It's a kind of fruit they grow in the south. (The closest I've gotten is a song we used to sing when I was a kid about "pickin' up paw paws, put 'em in my pocket'")
I once read an article in a gardening magazine suggesting that the tobacco growers could switch to growing paw paws...most of the country don't know what they are at the moment, but hey--20 years ago, who had ever heard of kiwi fruit?