History

The Concrete Banana traces to the freeze of December 1962, which damaged enough grove acreage around Talley Ridge that the Mid-Ridge Citrus Exchange convened a Crop Diversification Committee to consider, in the words of its charter, 'fruits of a hardier disposition.' A consultant's report delivered in March 1963 recommended bananas, noting their year-round appeal and 'proven popularity in other markets.' The committee voted 6–1 to proceed, and further voted to commission a monument announcing the program before any bananas had been planted, on the reasoning that public confidence would help secure planting loans.

Construction began in the fall of 1964 on a parcel donated by the Exchange beside its packing house on the Ridge Road. The banana was poured in three sections over a welded steel armature by Suggs Brothers Concrete of Talley Ridge at a contracted price of $28,500, which included the plinth but not the paint. The signature curve caused difficulties: the upper section sagged during curing and had to be broken out and recast, adding eleven weeks to the schedule and requiring the scaffolding to be re-rented at the winter rate.

The monument was dedicated on April 17, 1965, with remarks from the Exchange president and the first runner-up of that year's citrus pageant, the winner having a scheduling conflict. The banana program itself fared worse than the banana. Test plantings on four cooperating groves were lost to a cold snap in January 1966, a second planting was declined by the Exchange's lender, and the Crop Diversification Committee was dissolved by voice vote in 1968. The packing house closed in 1979; the monument was deeded to the town for one dollar and 'ongoing custody of the paint.'

That custody has been the monument's principal ongoing expense. A 1984 repainting used a surplus municipal coating identified on the invoice as Highway Marking Yellow, a color residents described in a petition as 'not how bananas are.' The error stood for seven years until 1991, when $6,200 in county bed-tax funds paid for a repainting in a custom shade the contract records as 'Cavendish Ripe,' with brown speckling applied by volunteers under supervision. The Talley Ridge Garden Club has held the maintenance agreement since 1994 and reports the concrete to be structurally sound.

Local Legends

It is widely repeated in Talley Ridge that the banana was originally poured as an orange, and that the forms were altered mid-project when the committee changed course. The Exchange's surviving minutes show the banana was a banana from the first meeting, but the story is retold at most civic functions anyway.

Some residents maintain that the curve of the banana points precisely at the loading dock of the former packing house, as a gesture from the builders. A surveyor engaged by the Garden Club in 1998 reported that the banana points 'generally northeast, at nothing in particular.'

Older residents claim the aggregate in the plinth includes crushed brick from a grove foreman's chimney that fell in the 1962 freeze. Suggs Brothers' records list only 'standard aggregate,' though the firm has allowed that its records from that period are incomplete.

The Controversy

In 1987, a county code officer determined that the banana, because it had been erected to advertise a commercial program, was a sign rather than a monument, and at 34 feet exceeded the county's 20-foot sign limit. The town countered that the program being advertised had not existed since 1968, and that a sign for nothing is not a sign. After fourteen months of correspondence, the banana was formally reclassified as 'commemorative statuary,' a category created for the purpose and not used since.

Visitor Reviews

Gift Shop