A CHRONICLE OF THE PASSING SCENE : Green (and Red) Acres

George and Alice Krebs have put the ho-ho-ho and holiday spirit in Christmas for the 26th--and possibly last--year in this area.

Not feeling festive? Just take a ride out to 5676 Colodny Drive in Agoura for a look at the Krebs’ front lawn.

There are thousands of lights and hundreds of holiday-related figures playing on the front half-acre. It’s a wonderland of fun and fantasy that started as a family project 26 years ago.

“When we were a young family, my boys decided to build some Christmas decorations for the front lawn. They made a holiday choo-choo that we still have out there today,” says Alice Krebs.

All kinds of other homemade decorations followed, usually one major one each year, including a motorized carousel and train, which give it that non-store-bought flavor. Still, one of her favorite pieces is a wagon she fell in love with in Stowe, Vt., and she had it shipped to Agoura.

The Krebses traditionally invite the neighbors over the Saturday before Thanksgiving to help decorate. This year, about 60 joined in. They also have parties throughout the season inside their equally Christmasy home.

Their home is a hillside place they had built 27 years ago, with six bedrooms, six baths, a pool room, atrium, pool, spa, barn and tennis courts spread over two acres. Quite a spread for a couple who married 40 years ago over her parents’ objections about their financial prospects.

“We had just graduated from Canoga Park High School and George was going into the service. They were afraid we would have a hard time,” Alice Krebs says.

The couple had three sons, and George Krebs was successful in his electrical business. “He had wanted to become an electrical engineer, but we didn’t have enough money for him to go to college,” his wife says.

They now own commercial property, as well as another six-bedroom, six-bath home in Aspen, Colo. They are building another home in Montecito, where the Krebses and their trove of decorations will move after they sell their local spread.

Warner Hilton, the Time Tunnel

Jose Montilla, Warner Center Hilton and Towers general manager, knows a challenge when he sees one.

“There’s the economy, and competition for every dollar in the hotel banquet business. If you want to succeed, you must be willing to offer more,” he says.

When he says more, he’s including time travel--as in going back to the days of Charles Dickens:

“We will take you back to the time of Victorian England, with both the food and costumes.”

Forget the usual banquet food. No dry prime rib or elderly chicken. Quail, other game birds and game animals, and roasted potatoes and vegetables will be offered at the holiday feast.

The dining room will be transformed with Victorian costumes and scenery by the folks who produced Bill Murray’s “Scrooged.” (The movie may have been a turkey, but the backdrops were a hit.)

Time traveling has its price. The usual banquet at this Hilton costs about $20 per person. If you get the extra Victorian doo-dahs, expect to add $10, Montilla says. “I think people might pay to get something really festive.”

In addition to live carolers and other goings-on, robotic Edwardian carolers will be in the lobby. Well, why not?

On New Year’s Eve, the time-travel theme will continue with ‘50s-, ‘60s- and ‘70s-era bands playing, with, of course, “reincarnations” of Elvis and the Beatles.

Scoring Big at Taft High

Elliot Witkow calls himself the Don Quixote of fund raising.

With the finances bottoming out in the public schools, he’s trying to raise $17,000 to build an electric baseball scoreboard at Taft High School in Woodland Hills.

Since some schools have cut out many educational basics such as classes, books and teachers, an electronic scoreboard doesn’t exactly seem like an idea people would be wild to fling money at.

Witkow says it all depends on how you look at it.

Looking at the school’s old turn-the-numbers scoreboard was driving him crazy.

“Every spring, I’d go out to watch my son, Brandon, play baseball, and every spring, I’d get madder about the scoreboard,” Witkow says.

“Like a lot of parents, I traveled around to all the other schools in the Valley for games. At other schools, they have state-of-the-art scoreboards. Taft’s was way out of date. I just wanted to do something for the school. I guess if my kids had been drama students, I would have gone after scenery,” he says.

In May, Witkow asked the school administration if he could ask the Taft Booster Club to donate the $2,500 needed to get architectural plans for the scoreboard.

“We were delighted that a parent was willing to take this task on personally,” says Tom Abraham, Taft vice principal. “This is not money coming out of teacher’s salaries or other budgeted items. And this was money he was willing to raise himself.”

Since then, Witkow has become busier than a one-armed second baseman. He got the architectural plan money from the Booster Club. He got the plans approved by the appropriate Los Angeles Unified School District officials and the Office of the State Architect.

He talked Taft alumnus Robin Yount--a player with 3,000 career hits with the Milwaukee Brewers--into kicking in the first $5,000 to get the scoreboard erected.

“My younger son, Bryan, went to elementary school with Robin’s brother’s brother-in-law’s son, Rickie Radenbaugh,” Witkow says. “I think that’s right. I tracked Robin down that way.”

Anyone wanting to donate $1,000 will get a Taft baseball cap, personal plaque, jacket and a name plaque at the field. For $100, you get the baseball cap.

Witkow says if he can get the money together fast enough, the scoreboard will be up in time for spring baseball and Brandon’s last season.

If not, there’s always Bryan, a sophomore infielder.

Put Up Your Whatever

Valley public relations woman Laurie Golden, 40ish, decided that she wanted to take karate lessons.

In the first studio she checked out, she says there were a lot of people who looked permanently disfigured.

She moved right on out the door.

On a visit to another karate master--one with a triple black belt--he asked if she wanted to learn the discipline for self-defense.

She said: “No, I’m into the beauty of the movement.”

He responded: “I know. When I need self-protection these days, I carry a gun.”

Overheard

“Why is an earring like a job? You get one, and then you lose it.”

--North Hills first-grader to friend at Cirque du Soleil