The little tree stood in the middle of our backyard. Towards the end of summer it was resplendent with smallish yellow fruits which we had been warned not to touch. Our ancient neighbor, Mrs. Murphy, told my mother in no uncertain terms that those little fruits contained a poison most virulent that could kill young children in a snap. All the kids in the neighborhood knew not to touch the “Poisonberry Tree.”
Coral Ridge was filled with fruit trees in the 1960s and the many, many children in the neighborhood knew them all. There were of course coconut palms in every yard, before lethal yellowing killed them all. The green coconuts were much prized in the neighborhood for their milk and their flesh and the big kids who could climb the coconut trees were neighborhood heroes.
Every yard also had citrus trees in those days before citrus canker eradicated them all. Our neighbors had a huge kumquat tree that bore vast amounts of fruit; unlike an orange or a grapefruit tree, there is not a whole lot you can do with kumquats so we used to hoard them and throw them at the uppity kids from the private grade school. They made a satisfying “splat” sound when they contacted flesh and juice spewed in all directions.
Mango trees were very common in the neighborhood then and we told the new northern neighbors who were just beginning to arrive in the Coral Ridge that the fleshy golden fruit tasted like peaches. We neglected to tell them that touching the skin of the fruit caused many northerners to break out in great, blistery hives that caused them to avoid mangos for generations.
The new northerners, used to cherry and apple and pear trees, tended to regard all southern foliage with grave suspicion. When we wanted to freak out the new kids, or their parents, we would pull the flowers off the ixora hedge and suck out the drop of honey at the base of the flower.
Yes, Coral Ridge was a veritable Garden of Eden and standing in the middle of this abundance was the Poisonberry Tree, beckoning us with its little yellow fruits. The more we were told to leave those fruits alone, the more alluring they became.
First of all, I noted that the mockingbirds ate hugely of the fruits, but we never saw a pile of little corpses around the tree. Later still, I noticed that our big dog Hector used to swallow the fruits whole and seemed to be thriving. In the face of all this empirical evidence, I did what any big brother would do: I paid my gullible younger brother twenty-five cents to lick one of the poisonberries. When he did not die, I gave him another quarter to eat one. He continued breathing and soon most of the kids in the neighborhood were gorging themselves on the poisonberries.
Before we knew what hit us, an ear-piercing shriek punctured the quiet summer afternoon. My mother had glanced out he kitchen window and saw what looked like a pre-pubescent suicide pact and rushed out to save the children. She loaded a good percentage of the children of Coral Ridge into the station wagon and, fruit samples in hand, drove us right to the office of Old Doc Langdon.
Doc Langdon looked at the fruit, my hysterical mother and us children and laughed out loud. “Those aren’t poison, they’re loquats!” he told my apoplectic mother. “Haven’t seen one of those trees for years. Try one – they taste like peaches.”