Tarzan and the Great Lakes State

Michael Hatt, a former postal employ ee living in Montgomery, Mich., has written the new book “Tarzan Slept Here: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Coldwater Connection.” It’s about the nearly two decades Burroughs spent vacationing with his family in Coldwater. Hatt will sign his books Saturday at the Classicon 46 Collectable Pulp and Paperback Show, which will have 35 tables full of magazines, comics, rare books and original paperback art.

Two of Burroughs’ works pay homage to the Southern Michigan city. In “Beyond Thirty,” a dystopian science fiction tale, there is an “aero-sub” named “Coldwater.” And the fourth chapter of the “Jungle Tales of Tarzan,” a collection of 12 inter-connected short stories, describes a lake setting that sounds a lot like Michigan. Turns out that wasn’t a coincidence.

In his boyhood, Burroughs was restless and poorly disciplined. After basically flunking out of the exclusive Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., he was sent to the Michigan Military Academy in Orchard Lake, where he spent a tumultuous five years. He was often restricted to his living quarters for disciplinary violations. This period has been exquisitely detailed in another Michigan author’s book, “Them Were the Days,” by Brian Bohnett.

At the academy, Burroughs became an accomplished horseback rider. After graduation, he enlisted for a short stint with the U.S. Calvary. His first book, 1911’s “Under the Moons of Mars,” was the first of the John Carter sci-fi action/adventure series about a U.S. Calvary officer who becomes a superhero on the Red Planet.

Hatt, 65, knew of the significant Orchard Lake connection, but he was more drawn to Burroughs’ relationship to the Coldwater area. Hatt lived there for 17 years while working for the U.S. Postal Service.

As a teenager growing up in Hillsdale in the 1960s, he said his interest in Burroughs was piqued when he saw a fellow student reading a Tarzan book. Hatt said he knew nothing of Burroughs’ Michigan connection when he was younger, only that the author’s work stirred something in him.

“My life’s passion (became) collecting the works and related material of Burroughs,” Hatt said. Then, sometime in the ‘90s, a fellow employee at the post office mentioned that the family of Burroughs’ wife, Emma, owned a summer home near Coldwater. Emma was a member of the wealthy Chicago Hulbert family of hoteliers.

“It floored me and I thought I should look into that,” Hatt said. “I didn’t, (but) in 2001 I was at the Michigan Antiquarian Book and Paper Show and I met Brian Bohnett and bought one of his books. He inscribed it, ‘Looking forward to ERB Coldwater Connection.’’’

Hatt said he went to the local library and made a few notes, but walked away from the project.

“Then in 2012, I found those files and I went back to the library and got started,” he said. In the book, which took 15 month to write, Hatt details the times that Burroughs and his family visited both Sunnyside Farms, owned by the Hulbert family, and then later a family cottage on Morrison Lake outside of Coldwater.

“Coldwater was his escape for getting out of Chicago,” Hatt said. He used the 819-page Irwin Porges biography of Burroughs, considered the best biography of the author, and began to put together a timeline. He located the farm where the family stayed.

“The farmhouse was still there,” he said.

He also discovered that Burroughs had planned a family car tour to Maine in 1916. Burroughs planned on writing a travel  series, which were popular at the time, but after problems with roads and vehicles — including a trip to Alma for repairs — he and the family camped at Camp Branch (named for his in-laws) for 37 days overlooking Morrison Lake. It was at this site he wrote the fourth chapter of “Gods of Tarzan,” and the trip to Maine was canceled. Burroughs would move to California soon afterward, where he would settle for life, returning to the Coldwater area only once more in 1919.

There is a famous photo of Burroughs standing with Morrison Lake as his backdrop. Hatt said the most memorable thing he did was track down the exact spot where the photo was taken and stand right there and pose there for a photo.

Hatt said it is difficult to say what Burroughs’ inspirations for his edgy, farout fantasies were, but he said he could understand how Burroughs wrote “Gods of Tarzan” while “overlooking the lake and the blue sky and blue water.”

Classicon 46 Collectable Pulp and Paperback Show

Author Michael Hatt appearance/book signing 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday Nov. 22, 10 a.m-4 p.m. University Quality Inn 3121 E. Grand River Ave., Lansing $3/students FREE (517) 332-0112, curiousbooks.com