Anderson mail carrier makes his final rounds

Final rounds:
After 25 years delivering mail in Anderson, letter carrier John Martin retired from the U.S. Postal Service.

It seems mother nature wouldn't allow letter carrier John Martin to retire from Anderson's post office so easily. Her send-off to Martin on Saturday, his last day after 25 years of postal service, included high winds and cloudy skies.

"I guess I'm getting thrown out with the lion," said the 58-year-old Martin, who will spend March saying his goodbyes to friends in the north state before moving to the Mojave Desert to care for his aging mother.

Not altogether new to Valley Post readers, Martin was interviewed in 1990 by Virginia Reeter when he rescued then-75-year-old Addie Bock who had fallen in her house. A note on her door from Meals on Wheels tipped him off that something was wrong because she had no transportation or other means to be absent.

He could hear her from within saying she was alright, but upon entering, found that she could not get off the floor.

"She said she was too embarrassed to tell anyone she fell and broke her wrist," Martin said.

At first reticent to discuss how he may have broken post office regulations, he told of a similar occurrence during his route when he saw a woman sitting on the curb, hunched-over, rocking back and forth. When he asked her what was the matter, she revealed a compound-fracture in her forearm, he said. To help, he lifted her into the back of the mail delivery vehicle and drove her home to her husband.

"It's hard to capture all the moments," said Martin, as he recalled anecdotes of his 25-year tenure, "but the ones you do stay with you forever.

"It doesn't occur to you that you're growing with these people," Martin said of working in the same neighborhoods.

"It didn't hit me until I saw a kid back his car out of a driveway. And I thought, I remember seeing him on a tricycle. That's the same kid."

Martin grew up in Alhambra, just outside of Pasadena, where he spent his lawn-mowing money on model cars. He still watches the Rose Bowl Parade every year, as he remembered seeing it regularly in person when he was young.

"The artistic displays on the floats were really remarkable," he said. "After the parade, we'd go to Presidential Park where they would park the floats. There, you could look at them closely and pick a petal or two if you wanted."

His interest in art and drawing was evident at an early age.

"From the time I could pick up a pencil, I was doodling," Martin said. "That's probably why I didn't reach a higher academic standing in class. I was too busy concentrating on what I was drawing."

Martin joined the U.S. Navy, serving two terms in Vietnam from 1969-73.

"You'd never guess it by my pony tail, but I was the ship's barber," added Martin.

He maintained his preoccupation with art after the service, making emblems for a designer in Los Angeles. After moving to Anderson in 1980, he produced a sign for Nickel Moulding. An Anderson sign of his that still stands is the wood sign at TJ's Drive-in. His is the one with the 1957 Chevy and carhop on it.

Martin supposed that he might take up more drawing in his retirement.

"I very much enjoyed all my co-workers," Martin said. "I'm going to miss them more than they know."

Looking back on his postal career was not all done wistfully, however.

"I've been bit a couple times," he said. "and once by a Pomeranian. As a delivery person, the last thing we hear before the teeth sink in is, 'Don't worry, he doesn't bite.'"

At that point, retired Anderson postal worker John Cherland tried to lure Martin into telling a yarn about the two-headed dog that bit him on both legs at once, but Martin didn't.

Acquaintances and route residents wishing to reach Martin may do so at johnmartin1950@yahoo.com.