By STAN STAPP

THE JET CITY MAVEN'S Third Annual History Scrapbook is the theme of this August issue - as it has been every August since the paper started. Staff writers have been busy researching material or trying to find an old duffer to interview who could provide some first-hand historical knowledge.

In my case, it's easy. I don't have to dig up any old duffer - I am he.

To begin with, I am 81 years old, and except for five years in Anacortes have lived all that time in Seattle's North End.

The Seattle house I was born in, 944 N. 84th, was out in the woods then, but still standing today. It's almost at the corner of N. 84th and Aurora Ave. (originally Woodland Park Ave.)

Today, that's behind Novus Windshield Repair Co.; and earlier, Denny's Restaurant. Woodland Park Ave. (north of the park) was renamed Aurora Ave. when the Aurora Bridge was first opened in 1932. I was there at the dedication, age 14.

My earliest memory (age 3) is being allowed to sit on a chair in the pantry of our house at 3915 Woodlawn Ave., and watch my brother, Milton, handfeed sheets of paper into his small, foot-pedal printing press.

Other early memories are of horses. For example: watching a portable garage being moved into place in a next-door vacant lot, pulled by a horse; and there was a man who kept several horses on a little hill at N. 43rd and Wallingford Ave. which I often passed on my way to Interlake Grade School; and the City of Seattle used a horse to pull a grass/weed cutter, to trim the growth on parking strips; another horse pulled a large scoop filled with dirt - before the invention of the bulldozer - when digging the basement area for Queen City Bank, N. 45th and Densmore, now Wells Fargo Bank - in addition to about 20 men digging with shovels; and there was a horse that pulled a popcorn wagon up Woodlawn Ave. on warm summer nights.

Just across the street from Queen City Bank there was a daily gathering of hungry men lining up in the "soup line."

Other places I lived in Seattle were: N. 36th and Woodland Park Ave., 4203 Woodlawn Ave., 2122 N. 117th, 16718 37th Ave. NE, 4742 21st Ave. NE, 1549 NE 102nd, 721 N. 86th, 8044 28th Ave. NE, 10043 Wallingford Ave. N., and 7015 33rd Ave. NE. Although it sounds like a lot of moving around, I worked/lived, or worked only, for 48 years in the Stapp Family house at 4203 Woodlawn Ave. So I consider Wallingford to be my "home town."

I BEGAN INTERLAKE Grade School in 1924. Years later, when I had three kids of my own, I'd kid them about how hard we had it in the olden days: "Why I had to walk BOTH WAYS to school, because we didn't have school buses like you have!" Eventually I would admit it was only four blocks to Interlake Grade School, across the street to Hamilton Junior High, and one block to Lincoln High.

I sometimes wore knickers in those days, but like most of the boys, I mainly wore cream colored cords, shirt, and necktie or bow tie. At Hamilton if we came to school without a tie we had to go down to the gym and borrow one. We also wore our cords at home - and generally they got pretty dirty.

The family home when I was a kid also housed a weekly newspaper in the basement, the Wallingford Outlook. My brother, Milton, started it in 1922 when he was 19 years old and I was 4. The whole family was involved at one time or another, and I eventually became the publisher. (Forerunner to the Outlook was the Fouress Print Shop, named after the four Stapp brothers. Milton was president, Elbert was vice president, Arthur secretary-treasurer - my three brothers were 12 to 15 years older than I - but they let me in anyway. General manager at the age of one.)

As a little kid, I often played in the dining room, under the table, pushing wooden blocks around on the floor, or building something with them. My mother, Emma Frances Stapp, was always nearby, proofreading news and ads for the paper and commercial printing in the breakfast room, or busy in the kitchen. My dad, Orrill V. Stapp, might be teaching a pupil to play the piano in the living room. And my brothers and other employees would be in the basement writing, designing ads, and operating the equipment.

When I was older I played in the basement when the staff was not around. Later I learned to set type by hand and operate the folding machine, eventually moving on to the Linotype, the job presses, the cylinder press, the paper cutter, etc.

WHEN I WAS EIGHT years old, and my sister, Pat, 6+, (and school was out for the summer) we acquired our first job: stacking papers. At "press time" if we were outdoors we could expect to hear mother on the backporch shouting "STAN-LEE! PATRI-CHAA!" Meaning it was time to come home and go to work. Our job was taking papers off the folding machine and stacking them in neat piles in the 27-bin cabinet so the carrier boys could come and get them.

