By STAN STAPP

ALTHOUGH I'VE LIVED in a number of areas of Seattle (presently Wedgwood) I consider Wallingford to be "my hometown." I've resided and/or worked there for nearly 60 years - maybe more if one considers writing a column (heavily laced with Wallingford memories) as work.

Thus the current news of Wallingford greatly interests me - maybe more than some newer residents - because I have memories of "the olden days" to help me better understand what's happening today.

The terrible tragedy that occurred Nov. 3 affected all of Wallingford, particularly Lower Wallingford. I doubt that anyone in Seattle hasn't heard of the Northlake Shipyard point-blank shooting in which two men were killed and two others injured. It has been a major news story ever since then - not only locally, but on national TV.

The shipyard is located on the north shore of Lake Union, adjacent to the Wallingford residential area and close to Gas Works Park.

The gunman killed: Peter Giles, 27, bookkeeper, and Russell Brisendine, 43, marine engineer. Two others were injured: a 19-year-old office worker new to the job, and a 58-year-old fisherman.

The killer then vanished, presumably in the Lower Wallingford area (roughly south of N. 45th, and in-between Stone Way and the Freeway). A heavily-armed SWAT team (Special Weapons and Tactics) surrounded the area, searching door-to-door in some cases - but to no avail. As a precautionary measure, local schools were "locked down" for the rest of the day.

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THE FOLLOWING ITEMS recall some of my earlier adventures in Lower Wallingford - an area sometimes overlooked by the more glamorous Upper Wallingford (i.e. N. 45th Street).

I was born in 1918 in a house at 944 N. 84th St. When I was 1-1/2 years old, my family moved to a building at 1058 Kilbourne St. (now N. 36th and Woodland Park Avenue.). My dad, Orrill, rented 12 rooms there, some for family, the others for his school of music. The heating system didn't work, and we nearly froze that winter. When the lease was up we got out in a hurry!

We relocated in a house at 3915 Woodlawn (about five blocks from the present day shipyard). There was room for two parents and five kids, a grand piano, a "sun room" upstairs with a peek-a-boo view of the red brick Stone Way, and a pantry to house brother Milton's foot-powered printing press.

Highlight of our stay there, at least for my three-year-old sister, Pat, and myself (then five), was the collapse of the plaster ceiling in our bedroom. We were having an afternoon nap when awakened by the crackling. Each of us (in our own crib) stood up and hollered until our mom, Emma Frances, heard us. When she saw what was happening she called for dad and they got us out of there, fortunately in time. Five minutes later, the whole ceiling collapsed - burying our cribs in plaster.

Not long after that, in 1923, we moved again, this time just three blocks up the street to 4203 Woodlawn where brother Milton started the Outlook. The family slept upstairs, ate on the first floor, and put out the paper in the basement. My dad's music studio was in the living room.

IN 1926, my brother Elbert died of encephalitis (sleeping sickness) at the age of 21. (I was 8 then.) Elbert's body was removed from the house in the absence of Pat and me, brother Art walking us down to the "Goat Lot" at N. 40th and Stone Way where we watched a bunch of goats for a while.

In later years, that lot was occupied by Hastings Fuel, 1934-1956, judging by the ad they ran every week in the Outlook. Then Safeway built its present store there. During construction, half of the main concrete floor fell into the basement - what a mess! The Outlook ran a nice picture of it.

We neighborhood kids liked to roller skate everywhere, around Hamilton Junior High and Lincoln High, and in front of the police/fire station at N. 45th and Densmore. And we raced down Interlake Avenue from N. 42nd, sitting on a piece of planer end laid across a single skate. Kind of like an airplane. We could go clear down to N. 34th (about a block from the shipyard).

Noises of the day included the whistles of the Fremont Bridge and Bryant Lumber Co., ship foghorns, the squeak of streetcar wheels as they rounded N. 34th and Wallingford Avenue, and the noise of coal rattling down a chute to the gas-making generators at the Gas Plant (now Gas Works Park).

One day, in delivering my Outlook route in Lower Wallingford, I came upon a home at which all of the furniture was out in the front yard. The family, evidently dispossessed, had been unable to keep up their payments. Then I saw their son, Bjarne Dahl, a classmate of mine all through school, and handed him a paper. I think we both mumbled something - but I'm not sure what.

