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Betty MacDonald, the author of The Egg and I and the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle Series is beloved all over the world. Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald biography and his very witty interviews on CD and DVD!
The famed "Bicycle Eaten by A Tree" tucked in the woods right off the Vashon Highway on Vashon Island, Washington.
We
have all seen this picture on the internet a thousand times. A tale of a
lad that went off to war and left his bike against a tree. He
never returned from the war so his parents left it there as a memorial.
We know this story, right? You have to love the internet for its
eccentricities and this story is another example (remember the catfish
that swallowed a Nazi?). The headline itself is the biggest clue –
the USA did not enter WWI in 1914. It entered in 1917. They also never
sent boys off to war – looks like a 10 years-old bike. Furthermore
– this isn’t a bike from the early part of the 20th century. So lets
have a look at the real story behind this picture. Vashon Island
Bike Tree.We don’t have to go back to 1914 for the beginning of this
story – in fact we just have to go back to the 1950s. You see, this is a
bike from the 1950s and it belong to an 8 years-old boy called Don Puz.
According to The Seattle Times. The story of how the bike
came to be in the tree is told by a retired King County deputy sheriff,
Don Puz, who now lives in Kennewick. The only bike he rides now is a
stationary one. He grew up on the island and lived here until 1992. Puz
tells how, in 1954, his dad died in a house fire, leaving his mom with
five children. The island came together and donated various items to get the family going again. Among those items was a bicycle for young Don. “I
never liked the bike. It was like a tricycle, but with two wheels. It
had hard rubber tires and skinny little handlebars,” he says. Puz says eventually the family moved to a home near what became Sound Food, but which then was a swampy area. “We liked playing there, catching polliwogs. We’d get into ponds and mud. It was a good place,” he says.Sometime in the mid-1950s, says Puz, he forgot the bike in that swampy acreage and never bothered to get it back. Good riddance. Then, in 1995, when visiting a sister still living on the island, she took Puz to see the local landmark. “The first words out of my mouth were, ‘That’s my bike!’ ” he says. “There was no doubt in my mind.” He still holds no love for the bike or its current decrepit state. Says Puz, “A bike itself doesn’t have any feelings.” “I
don’t think I own it anymore,” Don Puz says a little wistfully, a
little bit in awe, perhaps, of how time makes up its own stories. “I
threw it away a long time ago. I think the tree owns it now.”
The
handlebar has been ripped off. The front wheel is gone. The one pedal
that was sticking out of the tree (the other is presumably somewhere
inside the trunk) also is gone. source
There
are tourists who make a special ferry trip just to see this peculiar
attraction, on this island with the unofficial slogan, “Keep Vashon
Weird.” sourceIt
has now become a major tourist attraction and also a target for
souvenir hunters and very littler remains of the bike. Local are trying
to keep it alive by replacing the stolen parts but it is getting harder
and harder to find replacement parts for a bike this old. How the bike
ended up in the tree probably wasn’t a case of a young fir sapling
growing under the bike and swallowing it, says professor Elizabeth Van
Volkenburgh, of the University of Washington’s Department of
Biology.“That bicycle would have been too heavy for a young tree,” she
says. More likely, says Van Volkenburgh, when the tree was older,
“somebody hung that bicycle on the tree.
“The parts are hard to find. It’s a low, low-quality bike. It’s like a starter bike you’d find today for $50 at Target,” source
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.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club, founded by Wolfgang Hampel, has members in 40 countries.
Wolfgang Hampel, author of Betty MacDonald biography interviewed Betty MacDonald's family and friends. His Interviews have been published on CD and DVD by Betty MacDonald Fan Club. If you are interested in the Betty MacDonald Biography or the Betty MacDonald Interviews send us a mail, please.
Several original Interviews with Betty MacDonald are available.
We are also organizing international Betty MacDonald Fan Club Events for example, Betty MacDonald Fan Club Eurovision Song Contest Meetings in Oslo and Düsseldorf, Royal Wedding Betty MacDonald Fan Club Event in Stockholm and Betty MacDonald Fan Club Fifa Worldcup Conferences in South Africa and Germany.
Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honour Members are Monica Sone, author of Nisei Daughter and described as Kimi in Betty MacDonald's The Plague and I, Betty MacDonald's nephew, artist and writer Darsie Beck, Betty MacDonald fans and beloved authors and artists Gwen Grant, Letizia Mancino, Perry Woodfin, Traci Tyne Hilton, Tatjana Geßler, music producer Bernd Kunze, musician Thomas Bödigheimer, translater Mary Holmes and Mr. Tigerli.
