someone else’s clothes. They had all decided to take a swim and had taken their clothes off. Sheila Ray, as a joke, had dug a hole and hid them in the sand, then couldn’t remember where she had buried them. It was true because we saw Sheila Ray on the beach all day digging up holes and crying.
Daddy said Sheila Ray was Al the Drummer’s fiancée. Momma doesn’t believe him. She thinks Daddy likes her. The only peace and quiet I can get is under the house.
Sometimes Momma forgets to put that white stuff on my face, but not often.
They are setting up the carnival across the street. I went over there and met a man named Mr. Kowboski, a Polish Gypsy. He said his wife and children are coming down in a week and I will have someone to play with. They will be Yankee children, but I am not going to let that stop me.
I haven’t been doing much. I have been digging my tunnels under the malt shop every day. I have about sixteen tunnels dug and I’ve been going on the fishing pier. I kick the fish back in the water. People ought not to catch fish they are not going to eat.
I go every morning and every afternoon. George Potlow, the man who runs the pier, gives me a cold drink for free.
We don’t have Mattie Mae as a dishwasher anymore. She got into a fight with another girl over her boyfriend, Jerry, and was bitten in the face. Her head swelled up like a poisoned dog’s. Daddy and I went to Beulah Heights to see her.
Peachy Wigham had the Elite Nightspot lit up with blue Christmas lights. She told us that she had another colored woman who didn’t have a boyfriend that would be a good dishwasher. Peachy said Mattie Mae was crazy about that Jerry and wouldn’t be any good for nothing now that he was back from Korea.
The new dishwasher is a little old skinny woman named Velveeta Pritchard. She is the blackest woman I ever saw, so black she looks blue, which is a sign of royalty among
Mississippi colored people.
They hate albinos with a passion, which I don’t think is fair. I still am dying to see a real albino in person. I asked Velveeta if there was one living up there in Beulah Heights and she said no, there wasn’t and it was just a story someone made up. But I think she was lying. I just know there is an albino up there. I can feel it in my bones.
Velveeta has only worked for us a little while and she hates Daddy already. Momma is crazy about Velveeta and they talk and talk all day. Momma won’t let me say “jig time” anymore. I don’t like Velveeta at all. She is a one-woman person and will take Momma’s side against anybody.
One of Momma’s gold loop earrings got stuck in my nose and she ran in there and told her as fast as she could. She finds all Daddy’s hiding places for liquor and runs and tells Momma. She Knows she won’t get fired because Momma thinks she is wooonnnderfullll!!!!
Hank is having a terrible problem with women. They won’t leave him alone. He’s too sweet to say no. There is this one girl who is after him all the time, Tommie Jo Harris. Her daddy owns a truck stop four miles up the road and she hangs around here day and night.
Mrs. Dot said that her heart is just like the moon, there is always a man in it. Tommie Jo is a real wild girl and every local boy is crazy to get her to go out with them. They like her because she is so mean. She drives a convertible and goes every place by herself. Mrs. Dot believes everybody wants to catch her and tame her, which seems silly to me if what they like about her in the first place is that she is wild.
The story I like about Tommie Jo is the one where she went out with this guy that thought he was a big deal with the women, a lady-killer in Mrs. Dot’s term. Well, he got her into a car and tried to sweet-talk her, not caring a thing in the world about her but just trying to win a bet he had made with the other guys that he could kiss her. And then she took her knee and pushed in the cigarette lighter and at the very moment he thought he had won the bet, she stuck the lighter on the end of his nose. She took the wind out of his sails! Now he doesn’t dare show his face too much and he sure doesn’t play with the emotions of any other young innocent girls.