Let's See Your Cinderellas!

A Journey with the "LET'S GET ASSOCIATED" Stamps

I have a small but wonderfully fun hobby: taking three vintage advertising stamps, "LET'S GET ASSOCIATED" (Associated Oil cinderellas from around 1938–1939), affixing them to old postcards, then bringing them to post offices and visitor centers at Lassen National Park to get them postmarked. It is both a keepsake and a way of "reviving" stamps that are more than 80 years old.

And here are the three stamps I chose:


Stamp #83 – Feather River Highway

The Feather River Highway (now CA-70), opened in 1937, cuts through the mountains to connect the Sacramento Valley with the Sierra Nevada. It was once praised as a "miracle road," crossing rivers and steep canyons to reveal breathtaking scenery.
When I affix this stamp and get it postmarked, it feels like sending a greeting back through time: from a newly opened highway in 1937 to today, when it is still a famous scenic route. I was standing right on this mountain highway and took a photo with a stamp depicting the very road from more than 80 years ago.


Stamp #25 – Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Volcanic National Park (established in 1916) is known for Lassen Peak, the only volcano in the continental United States to have erupted in the 20th century (1914–1921).
Remarkably, the park contains all four types of volcanoes: composite, shield, cinder cone, and plug dome, an extremely rare combination worldwide.
The drive from Sacramento to the Lassen National Park Visitor Center takes you along the Feather River Highway, a perfect connection between the stamps.


Stamp #177 – Devil's Kitchen, Mt. Lassen

"Devil's Kitchen" is a bubbling geothermal area with boiling mud, rising steam, and a strong sulfur smell.
Today it is a popular hiking trail of about 3.8 miles round trip, drawing visitors eager to explore.
When postmarked on a postcard, it feels like sending a message: the mountain is still breathing, still boiling, still amazing 21st-century visitors just as it did people in the 20th century.


A Small but Joyful Meaning

The "LET'S GET ASSOCIATED" stamps were originally just advertising poster stamps for Associated Oil, encouraging people to fill up and travel across the West. But when I stick them on postcards and have them postmarked at post offices and visitor centers, they suddenly become a journey linking past and present.

A tiny hobby, but when I look back at a postcard filled with old stamps and crisp new postmarks, it feels like revisiting the gold-rush era and continuing an 80-year-old story of the American West.

You don't count the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens?

Anyone know what this item is?

Thanks.

Looks like Giuseppe Mazzini, Italian political activist.

My image search suggests Victor Emmanuel II, former King of Italy, is pictured.

That's because of the Centesimi text- if you extract the portrait and use image search it comes up with random old geezers, including Henry VIII and Qaboos bin Said.

It's not Garibaldi, anyway- beard too small, hat wrong.