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The Cover Monster of Elyria, Ohio, put the answer
to this puzzler on the back, but we probably don’t need to look there to
see who it is. Several others were also inducted into the ISHOF (International
Swimming Hall of Fame) in 1965 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller, by the way, also was instrumental
in setting up the HOF and Museum.
The Cover Monster had this postmarked in Elyria on Jan.
7, 2014, and it also received a machine cancellation from nearby Cleveland
the same day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Swimming_Hall_of_Fame
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It is not recorded in the canon if Tarzan ever encountered
Curious George in the jungles of Africa before the little monkey had the
opportunity to go on to fame. However, had there bean a meeting the spirit
of it was well captured by Keith O’Brien, who was living in The Grand Canyon
State when he did the artwork for this first-day cover postmarked Jan.
10, 2006, in Findlay, Ohio. George could well have been a relative of little
Nkima, who accompanied Tarzan on many of his adventures.
The stamp was one of eight issued by the Postal Service
to feature “Favorite Children’s Book Animals.” In addition to Curious George,
those honored were The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Wilber, the Fox in Socks,
Maisy, Wild Thing, Olivia and Frederick.
Curious George debuted in 1941 with George living in Africa.
The book tells the story of his capture by the Man with the Yellow Hat,
who takes him on a ship to "the big city" where he will live in a zoo.
The second book, Curious George Takes a Job (1947), begins with George
living in the zoo, from which he escapes and has several adventures before
the Man with the Yellow Hat finds him and takes George to live at his house.
The remaining five stories describe George's adventures while living at
the house of the Man with the Yellow Hat.
Sometimes dubbed the "Original Adventures," these original
seven titles are completely by the series creators, Margret & H. A.
Rey.
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Cats like to hop onto their owners’ beds but this big
cat takes up almost the whole bed, cuddling with Steve (Hawkes) Sipek on
this postal cover postmarked in Findlay, Ohio, Jan. 14, 2010, first day
of issue for the U.S. Postal Service Year of the Tiger stamp. Dave Lemon,
who made the cover, is former postmaster at Findlay.
Sadly, Bobo was already deceased at the time this cover
was made, having been shot after escaping from Sipek’s Florida compound
in 2004 or, as Sipek said, “Bobo was murdered.”
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/.../obituary-former-tarzan...
Sipek, who used the last name of Hawkes for roles as
Tarzan in some foreign films, passed away June 23, 2019, at the age of
77.
An ERBzine Tribute
https://www.erbzine.com/mag27/2772.html
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The 2004 Year of the Monkey stamp was issued Jan. 13
and a few days later Dave Lemon of Ohio stuck one onto a cover on which
he’d printed a montage of Ace Tarzan paperbacks and mailed it on Jan. 21
from Lima, Ohio
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The Postal Service issued its annual Love stamp on Jan.
14 of this year, giving first-day cover makers a whole month to make cover
designs in time for Valentine's Day.
For an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, images of "The Eternal
Lover" are a natural tie-in for a stamp like this. Shown is the All-Story
Weekly cover for the story's original appearance in 1914, the A.C. McClurg
dust jacket image for the hardcover book which followed, and the paperback
Pinnacle cover from Great Britain. No point showing the Ace edition on
this first-day cover since the editors changed "Lover" to "Savage" and,
while it's a word that may sell books better, with its promise of brutal
stone-age action, it doesn't quite fit as well with Valentine's Day!
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Jan. 27, 2021, marked the 103rd anniversary of the first
Tarzan film, "Tarzan of the Apes," starring Elmo Lincoln and Enid Markeyi.
John Colasanti, Dora, Missouri, made a montage cachet
to celebrate the 100th anniversary in 2018.
One of the cachets I made for the centennial is also
pictured.
In addition, another Jan. 27 cover, this one postmarked
in 2017, was by Dennis Gelvin, Olympia, who loves a good pun!
1. John Colasanti, Dora, Missouri, made a montage cachet
to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first Tarzan film in 2018.
2. Here's a cachet I made for the centennial of the first
Tarzan
movie, which rolled around on Jan. 27, 2018.
3. This cover, postmarked Jan. 27, 2017, was by Dennis Gelvin,
Olympia, who loves a good pun!
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As every ERB student knows, it was in the second
Carson Napier adventure, "Lost on Venus," that the subject of golf came
up. It amounts to only a passing remark and one might raise eyebrows at
my elevation of it to the status of a cachet on a first-day cover but....it's
what I do!
The remark is "Golf is a mental disorder."
Why did Edgar Rice Burroughs put those words into
the mouth of Carson? He enjoyed all kinds of activities -- camping, flying,
horseback riding…and golf. He purchased the vast Mil Flores estate
owned by L.A. newspaper publisher Otis Chandler and later divided it into
tracts for houses and a golf course in what would become Tarzana. ERB designed
the golf course along with nephew Studley. He was also a member of other
country clubs and, presumably, played golf on many courses. He may not
have been particularly proficient at it, even though he may have enjoyed
playing it. It may be one of the practices that kept him active enough
to enjoy the rapid-fire game of tennis, which he played in his later years
in Hawaii. Burroughs was playing tennis at the age of 65 on Dec. 7, 1941,
when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and he and his guests watched from
the tennis courts as the planes attacked Navy ships. That led to Burroughs’s
next adventure: He became the oldest war correspondent in the Pacific.
Burroughs often took his real-life experiences
and blended them into the activities of his characters, probably something
every author does.
It is in the second book, "Lost on Venus," where
golf is mentioned. The book opens with Carson and Duare both prisoners
of the socialist Throrists in the land of Noobol. Carson manages to escape
"The Room of the Seven Doors" and rescue Duare, and then both flee into
the wilderness, where they are captured by, and escape, hungry beasts known
as kloonobargan. It is then that they decide they need a fire and Carson,
whose fire-making skills are about as good as, apparently, his golfing
skills, struggles to ignite a blaze, coming up with the comparison that
trying to make fire is like trying to become good at golf: "Most people
never learn to play it but very few give up trying." Perhaps Burroughs
was thinking of his own golfing skills and, with tongue in cheek, poking
fun at himself.
Duare, of course, has never heard of golf, so she
asks about it, which is when Carson quips, "Golf is a mental disorder."
Once I had the idea for the cover, my next challenge
was to find a suitable image for the cover. I remembered there had been
a comic book adaptation of the first two Venus books with art by Michael
Kaluta. I used that scene for this first-day cover for the stamp issued
March 4, 2020, honoring golfing legend Arnold Palmer.
I was also fortunate to find an image of a golf
ball imprinted with the name “Burroughs” on which to place the postmark.
I continued the comic strip on the back of the
cover.
155th ANNIVERSARY, JOHN
CARTER’S ADVENT ON MARS
It was back on March 4, 1866, that John Carter lifted
off from a ledge outside an Arizona cave to experience an “instant of extreme
cold and utter darkness” as he was swept through space to the planet Mars.
Here’s a bunch of first-day covers I made, a couple with
the Arizona statehood stamp issued Feb. 14, 2012, and the rest with the
Edgar Rice Burroughs commemorative stamp, issued later that same year on
Aug. 17.
