The Whistle Stop Cafe in Irondale and did you Know Bess Fortenberry?

 by Glenn N. Holliman

Return to Irondale, Alabama

This Christmas my wife, Barb, gave me Fannie Flagg's latest book, The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop which I read in only two sittings.  Ms. Flagg (original name was Patricia Neal but an actress from Tennessee already had that sobriquet) as a budding actress in the late 1960s adopted a southern girl's name, Fannie, and a friend suggested Flagg.  For my English friends reading this I am quite aware that in the Queen's English Ms. Flagg's first 'stage' name means something, well, impolite.

In real life the town of Whistle Stop (see her earlier book, Fried Green Tomatoes) is Irondale, Alabama, a suburb on the western edge of Birmingham. Ms. Flagg's great aunt, Bess Fortenberry, for forty some years ran the Fortenberry Cafe on 1st Avenue facing the multi-track rail road.  The  business section of Irondale until 1960 was one block of 1st Avenue.  Next door to the Fortenberry Cafe, my Uncle Robert Daly and his brother, George, purchased the hardware store in 1944 which operated until 1960.

Above, H. Bishop Holliman (1919-2018) in 2011 in front of the Irondale Cafe. My father wrote extensively on his boyhood in Irondale in the 1920s and 30s.  These writings can be found at the virtual archive of the family, www.bholliman.com. 

Several times in the 2010's when I took him back to Irondale, he would point out where the Fortenberry's lived on 2nd Avenue South.  Below is the way the house looks today.  In 1940 this imposing home was listed in value at $4,000 a sizeable sum before World War II.  

The 1940 census recorded that Bess Fortenberry, age 32, lived in the house with her brother, James H. Fortenberry and his wife and child. Brother Jim sold insurance and evidently did well in his profession.

 A lodger in the house was a 28 year old single female, Chris Griffin, born in Mississippi.  The census records Bess owned a cafe, worked 70 hours a week, 52 weeks a year!  The lodger, Chris, served as a waitress at the cafe, and earned $720 in 1939.  

If you follow the plot of Fried Green Tomatoes and again in The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop, one surmises that Fanny Flagg, Bess's niece, based her characters on the two women.  

Wonder Boy is a nostalgic read, southern in tone and written with a warm heart.  A fine Christmas gift for a husband who spent the first two weeks of his life in Irondale, and has visited often through out his long life.  Full disclosure, I am not the wonder boy in the book!