I was just peeling and dicing some fresh pears from the Meyers' pear trees and remembered the pears I used to pick and eat as a child. Kitty-corner (that's the way they say it in Chicago) in back of our house was the home of the Wolskis.
Art and Virginia Wolski had about 8 children who, if I remember correctly, all had names that started with the same letter (S for the girls and T for the boys). I remember a Sheila, Sylvia, and Tommy who were around my age. We never got to know the kids well since they were a strong catholic family and the children went to the catholic school and didn't play with us. We thought their house was really big - but I think now that it probably just had a big kitchen and more bedrooms than we had.
They had a big Bartlet pear tree in the corner of their back yard that hung over into our yard. I could climb up on the top of the fireplace and reach the pears. I would pick one, eat as much of the hard pear as I could, and throw it down. Kind of like a squirrel... only I wasn't trying to get to the seeds. I loved the crunchy taste of those pears.
At one point the top of the fireplace got a bit wobbly and Daddy said we couldn't climb up there anymore. Probably around that time that they had the pear tree cut down. So that ended the pear-picking/eating days of my youth.
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