by Fannie Flagg
Tommie Jo wears colored scarves around her neck, a real Jennifer Jones type. She doesn’t talk to me. I don’t think she likes young children. She sure likes Hank, though. I know this for a fact because the people that rent a room to Hank at the Hammer’s Christian Motel have a vicious grandchild named Gregg. He made me hide outside Hank’s room one night because he had seen Tommie Jo go in there. She turned out the lights and got into bed as a surprise for him when he came home from work.
All I can say is that I feel sorry for Hank because he works very hard and I know he was tired. But when he came home and saw her in the bed, he was a perfect gentleman about it. We could see in the window, he pretended to like her. I’m never going to act like that and throw myself at anyone, not even Cornel Wilde if I ever meet him. Anyway, they are going to get married.
Yesterday the Jr. Debutantes cleaned up the debris at the end of Highway 3 because weather was permitting. Mrs. Dot’s thought for the day was: “If you make friends with the phone and frozen food, then life will be a bowl of cherries.”
In her opinion, Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Birdseye are the two greatest Americans that ever lived excluding Robert E. Lee. She believes we never lost the War Between the States, that General Lee thought General Grant was the butler and just naturally handed him his sword. Her family in Memphis had some heirlooms from General Lee, but the only thing General Grant left behind was empty whiskey bottles.
July 12, 1952
Momma got a call from Jackson today. Grandma Pettibone hit the jackpot at bingo and had a heart attack. They took her to the Baptist Hospital and told her not to smoke because of the oxygen tanks in the rooms, but Grandma hid one of her Camels in her hair and smoked one after everybody left. She blew out all the windows in the right wing of the Irondale Baptist Hospital. She wasn’t hurt, but the explosion made a lot of people on the other floors go into heart failure. Anyway, Momma has gone to Jackson and put her in the Methodist Hospital. Grandma says that’s just fine with her because the Baptists are too strict.
Mr. Honeywell and his all-girl army got a bazooka gun, but none of them are strong enough to hold it up. They put it on a wheelchair, but the wheelchair won’t roll in the sand. Too bad, I wanted to see it shoot
At the Jr. Debutantes’ meeting this week Mrs. Dot said we are going to adopt a poor child overseas and be foster parents. Whoever it is will write us every week and thank us. I hope it’s a girl. Imagine growing up and coming over here to meet its parents and seeing me and Kay Bob Benson and the shrimpers’ daughters!
I tried to talk them into adopting an albino child, but Kay Bob Benson had a squealing fit. She gets whatever she wants. She is always having baby-doll-pajama-spend-the-night parties. I sleep in my swimming trunks and I don’t want to go anyway. Mrs. Dot’s thought for the day was: “Nothing endures like personal quality.” Next week we are going to have a talk on accessories, whatever they are, from a woman from the Magnolia Springs Dress Shop. If Momma is still in Jackson, I’ll miss that one for sure.
Angel Pistal is getting to be a pain. I have to put paper sacks on her hands because in her sleep she pulls the tape off her ears and she wants to hear a story every night.
Mr. and Mrs. Pistal are getting their money’s worth. Momma doesn’t like to go to the Blue Gardenia Lounge, but even she couldn’t resist seeing Pegleg Johnson’s act last week. He was wonderful.
There was a singer on the bill named Ray Layne and he was good, too. You should have seen Momma’s face when Pegleg Johnson came over to the table after his act and asked her to dance. She looked so funny. They danced to “Dance, Ballerina, Dance” by Nat King Cole. They did twirls and dips and everything. He picked Momma over everyone in the room!
I wondered if the leg that Kay Bob Benson’s mother found washed up on the beach was Pegleg Johnson’s. Momma said for me to hush. She was sure it wasn’t, but I think maybe it was. It’s too bad they didn’t save it so he could see. I wanted to ask him where he lost his leg, but Momma said she would kill me if I did, it’s not the sort of thing you ask.
That singer, Ray Layne, came over to the table and sat with us for a while. He is real lonesome, being down here by himself. I found out he is only seventeen years old and he’s from Hattiesburg.
