Apples, which writer Henry David Thoreau named “the noblest of fruits” are largely depicted as simple, purposeful, utilitarian. The branding for Ithaca’s 41st annual Apple Harvest Festival displays them as the backdrop to text advertising live music and street vendors and performances. They’re iconic, they’re common, they’re America’s favorite fruit.

The town’s cordoned-off center was lined with stands and vendors and visitors. Apple Fest didn’t boast many apples aside from a couple of booths of cider and a few lonesome stands. A father and son sold maple syrup; Planned Parenthood was tabling; there were booths for tote bags, fairy doors, and abstract acrylic paintings. Elsewhere were elephant-themed mugs, viking helmets, and flavored sauerkraut. 

In front of the few apple booths, there were barrels of hundreds of varieties that gleamed at passersby. Amara, the operations manager from Littletree Orchards, told me it’d been a good year for local producers. The caveat, she specified, was that the apples in the local grocery stores actually came from the West Coast or the industrial orchards swaddling Lake Ontario. Also, the latest apple varieties all came from scientists at universities, not hopeful stewards like Johnny Appleseed who spread the fruit’s seeds.

An apple’s greatest strength lies in its ability to adapt, survive, and proliferate. Cut one along its equator and you’ll find a pentagram of seed capsules, each section adorned with its own individual reproductive abilities. The fruit’s fertility and potency once ushered it from the forests of Kazakhstan, then along the Silk Road to Europe, and finally to a new home in America. A child of immigrants achieving the American Dream, the fruit is as American as apple pie. 

The apple is both Americana and now Ithacana—and yet it hails from the Tian Shan Mountains, which most of us have never heard of. In the late 19th century, Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “I think this, above all others, may be called the true democratic fruit.” If it’s truly anything, the apple is open for interpretation. 

An apple attracts partners with its blush and then reproduces as eaters spread its seeds. Some see the apple as promiscuous. Its color and sweetness make it an object of desire. An apple is popularly assumed to be the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden that graced the lips of Eve, though the Bible names no specific culprit and the region isn’t particularly hospitable to apples.

I met a man from Robbie's Produce who introduced me to his crop—which all came from the Lake Ontario region.

The crateful of Empires were mellow with a soft blend of yellow and purple pastels. 

The McIntosh (the namesake of Apple computers) were broody, traditional in color but technical in design; they were dotted, adorned with longitudinal stripes like perfect mini globes.

The Ambrosia had a confectionery look, as if their skin was processed from red and yellow Laughy Taffy.

The Honeycrisps, which in recent years have surged in popularity, were so showy as to be uninteresting. Gargantuan in size, unabashed in their bright yellow, their looks left nothing to be imagined, nothing to be desired.

The Snapdragon, the man’s favorite apple, blushed with a romantic red. I had never heard of her before.

Apple production often boils down to consumer-formulated perfection—and the low-wage, precarious labor that makes its harvest possible. A little skepticism is deserved for glossy facades. The fruit is revered for its beauty; the work is unglamorous and straining. Harvesting, in part due to Cornell’s lobbying efforts, largely comes without labor union protections and benefits. I mentioned to the man at Robbies that I had heard migrant workers performed the bulk of apple picking in Upstate New York. He nodded: “White people won’t.” 

Across from the apples at Robbie’s Produce, there was a stand blazoned in red and mostly blue, attracting a small crowd. “This has been a real draw,” an older woman named Ann grinned at me. She pointed to a cardboard cut out of Kamala Harris, which stood next to a sweatshirt-donning frame with a circle cut out for people to put their heads into. The Tompkins County Democratic Committee told me that the race for NY-19 was as important to Congress as Wisconsin was to the presidential race. Josh Riley, then the Democratic candidate, had called Ithaca and its outskirts “the most competitive congressional district in the country.” He beat out incumbent Republican Mark Molinaro by less than 4,000 votes.

In the middle of the Ithaca Downtown Commons, a man was strumming a faint guitar on a bench. He wore a heavy flannel and an unmarked black baseball cap, and he was clearly irritated. Eyeing me as just another college student, he complained that in Ithaca, a “transient” city, “people come and go.” He said mournfully that no one actually cared about the town. “It’s just a money laundering scheme,” he moaned, pointing at a newly built apartment building. “Biden—” he stammered, “They just print money.” 

When he spoke of America, he gestured towards me and mostly said “you” and “your,” as if we were from two different countries. “The Federal Reserve will confiscate everything you own,” he warned. “You’re at war with the world and you don’t even know it.” I asked if he had been holding out hope for the presidential election. “It’s coming real soon,” he said. “You’re not gonna make it to the election.” In the wake of a Trump victory, I feel I should’ve asked what exactly he meant. As he shuffled the guitar case upon his back and swooped a strap over his shoulder, I asked for his name. The white man from Connecticut smirked coldly: “Chung Zhou.”

Across from the guitar player, a long line was forming at the most popular stand at Apple Fest (not for apples, but apple-flavored donuts). A large Amish family dalopped batter from a mechanical funnel into an industrial deep fryer. A young girl in a white bonnet manned a glazing tray; another worked the register; a few more carried supplies from behind the stand. At any given moment, a round of apple cider donuts was either being mixed, fried, cooled, glazed, or nestled into a plastic six-pack container. 

Before white sugar, the apple was once the epitome of sweetness in America. Food writer Micheal Pollen laments in his book, Botany of Desire, that cheap sugar and synthetic sweeteners have “been substituted for the real thing.” When Pollen confronts the apple’s formerly “real” sweetness and the modern granular sugar, he says he struggles with “exactly what that was—the strong desire that bound them one to the other, and to the country that took them in.” It seems the Amish are doing just fine in modern America. 

Two New York State Troopers emerged from the Amish donut line and strutted through the town square. Each donned a smokey grey bespoke mix of wool, polyester, and spandex: a collared long sleeve, a pair of freshly ironed slacks, and a royal purple tie. To top it all off, their heads were adorned by cream-colored Stetson hats. Trooper Laurore’s tipped sternly downward and a leather strap flanked the back of his neck. Trooper Levison sported flat-screened aviators, jet black shades which were pebbled with metallic silver screws. Coyly, she clarified that they weren’t standard-issue. 

I poked fun at their manicured uniforms and they eased up to tell me about their Apple Fest patrol assignment. “Appearance is huge,” Laurore noted. “It makes a big difference.” The trooper then praised the Amish donuts and Snapdragon apple he had eaten that morning. I asked why he chose that one in particular, hoping to learn his own interpretation of the all-American apple. “It looked good,” he said smiling, “nice and red.”