Fruits of Woodside

In July, 2006 we bought the 1930 building at 4148 48th Street near Roosevelt Avenue. Word on the street said it’d been a fire station. It did look like a tiny one, with its dark red brick and sloping vehicle bays. A gut renovation revealed no fire poles though - before it became a home, our building had been an auto body shop.

When the seller handed over the keys, I asked one last question. “This peach tree in the yard, it doesn’t actually fruit, does it?” “Oh yes it does!” Rachel exclaimed. “You’ll have hundreds of super delicious peaches right around Labor Day.” I let her mislead me about noisy neighboring bars, but she was spot on about the golden stone fruit. The peaches we got over the next 15 years were chin-dripping glories (except one September when we lost ‘em all to a peachnapper grrrr). Awestruck by our bounties, I’d bounce up the ladder each year like a king, excited to share the fuzzy ripe freebies with friends, neighbors, and passersby.

I was born in Eggertsville, up by Buffalo, an hour’s drive north of Pa’s home, a farm in Le Roy with plenty of fruit trees (his neighbors started the Jell-O brand gelatin company but you’ll have to get the hilarious cherries and chicken story out of me in person). True-blue Brooklyn Ma loved fruit so much we’d catch her mawing a peach pit hours after she’d finished its flesh. My parents were proud of their backyard, which once had 18 trees: apples, pears, plums, and a cherished cherry we lost to lightning. As Joni Mitchell posits, you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone. Worse, until I was in my 50s, I naïvely thought good peaches only grew down Georgia way

In 1981 I moved to Manhattan for my first job, and stayed, for 26 years. Friends in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst introduced the real Queens, its untoppable internationalism, its gritty urbanity. It’s no secret there’s a lot of fun to be had under the sooty, smutty 7, but there’s also a lot of peach, fig, grape and some quince too, much of it planted by early 20th-century Europeans who’d crossed the ocean with prized local seeds. Before that, when Woodside was still rural, the area was known for swamps and snakes and, you guessed it, abundant fruit trees.

When I realized I’d been wrong about good peaches coming only from below the Mason-Dixon line, I set to thinking about how nowadays some of the world’s finest wine comes from just east of Woodside. I can be as slow as the BQE at rush hour, but eventually it dawned on even my cityboy self that Matinecock, Nissequog, Shinnecock, and other first nations must’ve chosen Wamponomon (Long Island), at least in part, for its rich growing conditions.

Micki, my wife, was born on a farm in the Inland Seto Sea, on an island famous for oranges. She’s the one with the green thumb, the one who carefully nursed the Meyer lemon seedling I brought back from Florida. She cared for the spiky tree for 8 or 9 years, even going so far as to help pollinate it with a paint brush. Finally it blossomed. But it never fruited. This year our bedroom was invaded by hordes of tiny bugs. When we tracked them back to the lemon, that was the end of that. Sadder still, in August 2022, in the middle of a torrential downpour, there came a pounding at the door. Our neighbor gestured excitedly toward our tree. It had fully uprooted and tipped onto the fence, greatly enhancing my sense of the cost of the shiny parked beneath. Thank you for your timely alert, and for helping cut down our beloved peach in the middle of a torrential downpour, Sir!

We knew the peach was doomed. It oozed a gelatinous goo called “gummosis” and was drawing gazillions of ants, so we’d planted a replacement nectarine which is doing well except for giving me pause when its limbs started assuming the same unusual formation as those of the deceased peach. I suppose the Manhassets and Montauks would’ve expected no less, as the new tree was in the same cramped conditions as its predecessor. This all makes me wonder what the original inhabitants of this area did with the native tree fruits? The currants and grapes? Our house came with a single green Concord vine. It doesn’t look like much in winter but it gave 40 pounds of grapes last fall. Super sweet ones too, once you get past the thick skins and copious seeds.

We’ve also got a 4-year old cherry looking to put out a couple baskets full in June. And a fig, which we thought we’d lost over winter, so we bought another. Once presumed dead, the elephant-gray ficus has come roaring back. So, optimistically, we’re inviting you for a tasting come autumn.

Wong pei, a tiny Chinese sweet-and-sour citrus that’s one of my favorite fruits, has just come into market. I planted a few seeds and we’ll see if a vitamin C rich tree starts to sprout. And the best fruit of all? Our one and only child, who’s loved fruit from the get go. Together we’ve tasted a fusillade of fruit, 100+ varieties in the past 14 years here. I’ve saved some of the seeds, and collected citrus paring devices too: a selection of both are on exhibition at WHAM! The Woodside Heights Art Museum. Woodside has become our home, our community, our happy spot. We love it here in the Heights, and hope you do too - fruit and all.

Harley Spiller

May 2023

This essay accompanies the current show: Fruits of Woodside Heights.

Access the exhibition checklist here >>

Where to Buy Fruit in Woodside Heights

The local shops selling fruit are California Deli (and El Don), Nature’s Vida, G-Mart, and down the hill at 63rd Street there’s Dollar Up, a reliably inexpensive source of varied and less common Asian, South Asian, and Central American fruits, vegetables, herbs, and more.