Tropicals & Tender Perennials: The Epis Are Here, The Epis Are Here!! 2005 PART FOUR, 1 by Happenstance

Happenstance wrote:
I spent about six summers as a child working for cherries. You've probably heard of "working for peanuts", but I guarantee working for cherries is a better deal!

Herr Brünig who lived next door was in his 80's and could no longer harvest the cherries from his Bing Cherry tree which was about 3 stories tall. He and I struck a deal in my broken German (I was about 6 years old) and as long as he got the cherries he needed to bake with, I could have as many buckets as I wanted.

What was my mother thinking! I was scrambling up and down that tree from then on. I accessed the tree from the top of a garden wall that was about 10 feet tall that adjoined Herr Brünig's garden. Buckets and buckets of cherries each summer. I used to take several buckets up into the tree with me and then leave them in strategic locations as I climbed higher and higher.

The attached picture is when I was about 9 and had just dropped a fully loaded bucket into my mother's Hydrangeas. Ooops. Buckets I dropped, but I never once fell out of the tree. :-) Even after we moved into a bigger town I would ride the street car out to see Herr Brünig and pick his cherries each summer. I still love Bing Cherries and the memories that go with them.