San Juan Capistrano Ca Celebrations

There are only a few days left before the deadline to enter the most hair-raising event in the monthlong Festival de las Golondrinas. During the blizzard of activities surrounding the swallows' legendary return to Mission San Juan, men will be judged not by their ability to spot tiny, migratory birds but by how quickly and how well they grow facial hair. By Friday, all contestants for the Hairiest Man competition must submit an application and $5.

Young men dressed as charros and women wearing brightly colored dresses turned the basketball court in front of the city's library into a dance floor Saturday afternoon in celebration of Mexico's victory over French forces in 1862. The women grasped the hem of their adelitas and twirled as their partners tapped their feet to music. Together, they did the Jarabe Tapatio , or Mexican hat dance, and the La Botella around empty glass bottles.

News travels far. And myths do, too. It seemed not too long ago that I was a student in a high school geography class in Trinidad and Tobago, a tiny twin-island nation in the southern Caribbean. The topic was North America. The only thing I can remember from that class is my teacher saying that he had heard about a startling phenomenon that takes place in California: On the same day every year, swallows return from South America to "this Catholic mission."

His nickname is "Mocho," which friends say means "something missing" in a local Indian dialect--a reference to the three fingers he lost in World War I. But few lives have been as full and complete as that of 96-year-old Paul Arbiso, known across the country as the man who rings the bells of Mission San Juan Capistrano on Swallows Day. On Tuesday, the patriarch of this old mission city was honored during ceremonies marking the unveiling of a mural portraying Arbiso in the historic train depot.

One of Jennifer Orr's tuba valves fell out just as she was approaching the judges' stand, but she played every note she could and marched on with Perris High School to win first place for best band in the Swallows Week Parade on Saturday. Despite morning showers that started and stopped, the skies cleared half an hour before the 34th annual parade started, and it proceeded without a hitch. About 8,000 people looked on, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

For the last 30 years, one of Dorothy O'Quinn's dreams was to come to Mission San Juan Capistrano and watch the fabled March 19 return of the swallows. The 81-year-old retired schoolteacher's wish was finally fulfilled Thursday. Armed with her camera, O'Quinn arrived at the mission early and couldn't help but keep scanning the skies. To hear her tell it, she expected the sky to darken and thousands of the migratory birds to swoop down into the mission.

The establishment of a monthly downtown street fair with open-air barbecues, vendors and entertainment was given unanimous preliminary approval this week by the City Council. The fair, to be called the San Juan Market Place and patterned after similar events in San Luis Obispo and Encinitas, would be held on the first Thursday of each month on Camino Capistrano and Ortega Highway, in front of Mission San Juan Capistrano. The fair organizers hope to launch their first event on May 7 or June 4.

For half a century, Evelyne Villegas-Lobo saved six tattered loose-leaf pages bearing scribbled words from the language spoken by her mother, a Juaneno Indian. These were simply mementos of a dead past, she figured. But a few years ago, Villegas-Lobo turned the pages over to anthropologists and members of her tribe.

Cliff swallows have a wide breeding range for a migratory bird--all the way from the northern Yukon down into southern Mexico--but it's their annual return to one tiny spot in San Juan Capistrano that brings out the crowds. The return of the swallows (celebrated in a hit 1940 tune) to Mission San Juan Capistrano will be marked Thursday, St. Joseph's Day, when 98-year-old town patriarch Paul Arbiso rings the mission bells, just as he has done for more than six decades.

They wore tight-fitting jeans, Western boots and cowboy hats. Some added leather bomber jackets to complete the rugged look as they and their horses drove herds of cattle into a metal pen. No, this wasn't the set of the hit film "City Slickers" or a scene from "Dallas."