land of fruit and nuts n. California. Editorial Note: A reference to both the agricultural bounty of California and the stereotypical image of Californians as being other than normal, fruit n., ‘a crazy person’ and nuts adj., ‘crazy.’ Usually jocular but sometimes derogatory. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Diamond dust, tapioca snow, and sugar icebergs — a 1955 glossary of arctic and subarctic terms describes the environment in ways that sound poetic. And a mom says her son is dating someone who’s non-binary. She supports their relationship, but...
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
I can’t cite any old print references, but that phrase was current in the 1940s.
This is, indeed, an oldie but goodie – we used to say California was like granola- nuts, fruits and flakes.
The only time I’ve ever heard of this phrase was in direct reference to San Francisco. Where fruit meant gay people and nuts meant crazy people. Perhaps because I grew up in California I’ve only heard this version.