‘We Knew What Was Important’

A decade ago, my photographer friend Kam Jacoby and I embarked upon a photo essay exploring Guadalupe in Northern Santa Barbara County, just west of Santa Maria. Built mostly around agriculture, the tapestry of its population was woven of European, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, and Mexican threads. There was an excellent Mexican restaurant, a grocery store owned and operated by the Masatani family since 1922, a Catholic church, and a Buddhist temple. The white sand dunes where Cecil B. DeMille filmed The Ten Commandments in 1923 stretched out in the distance, and the town seemed refreshingly unpretentious and quirky, filled with stories and folks who were glad to talk to us.

One of the locals who welcomed us was Betty Silva-Smith (1926-2024). We sat with her at the kitchen table in her little stucco house, and she brought out an array of old photographs and albums, yellowed newspaper clippings, and various artifacts and memorabilia, even her own childhood report cards.

Betty was born in Paris –– Paris, Texas, that is –– in 1926. Her father left for California in 1943 in search of work and was employed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in Guadalupe. The family, which included Betty and five brothers, joined him in June 1944, traveling west by train, and Betty promptly found a job in the payroll office of a produce packing company called the California Vegetable Growers.

“When you have five brothers, you’ve got to compete,” said Betty. “If they jumped, I jumped higher.” She channeled that competitive spirit and athletic ability into sports, particularly softball. In 1944, she joined the Rockettes, Guadalupe’s champion all-girls softball team.

I asked her if she had any specific softball-related memories, and her eyes filled with tears. “When I was in 3rd grade,” she said, “my daddy came to one of the games at my school to watch me play.”

Isn’t it funny what ends up mattering so much? (Parents take note.)

“He was so busy, and he worked so hard,” said Betty, “but he made it a point to be there for me.” She explained that this was the year when her enthusiasm for softball had started in earnest, and it made her feel special and proud that her father had recognized this. More than 80 years later, it still shimmered in her memory.

Betty met her future husband, Everett, also a softball player, at one of the games, and they married in 1945. He too worked for the California Vegetable Growers, driving a long-line truck to Los Angeles. After their two children were born, Betty took on other jobs, including a 15-year stint as a clerk and bookkeeper in a hardware store. Everett passed away in 1986, but Betty managed to stay busy, and she married again, and traveled all over the world.

“We didn’t have money,” mused Betty, as we were leaving, “but we had each other. We learned what was important … caring about people, taking care of people.”

Betty’s life in many ways seemed to exemplify small-town America at a particular period in history, and Guadalupe still held echoes of those days. There is a gritty kind of charm to the town, and Kam and I felt more like time travelers than tourists. We passed a war memorial, a vintage theater, and the curious pink building that once held the Far Western steakhouse. We stopped at the old cemetery, whose distinct sections reflected the ethnic diversity of the place — a Japanese area, for example, with tombstones inscribed in Japanese characters, and another of mostly Hispanic names and distinctly Catholic statues. 

An affable groundskeeper told us that the remains of a Native American man rested beneath a certain olive tree. Pots of colorful plastic flowers sprouted brightly here and there, while stone angels spread their wings. Farm fields stretched out in the distance as Kam and I drove home, and at one point a very long freight train lumbered through on the tracks along the highway, and everything came to a standstill, not that things were moving much anyway.

I thought again of Betty, and of the old Quaker motto that she had read to us and said expressed her whole approach to life: “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness or abilities that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

It seemed the proper spirit for a sojourn, then and now.