It’s Stolen Cannon Day

By Neal Graffy

173 years ago tonight, five Barbareños – Jose Antonio de la Guerra, Jose “Chato” Lugo, Jose E. Garcia, Jose Dolores Garcia, and Pacifico Cota – decided to steal and hide a cannon that was lying on the beach awaiting shipment to Monterey. Things did not go exactly and as easily as planned, but their efforts have been memorialized on three of our street names as well as the first official seal of the City of Santa Barbara. So here’s the full story!

I produced this many years ago as the pilot for a weekly TV show we were hoping to run on three or four cable channels with sponsoring from Santa Barbara Bank and Trust. We had a great crew, Tony Ruggieri and Chris Bell on cameras, Jon Zubar director, Annie J. Dahlgren editor, Doug Hector on animation and music by David West (though I did the theme song). Actors in this episode were James Paul Garcia, Luis Moreno and Salistino San Juan. Though we had rave reviews from Tom Thomas (a great guy!) and the top brass at the bank, the cost of the show was too much for the advertising budget folks so it never happened. As part of the package, I had another 10 scripts ready to go and 40 plus possible topics. Oh well, that’s show biz!