Old Man

When I was a kid, living in the Boston area, one summer my mother and step-father drove us to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I don’t remember anything about that trip – where we went, where we stayed, and what we did – except for one thing. We saw the Old Man of the Mountain, the rock formation that looked like a man’s face.

We were standing on the side of a nearby mountain or maybe the same mountain, but a bit away from the face in a clearing. A fog engulfed the mountain, so everything was gray and quiet and the air was moist. I remember a small single propeller plane flying by at one point, at the same level as where we were standing. I didn’t understand what we waiting to happen or for what we were looking. My parents told me to keep looking in a particular direction for the old man. I thought they meant a person, not a rock face. Suddenly, the fog cleared a little and I saw it. I was surprised and impressed. After about two minutes, the fog hid it again.

Although it was nothing more than an anomoly that relied on our human psychology to make sense of shapes and to see patterns, I’m sorry that it’s gone: it collapsed in May 2003. All that remains are photographs – and this stamp on the top row here. Although it’s only a memory now, Great Stone Face, as it was also called, is still the symbol of the state of New Hampshire. Soon there won’t be many of us left who saw it or can tell of it. It was a long ride for very little, that morning in New England, but I’m glad we went and that I have that memory.

Note

This album page has a stamp on it that seems very out of place: The last stamp at the bottom was used for special delivery. It should be on one of the back pages. There is a page just for Special Delivery at the end of the previous album – which is where I ended the album, not Leuchtturm that printed these pages.

This stamp was issued in 1956. It could have be included on that page where there are special delivery stamps from the 1950’s, including one from 1957. I think they forgot to include this stamp when they designed that page, so they added it here. It wouldn’t have take much to have redone that page and this one. Maybe I’ll do that one day, replace this page and that one with my own and make them look identical to these. I’ll wait until I get better at creating pages and cutting stamp mounts.

Contains 10 spots: own 10 – 10 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Mar 23, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot	own	catalog	subject	description
1.1	✓	1064	Penn. Fine Arts Academy	3c (jan 1955) comm., violet brown
1.2	✓	1068	New Hampshire Statehood	3c (jun 1955) comm., green
2.1	✓	1069	Great Lakes Transportation	3c (jun 1955) comm., blue
2.2	✓	1066	Rotary	8c (feb 1955) comm., dark blue
2.3	✓	1070	Atomic Energy	3c (jul 1955) comm., dark blue
3.1	✓	1071	Fort Ticonderoga	3c (sep 1955) comm., light brown
3.2	✓	1067	Military Personnel	3c (may 1955) comm., purple
3.3	✓	1065	Land Grant Colleges	3c (feb 1955) comm., green
4.1	✓	1072	Andrew Mellon	3c (dec 1955) comm., pink carmine
5.1	✓	FA1	Letter Carrier	15c (jun 1955) special, red

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.