PLAINS, Pa. — In the hot summer sun, DPW workers with Plains Township began to break down a willow tree after it came down in a storm on Tuesday afternoon.
"It's got to be well over 100 years old because I'm 70, and when I was 8 or 10 years old, that was big."
For some who watched as crews took it apart piece by piece and put it into the chipper, it brought back memories from their childhood.
"I lived here all my life. When I was a kid, we used to play underneath that thing. We had a treehouse. That was a big tree house we had in it. That was, like, 7, 8 years old, my buddy Ricky Milonosky fell out broke his arm," Dave Mariucci recalled.
Some neighbors say they're surprised this tree didn't damage any playground equipment because it was definitely big enough to reach some of it.
"The tree is gigantic. You know, I don't know if any people went there was people that used to go over there and sit under there. You know, my Karen and I last week we're saying we're going to have to come down and watch a ballgame. And the kids were yesterday, so good thing we didn't go down, you know. You never know when it was going to happen," Mariucci said.
The township had to contract a company with heavy equipment to take the larger pieces of the tree away. You can see the tree was hollow inside, and it only took a storm wind to bring it down.
People who have admired this tree their entire lives tell Newswatch 16 they hope the township plans to replace it with another one for people to make memories under.