Nearly 60 years ago a small boy lost his father. His secret now grows out of a tree in Washington State. Yes, it exists. And no, it’s not photo shopped.
The bike dates back to the 1950s and the kid who left the bike went on to be a King County Sheriff’s deputy. In 1954, eight-year-old Don Puz, was given a bike by his generous community after the death of his dad. It was a free bike, but the bicycle was made for a girl. Puz was insulted. He decided to throw the bike in a swamp, hoping to never see it again. He never was expecting his mom to discover his secret.
The lost bicycle has turned up, 5-feet above the ground, lodged in a tree trunk making it a Bicycle in Tree treasure for others to see. Nature wrapped around this bicycle in tree, turning one boys junk into another treasure. The most interesting part: the front wheel sticks out just enough to keep on spinning.
True Story about The Bicycle in Tree:
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.
