Candy Cane Court is neighborhood's gift to the community

Christmas time is so exciting at the Vidal house. The lights are a little more festive than ever and we added more karaoke songs to our Christmas Karaoke song list. I recall an article about my mom's neighborhood published a few years ago too and I'm excited to share it again!

POWAY ---- When Rose and Rudy Vidal bought their Parkside home in 1990, the surrounding area was a brand-new upper-middle-class neighborhood filled with tile-roof and stucco houses along a small cluster of quiet streets.

The Vidals had no clue that 15 years later, the area would be a major destination for people seeking annual holiday magic.

These days, traffic is bumper to bumper in the neighborhood every night in December. The draw is thousands of Christmas lights, lawn ornaments and other decorations that transform the area into Poway's semi-famous Candy Cane Court.

Now an icon for both holiday and neighborhood spirit, the site is a regular on published lists of holiday attractions in the region. Bus and limousine tour companies also include the neighborhood among the stops in their Christmastime sightseeing packages.

Grinch types would probably resent such an annual invasion of their neighborhood. Candy Cane Court residents revel in it, however, going out with their decorations and then spending their evenings in their driveways so they can enjoy visitors' reactions.

"It's just fun," Vidal said last week. "You'll see cars driving very, very slow, like in a funeral procession, with the lights turned off. Many people are walking, children (act) like they're in a park, and there'll be people singing on the street. ... We look forward to it cause it brings us good feelings."

Big on neighborliness
Candy Cane Court extends along Hickory Street and down three cul-de-sacs that adjoin it ---- Rockrose, Hickory and Butterwood courts. Like the rest of Parkside, the neighborhood is tucked into the southern end of the massive Rancho Arbolitos residential development.

Built by Standard Pacific Homes just west of Carriage Road, the neighborhood is within an easy walk of Starridge Park and accessed via Saddlewood Drive. Houses in the neighborhood are one- and two-story with square footage ranging from about 2,200 to just over 3,000.

Most of those who bought into the neighborhood when it was new were young families with children, residents said. The years since then have seen relatively few homes change hands, they said.

When houses in the neighborhood do sell, they go for anywhere between $800,000 to more than $1 million these days, homeowners said.

Original residents described each other as friendly enough from the get-go that waves from driveways and front-yard chats were common. Hectic lives and busy schedules, however, generally kept residents from gathering en masse except for the occasional barbecue or party, they said.

That changed after Butterwood Court resident Vicki Lammers decided the neighborhood needed some kind of tradition.

"I wanted to do something that would bring us all together as a group," she said. "One of my friends told me that she was making all of her candy cane (lawn ornaments) for her house, so I asked her for the directions. It sounded pretty easy. So I wrote it out for all of the neighbors."

Thousands of lights
Lammers concentrated her efforts on getting people on her own street to make the canes and use them decorate their homes. Not everybody initially bought into the idea, she said.

Those who did produced candy canes of varying quality and aesthetic appeal, said Lammers, adding that early manufacturing methods were to blame. She and other residents said they used backyard barbecues and ovens to heat plastic PVC pipes, then tried to bend them into the correct shape and attach lights.

The first display featured about 12,000 lights, Lammers said. The candy canes' inconsistent appearance notwithstanding, their bright and cheery impact on the neighborhood prompted growing numbers of residents to join in and expand the effort to include other types of lighted decorations in subsequent years, they said.

Pre-made candy canes' arrival in retail stores brought nearly the entire neighborhood on board.

"I remember the first year that Wal-Mart started carrying candy canes," Lammers said. "I went there and I told them, 'you better start stocking up on them,' cause I knew everybody in the neighborhood would be in there buying them."

Now, less than half a dozen of the neighborhood's homes stay dark when Candy Cane Court is turned on every year, residents said. Participants constantly try to improve their personal displays, and this year's utilizes more than 50,000 lights, Lammers said.

Randy Dutcher is among the most innovative of the residents. His Butterwood Court home is drawing high praise from both neighbors and visitors this year because its decorations include lighted images of a ringing bell on the roof, snowflakes falling down the side of the house, and a star shooting out of a palm tree.

Hunt starts early
Dutcher, who moved in the neighborhood in 1993 with his wife Pat and the couple's three daughters, makes most of his decorations himself. He admitted to having a secret weapon in a friendly competition that has him and Lammers trying to outdo each others' displays each year.

"I have a computer program that controls light sequences," Dutcher said. "My goal is to kind of dink around with these computer programs and try and do something (different every year). I don't golf, so I guess it's turned into kind of my thing ---- I'm a geek who likes to play with Christmas lights."

He and other residents said they start planning and gathering supplies for their Candy Cane Court displays months before the day after Thanksgiving, which signals the start of an unofficial set-up period.

"You have to kind of start looking over the summer," said Kathie Yauk, who moved to the neighborhood with husband Mark and their two young sons nine years ago.

Like other newcomers before them, the family "chimed right in" when it came to Candy Cane Court and quickly learned that the QVC shopping channel and Costco were prime hunting grounds, she said, adding that both begin offering Christmas decorations in August.

Her family now has more money than she would like to think about invested in its annual display, which had a giant, blow-up snow globe added to it this year, Yauk said.

Getting in the spirit
Blown fuses and electric bills that are twice what they are in a normal month are common problems for Candy Cane Court residents. Many said they have installed extra circuit breakers in their homes, to handle the extra electricity load needed once a year.

The day after Thanksgiving, Candy Cane Court's creators start dragging storage boxes out of attics and garages and go to work. Set-up takes a week to 10 days for most residents.

Although grumbling is common early in that period, participants said, their complaints give way to a sense of purpose and comradery as the decorations start going up and neighbors jump in to help each other. However, they said the real payoff comes when switches are thrown for the first time and visitors start oohing and aahing.

"The satisfaction that you get from the people and everybody telling you how nice it is or that it has become their family tradition to come see the lights makes it all worthwhile," said Yauk. "A lady driving by last week stopped to say thank you. This was her fourth time this year driving by.

"We get a lot of feedback that they really enjoy it. And we get people who will tell us that we had something done this way last year, and then we moved it over here this year. So they know."

Repeat visitors include City Councilman Don Higginson, who said Candy Cane Court visits are a tradition for his family.

"I think it's neat to have them to provide a little Christmas cheer for other people," he said. "Sort of the spirit of Christmas is giving, not receiving. And I think it's their way of giving to the community."

The display usually stays up through New Year's Day, residents said.