Passing through Georgia on I-75, it is easy to dismiss the little town of Juliette, only 10 miles from exit 186. Near Rome, and slightly less than an hour from Atlanta, less than 300 residents call Juliette home, and its “downtown,” with a few houses, a bank, and an old general store, was largely forgotten when Hollywood found the town. It was the perfect location for the film adaptation of Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.
A story of friendships, community, love, and tragedy, the movie largely takes place in the “Whistle Stop Cafe,” a Depression-era diner serving up pounds of barbecue and its signature fried green tomatoes. The setting for the diner was a disused general store, its interior gutted and a horseshoe counter and booths installed. Behind the store, a masonry barbecue pit was built. A nearby mill dam was the backdrop for many of the movie’s most touching scenes.
Driving onto McCracken Street, like the town named for its founder, Juliette McCracken, it doesn’t take much imagination to be swept back in time. As if on cue, a freight train rumbles through town, and if you ignore some tourist signage and the ubiquitous Visa logo attached to the window of the Whistle Stop Cafe, the feeling is that not much has changed on the street since 1930. The Whistle Stop Cafe is an operating business, recreated at the close of filming when Director John Avnet, according to the Rome News Tribune, mentioned the idea of a real cafe in Juliette. Locals Robert Williams. partner Jerie Williams, and cook Marie Binion ran with the idea, rebuilt the sets, and opened the cafe.
Just over the tracks and down the street, Juliette Park offers a view of the dam, as well as a shack by the water where people still fish and children swim. Few modern sounds spoil the experience.
Juliette is a rare stop, one whose appearance and feel as a community from a different time, make reality as compelling as cinema.
