I never met my only Spanish-speaking great-grandmother, Josefa Erro, because she died in 1925, six months after the first Fiesta. But as a kid in the 1960s, I watched carefully for her in the parade every year.
My grandmother ensured we arrived early to find a place in the shade. She created a contest — who would first spot the Blacksmith Shop float coming down the street? A real blacksmith working his real forge with a real fire, pulled by mules — right there on State Street! She’d exchange waves with Jim Smith, the iconic Goleta blacksmith. She knew him because he’d crafted bean cutters, branding irons, and other farming tools for her coastal ranch at Refugio, where for decades her husband relied on horse-drawn implements and summer’s fog drip for his dry-farmed lima beans and tomatoes.
We, too, stood up to wave and to see where Jim Smith had branded the hind end of his wooden float with our family’s cattle brand, the conjoined initials “JE” — for our great-grandmother, Josefa Erro. That burnt JE brand was the parade’s highlight for us.