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and underbrush. Soon others from nearby communities were trekking across the
Borzik land to gander at the aptly nicknamed Corkscrew Tree.
―
It looks like it was carved into a corkscrew, but it wasn
‘
t done by man,
‖
Mary
said.
―
Our brother Louis wondered if maybe a vine twisted around it and caused
the trunk to become deformed over the years.
‖
―
But the marks were so evenly spaced that it didn
‘
t seem to make much sense.
It
‘
s just one of those mysteries that will never to solved.
‖
The tree was hollow, as so many old magnolias often are, but Mary and John
distinctly remember live branches at the top. John took a photograph and sent it
to what was then the newspaper art column, Ripley
‘
s Believe It or Not. The news
feature was so popular that it was also used in a book and in assorted novelties,
such as the cocktail napkin.
―
Ripley
‘
s used our tree,
‖
she said.
―
We saw it in the newspaper -
The Daily
Herald
, I think - probably about 1939.
―
But we were disappointed in the drawing that Ripley
‘
s used. It wasn
‘
t the
photograph, and it really didn
‘
t look like the real tree.
―
But I guess it made us famous for a little while.
‖
The tree didn
‘
t last much longer. Mary believes it fell over from decay helped
along by storm winds. At the time, John brought home a piece of its twisted
trunk, but it has long since disappeared.
The rest of the Corkscrew Tree dissolved into the ground from which it had
sprang. And its secret dissolved with it.
A footnote from Diana:
When Aunt Mary Borzik cut the clipping she failed to clip the date of the paper.
The photo itself was taken in 1939. The newspaper states that Uncle John Borzik
(who discovered the tree) was 82 years old so that would put the article as being
written in 1988 because he was born in 1906. My Uncle Louis (the one in the tree)
was about 23 years old at the time it was taken. Uncle John passed away 85 years
of age but Aunt Mary age 84 and Uncle Louis is age 88 still lives in Mississippi.