Mrs. Frye's Pear Tree

Mrs. Frye's Pear Tree

Mrs. Frye's pear tree was exactly three blocks from my home on my route to school. I remember well walking down the street, often with my nose in a book or doing multiplication tables in my head, taking a left on Marshall Street for one block, turning right on McIntyre Street at Homer's, the neighborhood store where cokes, Butterfingers, and Big Chief writing tablets cost a nickel apiece. Comic books were a dime, but the owner would let us display and trade our comic books on his front steps.

A block from the store at the intersection of Ash Street, on the corner, was Mrs. Frye's house, and in the front yard with limbs overhanging McIntyre Street was her pear tree. I assume, but do not know for a fact, that all the kids in the neighborhood who took that route to school partook of Mrs. Frye's largesse when pears were ripe and the boughs were hanging low.

Across from her house a gravel parking lot served the school gymnasium which housed the school basketball court and enclosed swimming pool. Further down the hill on the left facing Ash Street was the football field and stands, and down the hill to the right facing McIntyre was the oval track field. This access to the school grounds was a well used route, so the pear tree was well known to local kids.

On more than one occasion, after school, preteen boys would split into two teams, or factions, in the gravel parking lot and throw rocks at each other, not so much to hit each other, but to demonstrate agility to dodge thrown rocks or catch them one-handed like a baseball. I guess you could call it a game of "Dodge Rocks" instead of dodge ball which was much safer.

Anyway, one day after a game of dodge rocks as I proceeded home past Mrs. Frye's house, she called to me. "Young man," she called. Since I was the only person there I assumed she was calling to me even though I was more used to being called "Hey you" in most instances.

"Yes ma'am?" I responded questioningly.

"I've noticed you passing by and helping me harvest my pears, so I feel like I know you. Anyway, could I get you to help me move some things?"

"Yessum. I'd be glad to," I said and joined her on her porch.

"They're inside," she said, opening her door.

Mrs. Frye was an old woman to me, probably in her forties, maybe even in her fifties, so it made sense that she needed help. In her small living room she had an old couch with doilies strategically placed along its back and on the arms to protect it from hair oil and dirty hands. Against the opposite wall was an old black upright piano with framed pictures arrayed across the top of the piano, one of which I noticed was a picture of a young soldier in a WWII uniform.

On a small table next to the couch was a black party line telephone. There were no dials in those days.

“Before we start,” she said. “Would you like a coke and a slice of chocolate cake?”

I initially resisted, but I gave in and said, “Yes Ma’am.” We sat at a linoleum table and ate cake and drank coke while she told me of her son Richard who had played baseball at the high school, had graduated, and then joined the army to fight Hitler. She tearfully told me that he was buried somewhere in France.

Afterwards, she led me through the living room into a bedroom off a very short hall. On the walls were several pictures of a young boy, as a toddler, as a teen, in a H.S baseball uniform, and as a young man in uniform with other young men grinning at the camera.

On the floor was a brown cardboard box taped shut with Scotch cellophane tape. " I don't exactly need that moved,” she said. “ What I would like though, if it's not too heavy, is for you to take it home with you. And if there's anything in there you want, you keep it, and if you don't want it, to give it to someone else. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes Ma'am," I said, wondering what was in the box.

Before I left she insisted on giving me a dollar for taking the box away. I tried to decline, but she was intent on having her way, so I accepted it.

As I left she thanked me and said "Goodbye Richard." I hesitated, but said nothing. Richard was not my name.

At home I opened the box. It was like an early Christmas, actually better than any I had ever had. A couple of baseballs, an almost new but well kept Wilson fielder's glove, a pair of baseball shoes, too big for me but perfect for my brother, a Swiss pocket knife, a hunting knife with scabbard, decks of Bicycle playing cards, a jar of marbles, a Duncan yo-yo, and a dozen baseball cards.

That afternoon, before dark, I dug up and potted in an extra clay pot my mother had, one of the many marigold plants in our flower bed. The next morning I left the marigold on Mrs. Frye's porch.

When I went home from school that afternoon Mrs. Frye was sitting on her porch drinking a coke. The marigold I had given her had been planted prominently in her flowerbed.

"Good afternoon Charlie," she called. "Good afternoon," I replied.

We became good friends, and she never called me by her son Richard's name again.

Years later, at a military graveyard in France, I stood before Richard Frye’s marker. I stood silently for a minute. Then I placed a single marigold on his grave and said, “For your Mom. She loved you very much.”