One of my neighbors when we lived in McMicken Heights after World War II was a Boeing engineer named John Castle who had done an Army stint in the Pacific theatre and mustered out in China. There he met his Manchurian bride, and after the marriage brought her to America.

They settled down in the Highline district and wonder of wonders he suddenly reappeared in my life the other day when I discovered after 60 years that he and his wife, Helen, live in Hazel Valley.

So Elsbeth and I arranged to meet them for lunch.

They had raised four kids who went to Highline schools and while he did his Boeing years she became an accomplished painter and has authored several successful books.

He is slender, has a full head of hair, slightly hard of hearing like me, and full of enthusiasm for life. He has a great wealth of stories.

She has a delightful book recounting her life as a Russian peasant's daughter, which this newspaper will review later.

John was only 19 when he met Elena (Helen) in Tsingtao and was so captivated he instantly asked her to marry him. She misunderstood the proposal, thinking he meant making merry and rejected his idea.

He finally figured it out and they have been happily wed for 61 years.

I HAD never been elk hunting, but I did own a big .358 Winchester caribou rifle that was left to my wife when her sourdough miner Dad died in Livengood, Alaska.

I had never fired it, but put it in a closet where it rested for about five years.

I got the urge to give big game hunting a shot one day when my neighbor, Johnny Castle, suggested we each apply for a cow elk permit and go get us some meat for the table. I never told him I didn't know an elk from a hat rack.

Johnny had a Krag sniper rifle he got from army surplus. It was a huge blunderbuss made in Norway, which he claimed he had used to bag a deer or two.

This was in 1947 and I was driving a 1942 Dodge sedan-also army surplus-and it ran okay, but would not stay in second gear without some help from the driver. It also had US Baldy tires, but was the best we could do.

One Friday afternoon, clutching the cow permits we got without telling anyone we had never seen an elk, male or female, we headed for the Cowiche Hills above Yakima. Johnny had a trailer, which we hitched to the car and off we went.

My beater Dodge did okay on the highway, but getting into the high country up a narrow, winding, icy mountain road with no shoulders and no chains, pulling that damn trailer with a gear shift that refused to stay put, had us both ready to turn around and forget it a hundred times.

Finally, after a terrifying hour we made it to the top. We were ready to claw each other to shreds for even trying such a crazy idea. When we found a flat spot we got out, grabbed our big game guns, split apart about 50 yards and started trudging down a slippery slope through a forest of snow-laden pine trees.

We were barely of sight of each other when I heard shots from up the valley and suddenly a big ungainly beast came trotting right through the trees about 30 feet front of me. No horns. Nothing majestic. Just plain ugly.

Of course, cow elk don't have horns. Do they?

Once those thoughts flashed by, I hoisted my huge gun and started blasting away. Detesting myself for not even sighting the gun in, I missed her at point blank range, so I followed her as she kind of trotted past. Then I ran out of ammo. My gun had a side load slot for the magazine, but I was so nervous as I tried to load it the bullets kept popping out and falling in the snow.

But I followed a trail of blood till I saw my prey plodding up the hill barely 50 feet ahead of me. I managed to stuff some bullets into the chamber and fired several more times at my burly target. Nothing slowed her. She kept climbing till she got about 100 yards up, then leaned against a huge pine tree with her head on one side and her rump on the other.

Johnny then came running up and asked if he could take a shot before I made hamburger out of the poor animal.

I'd had enough. "Sure, go ahead," I said. "That thing is not human."

He took aim and dropped it with one shot. I hiked back and got the car, while he stayed and dressed out the 300-pound creature.

I never went elk hunting again. And I never told the Burien Elks about it when I joined the club several years later. I was afraid they would ban me, not for shooting an elk, but for missing one. Six times.

When I got back with the trailer, Johnny had the poor thing all dressed out. He said I creased it across the back three times, and the belly three times.

It was nice of him to let me keep half.