OCCASIONALLY I would accompany Harold Moffet, and his coaster wagon, to the Hocking Coal & Wood yard at 3616 Stone Way. We would fill the wagon with coal that had spilled between the railway tracks. It helped to keep the Moffet family warm. We thought it was funny, to be "hooking from Hocking."

One time I bought two pieces of plywood from Stoneway Lumber, 3636 Stone Way, to make a Ping-Pong table. I carried the plywood home on my head, as best I could, for 10 blocks. I built the table so it could be quickly set up on my bed, which required sawing off the iron bedposts. Bill Finlay once tried napping under the table while we played - but didn't stay long. By the way, I discovered behind Stoneway Lumber a flowing creek heading for Lake Union, apparently from Green Lake, mostly via an underground pipe.

Today, at 3620 Stone Way (between the fuel company and lumber yard, if they still were there) is the Stoneway Cafe, a restaurant popular with workers in the Lower Wallingford and Fremont areas. It is where Jim Daly, owner of Daly's Home Decorating Centers, and a community leader, could be usually found at lunchtime. I doubt if I have ever eaten there that he didn't come over to my table and say Hello. Jim died of cancer Sept. 6.

Also I might mention that there was the time when Wallingford was represented in Seafair activities by choosing a queen each year. The event was mainly promoted by the Outlook. One year Dorothy Provine was named Miss Stoneway Lumber. Although she didn't win the title of Miss Wallingford, she was discovered by Hollywood and starred in six films from 1959-1968: "The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock," "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," "Good Neighbor Sam," "That Darn Cat," "Who's Minding the Mint," and "Never a Dull Moment."

AS A YOUNG MAN I've taken ballroom dance lessons from several teachers including one associated with the Trianon Ballroom. It was Elliot Lough's idea. He lived at 3415 Wallingford, just above the gas plant. After our lesson, we'd join the dancers in the ballroom for free, hoping to have enough nerve to ask a girl to dance with us. Elliot's dad owned the Fremont Drug Co., 3423 Fremont, and Elliot jerked sodas there for eight or nine years. The pharmacy had two phones, one for each telephone company.

The Sausage Roll restaurant at 1428 N. 34th was just a block from what - is now the shipyard. It was owned by Bill & Millie Nicklos, 1949-1965. I ate lunch there about once a week. The Outlook staff knew to call me there if our police radio reported a fire or accident. I'd take off with my Speed Graphic, and maybe take some pictures, while Millie kept my plate of food warm in the oven. Everyone in the restaurant wanted the details upon my return. The restaurant is long gone, swallowed up by Oroweat Bakery.

One picture I didn't get was of the woman who ran a small store not far from the shipyard. She was robbed and hit on the head with a coke bottle. I arrived before the cops, and spent my time trying to calm her down.

On two other occasions I covered the drowning of two boys who slipped while playing on rafted logs near the Aurora Bridge; and the suicide of a young woman who jumped from the Aurora Bridge, landing in the Fremont Electric parking lot (now part of History House).

HAMILTON MIDDLE SCHOOL (one of the schools shut down the day of the shooting) was just across the street from my home. I attended classes there in the early '30s, and later spoke to the students as part of the school's 60th Annivesary celebration in 1987. And in 1997, I spoke to the Journalism Class, and sang the old school song I'd remembered from a half-century ago.

In 1985, newspaper friends, Outlook staff and former staff members honored my brother Milton and myself with a picnic at Gas Works Park. Milton died in 1991.

I recently strolled through the park with Eddy Mannery, a friend, UW astronomer, and former Outlook photographer. Eddy, associated with the Friends of Gas Works Park, pointed out possible sites for locating a camera obscura. He would design the lens.

Some 50 years ago, when the old Gas Plant was polluting Loser Wallingford with grit and fumes, the Outlook hastened correction of the problem. Our campaign brought the vice president of the Gas Company to our office begging for a "little time" to have a new warped iron cover (six feet in diameter) on a generator tower manufactured and put into place. I am proud that later the Outlook supported development of Gas Works Park in the '70s.

Well, that is a partial view of Lower Wallingford as I knew it before the double murder - the first time a SWAT team and school closures were necessary to assure residents that it was safe to be out on the streets.