Momma likes Mrs. Pistal a lot, but she’s never going back to that place because there were sleazy people there, lounge lizards she called them. Claude Pistal and all his friends looked like criminals to her. I didn’t tell her that those were the men I had played poker with.
The next day that boy Ray Layne, the singer up at the Blue Gardenia Lounge, came to the malt shop and asked Daddy if he could see me. Daddy came and got me out from under the house where I was digging tunnels.
He asked me if I could go swimming with him and I said sure. He is so handsome and has curly hair. He has a girlfriend named Ann who wears glasses. He has gone with her for a long time and misses her. I sure wish he was my boyfriend. I would never let him go anywhere without me. I think he is wonderful and the best singer I have ever heard in my whole entire life.
And guess what? He kissed me good-bye and said he had enjoyed meeting me! He should be a movie star, a real Rory Calhoun type. Momma has got to get my tooth fixed.
The Kowboskis are here with their carnival. There are seven of them and two are my age. They have a big school bus they live in, that is better than Roy Grimmett’s trailer. At the carnival they have a penny arcade and a Ferris wheel and a machine that takes your picture four times for a quarter, and they sell cotton candy and caramel apples. Momma told me never to eat any candied apples because those carnival people buy rotten apples and put candy on them. I know I shouldn’t eat them, but I can’t help myself. However, I do make it a point to look for worms.
Mr. Kowboski lets me sweep out the penny arcade anytime I want to and be the money changer. It’s great over there! Music plays all the time, and you can hear it over at our place. I like them very much even if they are Gypsies. I don’t believe they steal children, but I wouldn’t care if they did steal me. It would be fun to live in that bus. Michael comes over sometimes and we ride the Ferris wheel. You can see the whole beach from way up there.
Kay Bob Benson came once, but she got scared when I rocked the seat and she won’t go back on the Ferris wheel for nothing.
Billy Bundy, that radio preacher, finally brought me a picture of Sue Sweetwater, who has a radio show on WHEP. She signed it “To Dottie Fay,” so how can I show it to anyone?
Billy Bundy is a funny preacher if you ask me. Daddy and I see him almost every day in the back room of the Bon Ton Café, the only place he can get alcohol after church. He comes in and sits down at a table all by himself and orders his drinks. Then he takes out his red plastic letter opener and opens all the money envelopes he gets from the Christians that listen to his radio show and stacks the money up in neat little piles all over the table. Every once in a while you can hear him say, “Praise the Lord,” when he gets a $20 bill. Ten-dollar bills only get a “Bless you, brother.” Five-dollar bills get a “Thank you, sinner” and a dollar just gets “Every little bit helps.” Once he got a $50 bill and he said, “Hallelujah, Jesus!” real loud. But mostly he gets fives and tens.
July 21, 1952
A terrible thing happened. The malt shop fell three feet and is sticking up in the air on the right side! I ruined the foundation by digging so many tunnels. It happened overnight Daddy noticed it because all his hamburger patties kept sliding off the grill into the french fries. I didn’t mean to do it If you ask me, this place is cheaply built. I hope my mother doesn’t notice what I did when she comes back from Jackson. I told Daddy I wouldn’t tell her that he has been drinking if he doesn’t tell her the malt shop fell.
He had to build a ledge on the grill so the eggs and hamburgers don’t slide off into the french fry grease. Other than that, I don’t think it is too noticeable. I’ll be glad when Momma gets back because Daddy is in a bad mood.
Daddy went with Hank when he got marrie
d to be Hank’s best man. Daddy said the wedding was sad. It took place in an office and the bride didn’t wear a wedding gown, just a suit with a mum corsage. There wasn’t even a honeymoon. Hank came to work the next day and didn’t look any different. Daddy gave him $50 and I gave them some shell napkin holders and some oyster shell ashtrays I had made at Jr. Debutantes.
The wedding was written up in “Dashes from Dot.” So was the fact that the Harper’s Malt Shop is all cattywampus, but Mrs. Dot saved my hide by writing it had been a natural act of God that caused it. I think she didn’t want to print the fact that a Jr. Debutante had dug tunnels under the house, what with her liking us to be social and all.
