BICYCLE TREE

The Story:

A boy left his bike chained to a tree when he went away to war in 1914. He never returned, leaving the tree no choice but to grow around the bike. Incredible that this bike has been there for 98 years now!

The Fact:

In 1954 Helen Puz (who is now 99 years old) moved to Center with her five children. At that time she had been recently widowed.

 

“People were very sympathetic and generous,” writes Puz 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 none too happy having a girls bike, said Puz, but it was better than none.

 

The neighborhood boys, including Don, liked to play behind a local restaurant called, “The Den.” (This restaurant is now called Sound Food.)

 

One day Don told his mother that he had lost his bike and he wasn’t sure where he’d left it. They both let it go because Don was a little embarrassed to be riding a girl’s bike anyway.

 

Forty years later Puz read in the Beachcomber, Vashon’s newspaper, that someone had discovered a bike up in a tree near Sound Food. The bike was five feet off the ground and the tree had grown around it. News of the tree bike even carried to Japan where they made a film about it.

 

The mystery of where Don Puz left his bike had finally been solved.

 

If you’d like to see the bike in the tree, directions on how to get there can be found at roadsideamerica.com.

(Resource: Heather Larson)

 

 

 

 

 

 

BICYCLES IN COMMERCE AND WAR



British bicycle troops in India, 1920s.

(c) Anthony Cox, http://www.blacktriangle.org

 

 

As the number of bicycle riders increased among the general population in Europe and North America, so did its application in commercial and military ways.

During WWI and WWII, armies from many nations fielded bicycle-mounted troops, and a passage from Ernest Hemingway's Farewell to Arms describes the main character's encounter with a unit of Germany Army soldiers on bikes:

 

 

"Look, look!" Aymo said and pointed toward the road.  

Along the top of the stone bridge we could see German helmets moving. They were bent forward and moved smoothly, almost supernaturally. 

As they came off the bridge, we saw them. They were bicycle troops. Their carbines were clipped to the frame of the bicycles."

 

 

Over the 20th century, bicycles have been adapted to haul heavy loads over long distances, particularly in third-world countries, and even today in the world's crowded cities, bike messagers and pedicabs play a valuable role in moving people and packages in the most efficient means devised to date.