Juliette residents celebrate town with Green Tomato Festival

JULIETTE -- Twenty years ago, the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes” revived the dying town of Juliette.

Twelve years ago, residents created the Green Tomato Festival as a way of celebrating the quaint community in Monroe County.

This year’s festival was among the biggest yet, said Karen Manus-Pennings, director of tourism for the Forsyth-Monroe County Chamber of Commerce.

“We’ve had more vendors this year -- 44 -- than we’ve ever had,” she said. “It’s our most ever for such a small space.”

Manus-Pennings said about 3,000 to 5,000 people attended this year’s event, though it’s hard to get an accurate count, because the way organizers track attendance is through the number of green tomatoes sold.

Booths featuring vendors of food, jewelry, pottery and other hand-crafted items lined the small road next to the Whistle Stop Cafe, made famous originally in 1988 with the novel “Fried Green Tomatoes in the Whistle Stop Cafe,” written by actress and comedienne Fannie Flagg.

The book was turned into a movie in 1991, starring Academy Award Winning Actresses Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates. It revived a town that was in danger of dying out, turning it into a tourist draw.

Elizabeth Bryant bought the cafe two weeks prior to the first festival. She said cast and crew members from the movie still drop in over the years.

“This is one of our biggest weekends of the year,” said Bryant, who stood outside her restaurant Sunday as people waited up to two hours to get a table. “We went through 10 cases of tomatoes (Saturday). ... (The festival) allows vendors and shop owners to showcase our town. This is not like being in a mall; we’re our own little entity.”

Bryant said the size of the festival, in terms of vendors and attendance, has tripled in size since it first began.

She said visitors from all over the world have visited the cafe over the years. On Saturday, she hosted visitors from Ireland.

The restaurant isn’t the only business on the street to benefit. LaDonna Olivieri, who co-owns Verna Cora’s Antiques & Collectibles with her sister, Angela, said the festival is the biggest weekend of the year for their shop.

“It’s really a chance to showcase the town,” she said. “It’s our one chance to break out all of the stops. For so long, the town sat in ruins until the film revived it. The town was built in the 1880s, and people really respond to the old-timey quality of the town.”

Olivieri, who said that about 2,500 people came through the store Saturday and early Sunday, said a lot of Monroe County residents use the occasion of the festival as a homecoming event.

Though Mike Tomberlin and his wife, Diane, live in nearby Forsyth, Sunday marked the first time they’ve gone to the festival.

“We don’t do a lot in Monroe County,” Diane Tomberlin said. “We live in south Monroe, so we go to Macon a lot.”

Her husband said that with such perfect weather, the festival provided a good opportunity to spend the day outdoors.

“It’s good,” he said. “The food smells good, the prices look good. It’s just good to see this for the economy, too. Georgia’s unemployment rate is 10.3 percent, so any time you have people spending money, and a wide variety of people, it’s a good thing.”

To contact writer Phillip Ramati, call 744-4334.

This story was originally published October 24, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Juliette residents celebrate town with Green Tomato Festival."