We had a telephone, of course, but like most mothers in those days (when calling their kids) a faster way was to shout. To shout loud enough to reach us whether we were indoors at a kid's house, or outdoors. It saved the neighbors having to answer the phone, and us kids the bother of toting around a cellular phone (if we'd had one) like some kids do today.

Pat and I also learned to communicate by telegraphy. We employed the Outlook buzzer-system which the newspaper's receptionist used to signal staff members who were wanted on the phone: one to five buzzes. Pat and I used the telegraphers' Morse Code (weekends or evenings), she upstairs, I in the basement. For example: "HELLO" when converted to dots and dashes would be: dot-dot-dot-dot, space, dot, space, dot-dash-dot-dot, space, dot-dash-dot-dot, space, dash, space, dash, space, dash.

(Incidentally, it was only two weeks ago that Morse Code was finally dropped as a mean of communication - the lone remaining transmitter on the World War II Liberty ship, Jeremiah O'Brien, sending a farewell message to President Clinton - via e-mail.)

When I was about 12, I acquired several cases of handset type (not all that different from Johann Gutenberg's type which he invented in the 1400s.) I kept it in the closet off my upstairs bedroom, and put out a few issues of my own newspaper, The Magnet.

The Wallingford community at that time was about half built-up (half homes, half vacant lots). This provided us kids with a variety of places to play outdoors: Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, hide and seek, throwing bracken ferns at each other, kick the can, and so on. We also enjoyed palying ball in the alley near my home, or in the street on Ashworth Ave. (In those days, there was a lot less automobile traffic to contend with.) And if I wanted to be alone, there was always my little "hidey-hole" under our backporch steps.

ALL OF MY FRIENDS had roller skates. We used to skate together: around Lincoln High School where we had a pretend-jail under the steps to the auditorium (with an unlocked iron gate); around Hamilton Junior High where we laid out cardboard boxes at the bottom of an incline and jumped over them on our skates; and, when we felt brave and skated on the street in front of the Wallingford Police Station, when it was at N. 45th and Densmore, because it was s-m-o-o-t-h (paved with asphalt). We were a little nervous the cops might arrest us. But they never did.

As for toys, it would have been nice to get a pedal car with a real steering wheel, or a bike. Because of the Depression, though, only Bill Finlay's family could afford to give him a bike (second-hand for $15). I did have a scooter at one time (it was L-shaped: a wheel at each end of a horizontal footstand, and a steering hand-grip atop the vertical support). I also built myself a skate-mobile: the same principle, but made of 2x4s and an apple or orange box. The rest of us could only expect roller skates. Union Hardware skates cost about $1.95, Chicago skates about $2.95. Occasionally we would rent bikes for 10 cents an hour (balloon-tired bikes were 15 cents) from a little bike shop at N. 45th and Woodlawn. We liked to ride around Green Lake, usually twice in an hour, or three times if we pushed it.

My nickname was Stanley Steamer, the name of an early automobile that ran on steam. I recall one day a Stanley Steamer parked near our house while the driver attended a funeral at the block-away Whitman Memorial Church (later known as Central Presbyterian, and now Wallingford Presbyterian) at N. 42nd and Ashworth. After everyone else left it took the driver awhile to get started because he had to build a fire with kindling wood under his boiler to get some steam up.

And as for heroes we had two, both connected with airplanes: Charles Lindbergh our national hero (I was 9 when he crossed the Atlantic); and Eddy Hubbard, locally, who flew the mail up to Canada. If we heard an airplane fly by, of which there were very few, we would run outside and shout: "There goes Eddy Hubbard!"

(Continued next issue)

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MATTHEWS RED APPLE UPDATE: Arbitration depositions ended on Thursday, July 22 regarding a citizens' petition to keep the popular Matthews Red Apple grocery in Wedgwood open under its present ownership rather than to lose it to QFC. More than 20,000 people signed the petition. The arbitrators will have a decision by Wednesday, July 28, which is after the Jet City Maven's August issue deadline. So by the time you are reading this, it will all be over one way or the other. No matter which way it goes, Matthews Red Apple plans to hold a party on Saturday, Aug. 8, 1 p.m. at the store. Everyone is invited. "It will be a party or a wake," says Stacy W. Swanson, co-chair of the citizens group that's been fighting the landlord's plans to lease the property to QFC.

Stan Stapp is the retired publisher of the old Outlook, a family-owned community newspaper that covered North Seattle for several decades up until its sale in 1974. He and his wife, Dorothy, now reside in the Wedgwood neighborhood. His column appears monthly in the Jet City Maven. Stan can be reached via e-mail at: stapp@w-link.net.