By the late 1940s, all of George and Onzell’s children are adults. Naughty Bird gives birth to a daughter at 17, and her boyfriend, Le Roy Grooms, leaves her for a lighter-skinned woman. By 1949, Naughty Bird is deeply depressed, having tried everything to lighten her skin, straighten her hair, and win Le Roy back. It’s only after Le Roy dies that she recovers and returns to work at the local beauty parlor.

Other flashbacks and newspaper articles center on Jasper, who marries a light-skinned, middle-class woman while working various jobs on trains. By 1955, trains are on the decline and the railroad yard near Whistle Stop is closing. By 1958, Jasper feels he no longer fits into society. He’s proud of his hard work and the opportunities he created for his children, but he recognizes that younger generations of black Americans have moved beyond his understanding of racism as something that simply has to be “endured.”

The closure of the railways also affects Smokey Lonesome, who finds himself sitting outside an abandoned terminal in 1965, fantasizing about the time “[w]hen Idgie and Ruth and Stump still lived in the back of the cafe, and all the trains were still running” (321).