However, unbeknownst to Floyd, Chester was to make one final solo appearance. During the big Pea River flood, Chester the dummy washed up and floated through the town on his back and scared everybody half to death. The three firemen that risked their lives jumping into the river to retrieve the body of the poor little drowned boy were in for a surprise and took quite a bit of ribbing from the other men when they pulled him out. Chester spent the rest of his days hanging on the wall at the firehouse, until it burned down. Being made of wood, poor Chester the dummy finally bit the dust for good.
Beatrice and Floyd had one son. They did not name him Chester.
To the Public at Large:
It’s Tot again, with a late update. Believe it or not, I have married again. I know it is a surprise; it was a surprise to me. He is a retiree from the poultry business with good benefits, a widower—i.e., no living wife or ex-wives, children, dog, or cat. Hoorah! He owns (totally paid for) a tan and brown Winnebago and he doesn’t drink. He drove through here and stopped at the cemetery to see the graves of some friends of his, Doc and Dorothy Smith. I was out there pulling weeds off of Momma’s grave and said, Who are you looking for? and the rest is history. I have sold my house and I gave the hair business to Darlene, lock, stock, and barrel. Dwayne Jr. is in the slammer again for selling drugs. Let the government have him. I never could do anything with him. My granddaughter, Tammie Louise, as predicted, has a baby on the way, which is one of the reasons we hit the road. I am not paying for raising any more kids. As I write this, Charlie and I are just outside Nashville headed on up to Minnesota to the Mall of America, where I plan to shop till I drop, then on down to Florida to Vero Beach, to visit Macky and Norma and Aunt Elner, where we may stay for good. The Goodnight sisters and Verbena and Merle have moved there and they say Bobby Smith and his wife, Lois, and Anna Lee and her husband come down and visit all the time, so it will be just like home only better. No Whootens. My health is still pretty good, considering what all I’ve had to put up with, and they say with all the advances in modern medicine that age sixty is now the new forty, so that makes me around fifty-one again!
Best wishes,
Mrs. Tot Whooten Fowler
P.S. I am happy for the first time in my life.
Epilogue
ROBERT SMITH, given the fact that he had traveled all around the world and back lecturing on the Old West, had been asked to write a piece for Aunt Elner’s favorite magazine, Reader’s Digest. He wandered around the house for days thinking about the kings and queens, African chieftains, prime ministers and presidents of countries he had met; it was amazing how many people were still fascinated by cowboys and Indians. He had met so many interesting people that it was hard to just pick one. Then one day he chose his subject. He sat down and started on:
The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met
by
Dr. Robert Smith
Her name was Dorothy and she happened to be my mother. I guess a good place to start would be in 1946 in my hometown of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, a little place you have probably never heard of. . . .
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank the following people for their invaluable help with this book: Sam Vaughan and family, Wendy Weil, Bruce Hunter, Dennis Ambrose, Judy Sternlight, Carol Schneider, Todd Doughty, Sherry Huber, Lauren Krenzel, Trebbe Johnson, Bonnie Thompson, Susie Glickman, Joy Terry, Lois Scott, Cathy Calvert, and Sue Grafton for all her good advice. Special thanks to the Warren family of Birmingham, Alabama, and Jonni Hartman Rogers, my press agent and good friend for more years than either of us cares to admit.
PHOTO: © SUZE LANIER
FANNIE FLAGG began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), and Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! Ms. Flagg’s script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.
ALSO BY FANNIE FLAGG
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
(originally published as Coming Attractions)
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Cafe Cookbook
Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!
STANDING
IN THE RAINBOW
A Reader’s Guide 
FANNIE FLAGG
A CONVERSATION WITH FANNIE FLAGG
Interviewer Sam Vaughan was publisher, president, and editor-in-chief at Doubleday, then senior vice president, and is now an independent editor-at-large for the Random House imprints, including Ballantine Books. In addition to Fannie Flagg, he is currently editing Margaret Truman, Dave Barry, Elizabeth Spencer, and William F. Buckley Jr., among others.
Sam Vaughan: There are continuities of characters and plot that link Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! with Standing in the Rainbow. Some of the people carry over, some grow up, some die. Did this come to you as inspiration or did it just seem the natural thing to do? Was there something of unfinished business at the end of Baby Girl? Or did you simply want to visit with some of those people once more?
Fannie Flagg: Well, as usual I seem to do things in a backward way. As it turns out, Standing in the Rainbow is the prequel to Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! It really should have been written first but I did not know it at the time. The character of Neighbor Dorothy was always meant to be my main character in the first book but the story line of Dena Nordstrom just took over the book and as you know, I tend to write too much rather than too little. Had I written it all at once, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! would have been 800 pages long. I had done so much research and still had so much more to tell about Neighbor Dorothy and her family that I decided to just introduce her in the first one and then write about her almost exclusively as I began the next.
SV: How did you come up with the character of Neighbor Dorothy? Was she a real person or just a figment of your imagination?
FF: Both. By that I mean I did make her up but she was based on the true lives of many different women who were real “Radio Homemakers.” Something I never knew existed. I first discovered them when, one day as I was browsing through the cookbook section of my hometown book store in Fairhope, Alabama, I picked up a small cookbook published by the University of Iowa Press, written by Evelyn Birkby, a Radio Homemaker in Shenandoah, Iowa. In the book were photographs and histories of some of the Radio Homemakers. I was fascinated to learn that since the 1920s scores of women had radio shows that were broadcast from their homes, offering recipes, homemaking tips, etc. I am always interested in history and as I read on, I realized that these gals were the real pioneer women in broadcasting. Long before Martha Stewart was born, they were offering housewives tips on cooking and entertaining. I called Evelyn Birkby in Iowa and to my surprise she picked up the phone. She is a delightful lady and we became fast friends. I told her I wanted to write about the Radio Homemakers in my next book and she was kind enough to help me with my research. I found out that the broadcasters were also known as “Radio Neighbors” because listeners considered their shows as a visit with a neighbor. From that research the character of Neighbor Dorothy was born.