We used to do that with little crab apples - half inch to an inch in diameter. Yeah - folks would get out and chase us through the back yards.
That probably ended in about 7th grade I suppose. Looking back, I’m glad nobody had a heart attack, or crashed their car, or had shot us.
Odd thing - I grew up where there was a lot of snow, but only once threw snowballs at cars. We were in high school and playing street hockey. A car full of girls that we knew comes down the road. We scattered to the side and made snowballs.
The driver put on the gas to get through our gauntlet, missed the turn at the “T” intersection, launched off of the pile of snow along the edge of the road ended up on the neighbors lawn between a big tree and the sidewalk lamp post.
Just like in the movies with the jump and a spray of snow. About a milli-second of “cool!”, then we all ran to see if they were okay. Scared to death, but okay. Then we had to shovel and push them off the neighbor’s lawn before anybody saw us!
Yes, we would sometimes use small pears from a local tree. I watched a car spin out in the street after being hit by a snowball; terrifying (no collision or injuries, thank God).
When I think about running through peoples’ yards to get away, I realize that today those residents would be much more alarmed to hear that. Motion-sensor lights had just started to appear when we were growing up; probably makes that much more difficult (if not impossible) today. They seem to be everywhere, often startling you as you simply walk past on the sidewalk...