the rest of the story Jim was just plain tired and hungry so tired so hungry that he couldn't decide whether he wanted to stay in his hotel room and sleep or trudge down to the little restaurant on the corner and eat well Jim tried to get some shut up the growling stomach kept him awake all right dinner time now
He's down there in this tiny restaurant in the tiny North Carolina town with the sea.
Elbow's on the table.
He props his weary chin on the heels of his hands, and he waits for a waitress.
And up walks Lucy Coleman.
One look at the stranger.
His eye lids at half-mast.
And Lucy is curious.
Are you all right, sir?
Sure, sure.
Jim answers, blurrily.
A little supper will do him wonders.
And only then does the bone-tired traveler look up at the woman standing there, and the first thing he sees is that smile.
Warm, welcoming, a wonderful smile that stirs him like strong coffee on a cold morning.
I'm Lucy Coleman, may I take your order?
She was 28 maybe, sweet-faced, average, except for her extraordinary poise and good humor.
The soup looks good, is it?
Oh, yes, Lucy assured the customer.
It's the best in town.
Jim Grindelittle, you sound like you run the place he observed.
Quite in fact, she did, she said.
She and her husband, that is.
A slight sudden disappointment rose up from somewhere deep inside Jim, and it surprised him.
She was married.
Why should he care?
And when she returned with his soup, it surprised him further that his hunger and weariness had somehow abated, and he was becoming engaged in a delightful conversation with a delightful woman that he'd only just met.
He was not used to this where he came from strangers were strangers unless they wanted something from you You kept your cards close to your vest according to the rules of the game the rest of the world played So have this tiny seaside town abolished those rules or was the magic gym was feeling the unique charm of Lucy Coleman herself It was much later than a mere meal would have taken to finish the gym thanked Lucy for the pleasure of her company and bad her goodbye But he turned in the doorway
Now, remember this.
He turned in the doorway and called out to her, knowing somehow that he would never see her again, and he said, I'm going to make you famous.
And then he was gone.
But once upon a unexpected delight, there was a traveling man and a restaurant keeper who passed like dreams in the night.
But even after Jim kept his promise, even after he'd made famous the woman who had treated him so kindly without knowing who he was, she, Lucy Coleman, a modest southern lady,
vigorously maintained her privacy to the extent that she could until her death in 1989.
But now you can say that you were there that night in 1940 in a restaurant in Calabash, North Carolina, when a weary entertainer stopped in only for a meal and met the woman that he was to acknowledge enigmatically at the end of every performance for the remainder of his life.
The world of comedy still reveres and laughs
to recall the superstar funny man with the gravel voice and the enormous nose, Jimmy Durante.
But now you have met Lucy Coleman, upon whom the great Schnauzola once bestowed another name.
The evening they met.
The name he called her then is a name the rest of us learned through a million mysterious farewells.
Good night.
Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are, only now you know the rest of the story.