Opening a Bag of Life’s Tricks and Treats

Today’s offering, in the spirit of the Great Pumpkin, is a mixed bag of tricks and treats.

I have always liked Halloween even though it reminds me of one of the harshest, most traumatic experiences of my childhood. I have told this story before but it’s worth repeating.

There I was, age 10 or 11, trudging up Edgemont with my buddy Brien just a half block from the safety of his home. I might have been a cowboy or a monster--I don’t recall. I don’t remember what Brien was either.

Our mission mattered more than our costumes. We planned it well, making a map of the neighborhood to maximize our efforts, taking care to hit that big house where the rich people lived. We towed a red Radio Flyer wagon; heavy bags wouldn’t slow us down. We started before sunset, earning the wrath of some grown-ups, and were still on the streets until every porch was dark.

A bigger kid, maybe 14 years old, appeared on a bike and asked me for a treat. I figured, big deal, I don’t like Clark bars.

I offered him one.

He grabbed my bag and rode off cackling into the night, leaving me standing there with the Clark bar, devastated, trying not to cry.

Brien’s mother, God rest her soul, nudged her boy to share his booty.

Adversity, I’m told, builds character. Time and again I should have learned the lesson about no good deed going unpunished. Certainly all of life, not just Halloween, is full of treats and tricks.

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This brings me to a treat--a rather terrific treat at that.

A few weeks ago, when I first wrote about Hepatitis C and my cousin Curly awaiting a liver transplant, I resolved to keep readers updated on his condition.

Curly lives. And he lives with a new liver that is said to work beautifully, for the production of bile is indeed a beautiful thing.

Curly, you may recall, is one of the 4 million Americans believed infected with Hepatitis C--many of whom are utterly unaware they contracted the blood-borne virus. Of those 4 million, some health officials estimate that as many as 800,000 people could be in need of liver transplants in the coming decades.

Curly’s story inspired other affected families to write to me about the urgency of this epidemic and importance of organ donation. Two weeks after the death of her husband, Ron Hoopes, Jean Taueffer of La Crescenta shared their experience for another column.

“If one person decides to donate their organs because of it,” Jean told me later, “then it was worth our efforts.”

The movement to encourage organ donation is becoming a crusade. The other day, I also heard from Transplant for Life, a group affiliated with the Irving Grant Service Center at Temple Kol Tikvah (Voice of Hope) in Woodland Hills.

Transplant for Life is active in promoting the National Donor Sabbath, a program scheduled for Nov. 13 to 15 by the U.S. Department of Health Resources.

Spiritual questions often make people reluctant to fill out their DMV organ donor forms. Transplant for Life has been spreading the organ donation message to temples and beyond. One of their objectives is to enlist rabbis in the mission.

“Judaism’s overarching command,” Rabbi Steven Jacobs of Kol Tikvah said in his Yom Kippur sermon, “is to save life and limb and has prompted all rabbis who have written on the subject to indeed urge us as Jews, and non-Jews, to make provision for donating our parts.”

If the subject still seems a little creepy, well, it’s time to move on to some tricks.

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Halloween seems the perfect time for sharing a couple of recent letters.

A recent report of ghosts and ghost busting in Tujunga led Barbara Hughes to write:

I find myself sitting at my computer trying to allow my sense of humor to go into override. In the Sunday Valley section . . . Scott Harris takes a timely (Halloween) lighthearted jab at Sunland and Tujunga.

As President of the Sunland/Tujunga Chamber of Commerce, do I allow this guy . . . [to] refer to our community as “the crumbly hills of the San Gabriel Mountains which always seemed a tad eccentric, maybe even spooky”?

I think not!

And so on. Barbara Hughes left me feeling a little guilty, because she invited me to the twin towns’ “Old Towne Commerce Street Faire” last Saturday. But I was out of town, visiting the woman who is threatening to marry me. (Talk about scary.)

The ghost story, you may recall, involved a little metaphysical whatnot shop called Auxien on Foothill Boulevard, which claims as one of its specialties the removal of poltergeists. I learned one valuable tip when encountering such unwanted guests: Rearrange the furniture.

Hughes said the tale “makes me wonder if the Auxien people had leapt off the pages of an ‘X-Files’ script and set up shop in our town.” Hughes wanted me to know that there is more to Sunland and Tujunga than things that go bump in the nights. She seemed puzzled why these “X-Files” types would gravitate there.

I’m not so sure it’s such a mystery, because I also received a letter with a return address of the UFO Society of America, based in Sunland. The author noted that I had recalled a visit to a Sunland radio studio in which the topic was alien abduction.

The Sunland man writes:

I started a UFO Society last year. And it was listed in the World Almanac 1998. Associations and Societies heading. Since that time, I have received many requests from school kids for UFO data which I send out to them.

Now, here’s my problem. I REALLY want to meet a UFO alien. NO JOKE! I know there are people who claim to be “Contactees.” Except I can’t seem to locate the “Contactees” to contact! To ask if I can arrange a “DATE” with an E.T.

Maybe you might mention my plight in your column? That would get the word out so I can contact a Contactee and get in contact with an E.T. Thanks!

I called the pager number listed but he hasn’t called back. Frankly, I’m not sure if this is another Halloween trick. (But who cares?) At any rate, any Contactee may contact me and together we can try to contact him and fix him up with an E.T.

File this not under X, but as another good deed that, no doubt, will not go unpunished.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.