MEET JOHN MARTIN

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John "Bridge" Martin grew up in the era in which Lex Barker was the movie Tarzan and Lex's image was on the cover of the Dell Tarzan comics he regularly purchased. He encountered ERB's original Tarzan, as well as the ERBiverse of other ERB characters and worlds, in the early 1960s during what is often described as the Burroughs publishing boom.

  His first fanzine contributions were poems and eventually he acquired the ERB world nickname of "Bridge," the poetry-reciting character who was introduced in the last half of "The Mucker" and also featured in a sequel, "The Oakdale Affair."

  Martin joined the Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association (ERBapa) in the late 1980s and began writing articles on ERB's books and characters in earnest. Many of his ERBapa articles, as well as new material, are now online at ERBzine.com, the Edgardemain and Fan Fiction sections of erblist.com, and in Facebook ERB groups, most regularly ERBzine and For the Love of All Things Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  In addition to research articles on ERB, Martin has continued to enjoy writing poems and has written many short ones as well as longer ones which are featured at ERBzine, including the 115-verse retelling of "The Gods of Mars" in poetry.  He has also tried his hand at fan fiction, typically in the short "flash fiction" format and always with a dose of humor.

  Besides collecting the works of Burroughs and other authors of adventure stories, Martin became interested in the hobby of collecting special postmarks on envelopes (covers) he designs himself. He often combines his hobbies by looking for ways to tie in various stamps with ERB subjects and was especially delighted when a stamp was issued in August of 2012 honoring Burroughs himself. Many of Martin's ERB-related covers, including some in his collection that were made by others, are appearing in ERBzine and on Facebook in the on-going feature titled "Pushing the Envelope."

  Martin's professional writing career began in his 1964-68 Marine Corps enlistment in which he took photos and wrote for base newspapers in the U.S. and on Okinawa and later for the Marine magazine, Leatherneck. Afterward, he was a writer and editor for several years for his hometown newspaper, The Daily Chronicle, before moving on to a Western Washington-based regional monthly magazine, Loggers World. He also edited and published a weekly newspaper, Sportsweek of Washington, for awhile. Later, he managed the Lewis County distributorship for Portland's newspaper, The Oregonian, and eventually settled down as a rural carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, which he did for 26 years until his retirement in 2014.

   Martin serves as an elder in a local church, the Centralia Bible Chapel, and has written Christian songs and poems as well and sometimes provides music for church meetings with his guitar. He and his wife Peggy enjoy the close proximity of the four grandchildren born of their own two children.

Since his nickname of "Bridge" and his interest in poems became well-known, Martin was asked to write a poem to be included in a new publication of "The Oakdale Affair." That book was published for the 2019 ECOF by The Muckers, the Chicago chapter of The Burroughs Bibliophiles, as "Bridge and the Oskalooska Kid," which was Burroughs's working title for the novelette of how Bridge the hobo found true love. Martin's poem, which became the "Afterword" of the book, focuses on the role of the barely trained bear in the story and is titled, "Bridge and the Ballad of Beppo the Bear."