Words By Jason Nark. Courtesy Of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the land of deep fryers, where back bays flow with fudge and the ice cream rolls at you in waves, Bill Baxavaneos cuts through the calories each morning with two simple words and a dinner bell, “Fresh fruit!”
For three decades now, drivers for Island Produce have parked colorful pickup trucks all over Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, and North Wildwood, hawking healthy food options on streets where the fruit’s mostly served on top of pancakes. It’s a tradition once common in inner cities when everything from ice to meat was sold from trucks, and according to new accounts, it may be making a comeback in some food deserts.
Along the coast of Jersey, the New Jersey fresh fruit trucks appear to be unique only to Wildwood. Wildwood is more of a food forest, dripping with cheese and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
“I haven’t seen them anywhere else, Says Dave Mayer, Island Produce’s owner. “I think there used to be a couple up in Avalon years back.”
Mayer, who started the business 1n 1989, said all three towns work with him to allow the trucks to operate but there are strict local ordinances. He can’t serve coffee, which people ask for, or prepare the New Jersey fresh fruit and veggies he sells. He can sell you a watermelon, but he can’t slice it up at the truck. If you want a smoothie, you have to drive to the rehabbed garage Mayer operates as a market and his truck depot on Park Boulevard near Ottens Harbor in Wildwood.
Before Mayers trucks hit the road in 1989, other colorful produce trucks used to ramble around Wildwoods, setting up shop by the beaches.
Just before 8 am on a recent weekday at the garage, drivers were busy loading the New Jersey fresh fruit and vegetables in the wooden racks Mayer built into the beds of the trucks, which are often painted in bright pinks and purples.
Mayer, who’s retired from the borough of Wildwood Crest, employs approximately a half-dozen drivers who divvy up routes among the three towns. He works back in the garage with his daughter Katie, who is also a life guard. Baxavaneos, a Lower Township resident, is in his fourth year and as the veteran of the bunch, he gets the best route – Wildwood Crest.
He wasn’t in a rush.
The last thing Baxavaneos loaded into his truck was his lunch, a small tub of peeled shrimp. He brings Mayer a Starbucks coffee and Mayer gives him shrimp. The Ford pickup Baxavaneos drives are the plainest of the bunch – white with a few dings in the paint- and he’s thwarted Mayer’s attempts to slather it in bright colors each year.
“He really likes purple. I told him I refuse to drive a purple truck,” Baxavaneos said. “I told him, ‘If you want to paint it yellow, maybe lime green, we can talk.”
Sometimes Baxavaneos trains the younger drivers but said success in the fruit truck is mostly about being personable. “It takes a bit of effort,” Baxavaneos said in the truck. “If you don’t put in the effort and talk to people, it can be tough. It can be rough on hot days and when it’s raining it makes it really rough. We do better when it’s hotter.”
Teaching them how to ring the dinner bell isn’t so easy. Most of them just whack at it. “It takes a certain rhythm,” he said.
This day was a toss-up, muggy but overcast, and at the first hotel, the Adventurer Oceanfront Inn, Baxavaneos’ rhythmic clanging and “fresh fruit” wail attracted no buyers. People like to sleep in on days like this.
At the Attache Motel, one man from Connecticut stood and marveled at the truck while a father and daughter from Pittsburgh inspected some peaches. They had a garden back home and were missing it.
At the doo-wop-themed Aztec Motel, owner Adamo Pipitone, 65, came out to greet Baxavaneos. Sometimes Pipitone will let Baxavaneos use the bathroom and give him a free cup of coffee. “It’s so unique, ” he said. “People wait for the triangle bell, and sometimes I’ll come out and treat my maids to some fruit.”
Baxavaneos said cherries are the top seller, the perfect thing to bring to the beach. They sell for $4.99 a pound and come from as far as South Africa. The tomatoes, obviously, are local, as is most of the produce, though Mayer said he does buy from wholesalers in Philadelphia if he has to.
Baxavaneos has learned that seagulls don’t like grapes, at least not the old ones. They spit them out, and unlike on the boardwalk, the birds don’t dive bomb the wooden roof on the truck that’s been lovingly repaired and painted several times over the years. “I didn’t build that,” he pointed out. “Dave did”
On Morning Glory Avenue, just off the beach, Suh Gruppuso, 44, of Monroe Township in Middlesex County, just finished a four mile run, dripping in sweat. She used the fruit truck as motivation to sprint out to the end. “I ran four blocks to find you,” she said. “Give me the ripest bananas you got.”
Nancy Bouselli, 69, of Woodbridge was up on the balcony of her condominium having coffee when she heard Baxavaneos ring the bell. With a team of sleeping dancers in the condo resting for a competition
at the convention hall, she hurried down to load up. I’m thinking, “What was that?’ ” Bouselli said. “I grew up in Newark and this wasn’t uncommon back then. They had fish trucks, bakery trucks, ice trucks, you name it.” Bouselli dropped $22. “My kids are all big fruit eaters, they’re not junk eaters,” she said.
But alas, in the Wildwoods, junk is unavoidable and acceptable on vacation. It’s best to wear elastic pants and hit the gym hard when you get back unless you’re a kid.
“You’re going to eat an orange?” Laura Beven, 38, of Hamburg, asked her son with suspicion as they sat on a bench, by the beach.
On this cloudy day, Cole Bevan, 6, wanted the real deal, an honest-to-goodness piece of New Jersey fresh fruit, not deep-fried on a stick, at the junk-food capital of the Jersey Shore. He’s a lifesaver for every parent who worries about the dental visit come September. “Do you have any oranges?” the boy asked Baxavaneos.
“I sure do,” he replied.