Michael has been reading Mickey Spillane’s book Kiss Me, Deadly and thinks he’s big stuff. He says it’s only for boys and adults. I read it last year and it’s not all that hot
The only good thing that happened is the woman who was going to talk to the Jr. Debutantes on accessories got sick, so we sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” instead. Mrs. Dot’s thought for the day was: “Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead!”
Daddy and Jimmy Snow have been on a drunk the whole time Momma has been gone and poor Hank is running the malt shop by himself.
Jimmy is drinking because his girlfriend, Iris Ann Moody, who he has been engaged to for eight yean, is marrying someone else. I don’t know what Daddy’s excuse is.
Mrs. Dot must have found out that Daddy was drinking because she wanted me to go stay with her, but I told her I was fine. I like her very much, but I can’t stand her husband. He is mean to her and insults her in front of people all the time. I’m glad my hot fudge sundae went down his back.
July 30, 1952
Momma’s home from Jackson and the first thing Velveeta did was tell her I had caused the malt shop to fall. She also told on Daddy. When he came in drunk, Momma was so mad she socked him all over the back room. Every time he would get up, she would hit him again, but she did turn the lights off so that the neighbors couldn’t look in.
I could only see shadows and hear them. It was like watching Flamingo Road with Joan Crawford. During the whole fight the carnival music was playing a real nice song, “Give Me a Kiss to Build a Dream On.”
Momma was accusing him of fooling around with a roller derby woman. When she broke the phone over his head and he started to bleed, she got scared and made me run over to the Romeos and call the doctor. He came and said Daddy was all right, but we would have to order another phone. He said to Momma, “Fay, you better be careful. If he had been sober, you would have killed him.”
Momma is being real sweet to Daddy because I think she was afraid she might have killed him. I would have been the daughter of a famous murderess, and when she went to the electric chair, I would have been an orphan and everyone would feel sorry for me.
I guess I could get a job and live in a hotel and wear black, but I would be marked for life. I would rather be a shut-in, like Jessie, only I want a better disease than elephantiasis. All of this trouble began because Velveeta is a squealer. She should see what James Cagney does to squealers.
Grandma is fine. She has already started having bingo parties at her house again. Momma is disgusted with her because she won’t give up her Camels. She said she would die anyway if she couldn’t smoke her Camels and play bingo.
Grandma has some old man as a boyfriend and Momma thinks she is going to get married again. According to Momma, he is so decrepit he can hardly stand up and Grandma is acting like a silly, old woman. The only problem is that she can’t find my real granddaddy so she can get a divorce. Grandma is trying to have him declared legally dead because it’s been nine years that the Bureau of Missing Persons have been looking for him and they gave up. If Grandpa isn’t dead, he sure is going to be mad when he finds out he is dead in the eyes of the law.
Grandma sent me a letter and said for me not to worry about her but to be sweet to my momma because she thought Momma was headed for a complete and full nervous breakdown and no wonder, being married to that little worm, Bill Harper. She also sent me a head scarf with the map of Mississippi on it.
The biggest news around here, besides my daddy getting his head busted, is that I am a real bona fide hero. I may get a medal from the VFW. Last Sunday, Michael and Angel and I decided to go fishing in the lagoon. We were sitting in the boat, fishing for toadfish so we could blow them up and hang them in our rooms when all of a sudden Michael hooked something on his rod and his hair stood up on end. He started hollering and jerked the biggest, blackest snake I’ve ever seen right into the boat. As soon as that snake hit the boat, all three of us jumped out into the lagoon. I was so busy yelling at Michael for pulling a snake in the boat I must have forgotten I didn’t know how to swim because I made it to shore in NO time. When Michael got there, we looked around and Angel wasn’t anywhere in sight. Then I remembered she couldn’t swim either. I was so scared at having to tell her momma and daddy their little girl had drowned that I jumped back in the water.
Michael and I were diving and looking for her, but we couldn’t find her anywhere. Finally I saw her standing on the bottom of the lagoon, and I dove down and went under her and grabbed her feet and pushed her straight up in the air so her head would stick out of the water.
I was standing on the bottom and sinking fast, knee-deep in the mud. Michael saw the top of her head and grabbed her by the ear just in time. When I tried to get back to the top, I was stuck in the mud and couldn’t move. Michael was so busy saving Angel he forgot about me. Some junior lifeguard he is!
