Mystery of pair of trousers found inside century-old tree

For decades, residents of Shelbyville, Indiana, have heard the story of the "Old Linden Tree." Legend has it, the site of what's now Shelbyville used to house a Miami Indian village. From now on, they'll have a story about some old-fashioned trousers to add to it. On July 16, the employees at Shelby Tire and Auto Care removed a branch from the tree that stands in front of the auto center's parking lot.

When owner Brent Montgomery bought the building 27 years ago, all seven branches were still intact. Until last week, there were four remaining on the 100-plus-year-old tree. The tree has suffered some in the past few decades and had to be trimmed. "The brick wall we built around the tree has moved about a foot in the last year or so," Montgomery said. "When one of my employees stood on the wall, it collapsed." At that point, the leaning branch became a safety concern, so he decided to cut it down, he said.



"About halfway up the tree, there was about an eight-foot hollow patch," Montgomery said. "I was standing underneath it looking up and I said, ‘Well what's that?'" He said it looked like a brown bag from the ground, but when he got a closer look, he realized it was actually a pair of pants. Very old pants. "It's not like there's a knot where someone might have stuck them in there," Montgomery said. "They grew in it." Grover Museum Director Candy Miller rushed to see the pants, which she described as "very coarse."

The bottoms, which the local history authority claims were probably sewn during the 1800s, have a button but no zipper. The letters "HCRAFT" can be made out on the small, rusted button, but the rest is faded. The pants, which are still connected to the tree, are stained with what looks to be white paint. "We may solve a mystery here. We need to solve the mystery," Miller said. Montgomery agrees, which is why he reached out to her. "Somebody lost their pants and I don't know why," Montgomery joked.

Full story here.