Word: capistrano
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Founded by Fra Junipero Serra in 1776 the Mission of San Juan Capistrano on California's coast about half way between Los Angeles and San Diego, was already well seasoned when Richard Henry Dana Jr. (Two Years Before the Mast) visited it last century, called it the loneliest and loveliest spot he had ever seen. Of the legends clustered about this historic shrine mellowest is the tale that for 160 years migrating swallows have arrived at the Mission each year on March 19 (St Joseph's Day), flown south again on Oct. 23 (St. John...
...bigger until it all but blotted out the Mission sunlight, making the air loud with the beat of thousands of narrow wings. Suddenly, while the rest flew on to the canyons beyond, a great segment of the swallow cloud broke off, swooped down on the Mission. Then began Capistrano's annual battle of birds as the swallows fought to drive interloping swifts and sparrows from their last year's nests. Meantime cameras whirred, radio announcers chattered and Dona Magdalena Murillo, 89, triumphantly croaked her tale of watching the swallows' clocklike arrival and departure every year since childhood...
...Capistrano, a dust storm added to the woes of the firefighters. In Los Angeles itself, a mantle of ashes settled over everything...
...week at 65 m.p.h., it toppled oil derricks, flattened orchards, roiled the harbor until shipping ceased, caused wide damage. Then came the fire. Started apparently by fallen power-lines, blazes flickered up in the night on three broad fronts, spread out through the dry, brush-matted hills of Altadena, Capistrano, Malibu. Soon the tawny, tumbled country on all sides of Los Angeles was a mass of crackling flame. Beneath huge billows of smoke, it sprinted across the arid hills, licking up bungalows threatening oil depots, stealing down lush valleys to frizzle acres of fruit...