Games to Take the Bite out of the Holiday

Halloween is the big holiday at our house.

For me, it ranks somewhere between Arbor Day and Rutherford B. Hayes’ birthday. I never saw a werewolf I wanted to get to know better. But when I got married, I discovered that Halloween was going to be huge for us. It’s my wife’s favorite holiday. And she’s instilled that fervor in our two children. They start talking in November about what they will wear for the next Halloween.

This past month, my 4-year-old daughter has demanded vampires in each nightly bedtime story. I tried to slip in Cinderella the other night. Becky’s face lit up: “Daddy, that’s a great idea. Tell me about the time that Cinderella got bit on the neck by a vampire.”

So over the years I’ve learned to get into the mood. My job Halloween nights: to sit on the front porch with huge bags of goodies for little goblins marching up our sidewalk, while my wife and children take their own tour of the neighborhood in costume. (My wife wears a fake hatchet in her head. My son, now 14, has never worn anything without fake blood, the kind that drips on the carpet.)

Reaching beyond our neighborhood, one of their stops will be at Lee Rhodes’ house on Norma Lane in Anaheim. Rhodes is used to getting people from outside his area.

“We’ve had people come from San Diego and Riverside who have heard about us,” he told me.

Rhodes creates Halloween games for youngsters to play in his driveway on the big night. Last year he had two games, and his parents and cousins pitched in to help him operate them. He spends weeks planning something new for each Halloween.

This year: a large board with 100 squares. Some of the squares have werewolves, some have vampires. You win prizes, like a lighted key chain or a small toy, if you manage to hit one with a Velcro-like ball. Rhodes always sees to it that every youngster wins at least something.

My son was about 5 when he and my wife first came across the Rhodeses’ home on Halloween. They came back so excited they made me go see it. They’ve been back almost every year since, though we no longer live on Norma Lane.

Rhodes, 38, told me it all started 13 years ago when his parents told him they’d decided to stay in the backyard and not entertain trick-or-treaters that year. Rhodes, who happened to be in the toy business at the time, couldn’t bear the thought.

“When I was growing up, my parents had always made Halloween so special,” he said. “It brought such warm memories to me.”

So that year and the next, Rhodes handed out “snap caps” at his family home. (They make a small “pop” when you throw them to the ground.) After that, he decided to invent a Halloween game. And he’s had some great games over the years. Last year he made what amounted to children’s pinball machines.

“The year before, we’d had about 120 Halloweeners, but last year it was over 300,” he said. “When I see how excited the kids get just playing the game, it’s worth all the effort.”

The other day I was telling my family about Rhodes’ newest game. That night, at story time, my daughter said: “Daddy, tell me a story about the time that a vampire in that man’s game came alive and bit all the Halloween kids on the neck.”

Oh well, at least it was a new twist. You don’t get that kind of fun on Rutherford B. Hayes’ birthday.

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Missing Bobby: Sunday was my paternal grandmother’s 96th birthday, and it brought to mind the importance of family. Then on Tuesday I received a wonderful, heartfelt letter from Harriet Robinson of Houston. Her brother was Robert H. Green, the well-known Orange County civil rights lawyer and former Superior Court judge who died a few weeks ago. It was standing room only in cavernous Department One at the county courthouse for Judge Green’s memorial service.

Robinson wrote that she and her brother were especially close growing up during the Depression in Hollywood, because their father was a gambler who didn’t work much. She and her brother went to 18 schools as their father drifted along, she wrote, before they finally graduated from Hollywood High School.

When Green entered the Navy during World War II, he wore a bracelet she’d given him with this inscription on the back: “To Bobby with love, Harriet.” She wrote about the memorial service, which she attended: “He would have loved being there.”

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Cyberspace Medicine: It’s the computer age, even if you’re a hospital patient. La Palma Intercommunity Hospital recently installed computers and software for patients with communications disorders--usually the result of strokes or head injuries.

Spending time reading or working on programs on the computer helps stimulate thinking for those kinds of patients, says the hospital’s speech-language pathologist, Susan Allen. She adds that “improving patients’ attention, memory and reasoning skills is crucial to helping them regain independence at home.”

The computers were a gift from Anaheim-based Sertoma International, a nonprofit group that specializes in aiding those with communications disorders.

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Wrap-Up: My daughter’s delight at Halloween made me wonder what this holiday-made-for-children will be like for youngsters who have no families to take them trick-or-treating. I asked at the Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange, the county’s temporary shelter for abused or homeless children.

Happily, it has a terrific night planned for the young people there. Rick Bazant, Orangewood’s community program director, says there’s a haunted house on the grounds for them to explore. And its 260 young people will be decked out in nice costumes donated to the home. They’ll trick-or-treat at the 10 cottages where they live. Orangewood has plenty of donated candy to pass around.

“For what many of these kids have been through, it is amazing--their resiliency,” Bazant said. “They are very, very excited about Halloween and picking out what they’ll wear.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com