Marooned in Crater Lake by Alfred Powers
IN OCTOBER, 1910, before George Washington’s profile had displaced the picture of Benjamin Franklin on the one-cent stamps, Jim Turner bought a book of this denomination at Medford, Oregon, securing only twenty-four of the green rectangles for twenty-five cents. But the protective book was well worth a penny when carrying stamps in a warm pocket. He tore out five of them as postage for five scenic postcards which he mailed, three for his aunt and two for Mrs. Harry Smith. Mailing postcards was one of his duties as the only boy member of the two-car tourist party which included his uncle and aunt and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. He put the book with its nineteen remaining stamps in a hip pocket of his khaki trousers and promptly forgot all about it until two days later, at the edge of the blue waters of Crater Lake, when he had occasion to use it under circumstances that made those nineteen one-cent stamps of greater value to him than nineteen dollars or even nineteen hundred dollars.
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