The bicycle in a Tree Legend

Via Facebook: According to Internet legend, a boy left his bike by the tree and went off to war in 1914, never to return. The actual story, according to Discover Washington State and Snopes, is a little less romantic, but with the same result. A local resident, Helen Puz, now 99, moved to Center in 1954 with her five children. Recently widowed, she was not well off. “People were very sympathetic and generous,” Puz wrote in a document on display at the Vashon-Maury Island Heritage Museum. “We were given a girl’s bike and my 8-year-old son, Don, seemed the natural one to ride it.” Don was not very excited about riding a girl’s bike, but it was better than nothing, according to Puz. When Don told his mother one day that he had lost the bike, they both let it go because the boy had been embarrassed by it. It was decades later that Puz read a story in the local newspaper about someone who had found a bike up a tree and realized that she knew the real story behind it. Visitors to Roadside America have posted pictures of the bike over the years and directions to the trail. One user noted the handlebars, once missing, have been replaced.

So the story was no longer a legend when this bicycle was found in this tree, therefore, it was a true story from that old lady.

The BBC reported: A spokeswoman from Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park said: “The mature sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) has significant cultural and historic heritage which is recognised locally, regionally and nationally. “The tree has been recorded on a number of veteran tree surveys such as Loch Lomond and the Trossachs Countryside Trust 2013 and Woodland Trust ‘Ancient Tree Hunt’ 2009.” The Park Authority says a tree preservation order would protect the tree in the event of any future change in land use in the area. Turns out that Berkeley Breathed wrote a Christmas-themed fictional book about this incident, named Red Ranger Came Calling.

Originally posted 17th January 2019