Natural Perspective

Vic and I have volunteered at the Oakview Police Substation at Beach

Boulevard and Slater Avenue on Halloween for the last few years. It’s

probably the most fun that I have as a Volunteer in Police Service with

the Huntington Beach Police Department.

Volunteers Abbie Francis, D.J. Englert, Diane Shelton and others

started this Halloween tradition several years ago by decorating the

substation with lighted pumpkins, spooky skeletons, spider webs and other

trappings of a perfectly ghostly evening.

On Halloween night, they gave out police coloring books, junior police

badges and pounds and pounds of candy to the neighborhood kids who

visited.

I thought it would be fun to pass out apples to the kids instead of

just candy, so I arranged for donations to cover the cost of the apples.

I dressed up as Swampy the Clown and Vic accompanied me dressed in tux

and top hat.

We handed out 200 apples the first year we offered them. It wasn’t

just the kids who wanted those apples. Teenagers ate them right on the

spot. Men just off work from minimum wage jobs asked if they could have

one. Mothers were grateful to see fruit go into the trick-or-treat bags

instead of just sweets. We were surprised at how much people appreciated

a simple piece of fruit.

Imagine paying for housing, clothing your children and feeding a

family on the income from one or two minimum wage jobs. There’s not much

money left over. Consequently, some families can’t afford Halloween

costumes or candy. While many kids had great get-ups, some kids merely

draped a cloth around their shoulders and put on some lipstick. Some had

no costume at all. But every one of them had a bright twinkle in their

eye as we filled their bags with candy.

Each year, the substation drew more and more children as word of the

fun spread. We volunteers hoped we were helping to build better

relationships between the police department and the people in the Oakview

community.

Two years ago, about 500 kids visited the substation on Halloween --

more than we could comfortably handle. Because the crowd had outgrown the

location, Sgt. Janet Perez of the Huntington Beach Police Department and

some volunteers had the great idea of building a haunted house at the

Oakview Community Center, sponsored by the police department and run by

volunteers.

Last year, Bill Meyer, Doug Blankenship and other volunteers built a

twisting maze-like corridor of lumber and black plastic. It was lit it

with strobe lights and featured dangling skulls that screamed and a

chandelier draped with spider webs. A volunteer in ghoulish makeup lay in

wait in a coffin, sitting up to scare the living daylights out of the

kids as they passed by. It was only a corridor of black plastic with a

few decorations, but gleeful screams filled the air. Kids waited in line

to go through the haunted house again and again. One 10-year-old boy, his

face flushed with excitement, said he’d never seen anything like it.

“I just love this place,� he said.

We received donations of 1,000 apples as well as orange drink, popcorn

and small toys as prizes for carnival games for last year’s event. And of

course, we had candy.

Volunteers stuffed it into bags along with the police coloring books

and Junior Police badges. My 89-year-old mother, Lucile Wilson, came

dressed as a witch to help hand out goodies. She said she’d never had so

much fun.

Bev McDougall, Penny Lambright, Gladys Ramirez-Walker and many others

have been working all summer to make this year’s event even better.

We want to add more kinks and decorations to the maze, add face

painting to the carnival games, and rent a fog machine. We already have a

donation of 1,500 apples from Ralphs, but we’d like to be able to give

out fruit cups or juice boxes as well. Volunteers for this event are

gathered from various police volunteer programs of the police department.

Teen volunteers from the Oakview Community Center and residents of the

Oakview community help out as well. But we still need help in the form of

donations of candy, small toys, Halloween decorations and costumes, and,

of course, money.

If you’d like to help bring some cheer to this needy part of our city,

you can contact Perez at the Huntington Beach Police Department, 2000

Main St., Huntington Beach, CA 92648 or call Midge Martin at (714)

536-5920 before the end of September.

Vic and I look forward to another scary, but safe, Halloween at

Oakview.