I thought I’d just have to go ahead and drown at an early age, but then I remembered that black snake. When it hit me that some more of them might be in the water, I must have got the strength of a hundred, because I got loose and saved my own life.
Angel was real sick. I never saw somebody throw up so much in my life, and we had leeches all over us just like Humphrey Bogart in African Queen. Ugh! We took Angel back up to the Blue Gardenia Lounge and told her momma and daddy what had happened.
Claude wasn’t there, thank goodness. He’s crazy about Angel. He probably would have killed Michael and me for almost getting her drowned. Mr. and Mrs. Pistal hugged her and were so glad she was all right that it didn’t seem to matter I could have been drowned myself.
Michael and I took Mr. Pistal and showed him that black snake. And guess what? It wasn’t a snake at all. It was a big electric eel. That was why Michael’s hair had stood up on his head.
Mr. Pistal took me home and told Momma and Daddy I had saved Angel’s life and he would never forget what I had done. Momma and Daddy acted proud of me in front of him, but when he had left, Momma pinched me real hard and wanted to know what in the world I was doing, jumping in the water like that when I couldn’t even swim. She was about to hit me when Daddy said, “Well, Fay, she can swim; she isn’t drowned, is she?” He had a good point. So we finally did prove Daddy’s theory that small children can swim if they are scared enough. Daddy is happy about the whole thing because he put that dead electric eel in the ice cream freezer and is going to stuff it in the fall.
At the Jr. Debutantes’ meeting I had to stand up and tell how I had saved Angel’s life. After I was finished, one of those shrimpers’ daughters made a snoot at me. Creep. Mrs. Dot said that I was a natural-born storyteller and very brave on top of that. She is going to put it in her “Dashes from Dot” column.
I guess I should have told them Michael had been there, too. Oh, well, I don’t think he reads the paper anyway. Mrs. Dot’s thought for the day was about snakes in honor of my story. She said, “Never be rude to a rattlesnake because he is the gentleman of the snake world. He always announces his comings and goings with a rattle.”
I want to go to Magnolia Springs and see the double feature that is playing there now. Listen to this ad:
“THE COMMIE NAZI SHOW” … HITLER’S CAPTIVE WOMEN AND SLAVES OF THE SOVIET, FILMED IN MOSCOW. ALL WOMEN MUST SERVE THE STATE. FAC
TS ABOUT THE STATE CONTROL OF LOVE, PAGAN BIRTH RIGHTS, DEPUTY HUSBANDS, TORTURE FOR GIRLS THAT REBEL, DEGRADING AND SINFUL.
and the other film that is playing is called Prehistoric Women … They Feared No Beast, Only the Beast in Man. I can’t wait. Mr. Honeywell and his all-girl army are taking me as a reward for being a hero. Mr. Honeywell believes that this double feature is something that every American woman should see.
Jimmy Snow got put in jail for crashing his plane into his old girlfriend’s house and waking her up. We went to see him and he seems right at home. The policemen like him a lot and give him beer and everything. I found out from one of those policemen that Jimmy Snow is a war hero for shooting down Japanese planes. Daddy told me that’s why he drinks so much, he misses the war.
Jimmy was raised in an orphanage in Tennessee and doesn’t know who his parents are. I can’t get over him having snow white hair and eyebrows when he isn’t even that old. He may have been scared real bad once or else he could have albino blood, like Ula Sour, and not even know it! But I’m not telling him!
August 3, 1952
Guess what? Hank and Tommie Jo are going to have a baby. I hope it’s a girl. If it is, they should name it Claudette after Claudette Colbert.
I wrote and told her that I thought she was wonderful in The Egg and I. I haven’t received an answer yet, but as you know, she is one of the busiest film stars in Hollywood. If it’s a boy, they should just call it Hank, Jr.
I don’t go out much anymore. I had my feelings hurt real bad. I was over at the Kowboskis’ carnival, sweeping out the penny arcade for Mr. Kowboski, when one of his daughters came in and told me to go home, that I didn’t belong there, the carnival was a family business.