Aug. 27—Ferby Vigil wore a 150-year-old concha belt that once belonged to her mother, a sign as clear as any that Fiesta de Santa Fe was just around the corner.
A papier-mâché Zozobra hung from the ceiling in her living room — evidence her household was already in the throes of the centennial celebration of Old Man Gloom.
“I don’t know why, but it’s the only place I never get tired of going,” 99-year-old Vigil said of the annual burning. “I haven’t missed a year since I was little.”
For the Santa Fe native, who is nearly the same age as Old Man Gloom, the torching of the dour marionette has always been an exciting part of her hometown’s Fiesta celebrations. No two years have felt the same. Just ahead of Friday’s milestone burning of the bogeyman, that heady sense of excitement again beckoned.
She spoke of the various iterations of Zozobra she remembers through the years — the time he wore suspenders and the year he had red hair, provoking the crowd in a major way. She was curious about what he would be wearing when he appears Friday on a 50-foot pole in Fort Marcy Park before a sea of 65,000 revelers. How would he look? How would they have his hair styled?
She just “has to see” the $300,000, custom-made hot-air balloon depicting Old Man Gloom that is expected to be displayed for the first time Friday at the 100th anniversary bash, said Vigil, who will celebrate her own 100th birthday in February.
She never thinks about turning 100, she said, “because it seems so far away.”
Vigil has already been out to see the newly installed Zozobra statue at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, where she posed for a photograph.
“In the beginning, we were afraid of him,” she said, remembering the Zozobra of her childhood.
When she was 6 and misbehaving, her parents had a ready-made warning: “Zozobra’s going to come.”
Vigil hasn’t lost her sense of spirit.
“She is a firecracker,” said her daughter, Patricia Bermudez, adding her mother still loves to go to Fiesta, too, where she listens to the music and watches people dance on the Plaza.
Vigil recalled capering on the Plaza deep into the night during Fiesta years ago — a time when she would don festive clothing and the city was electric with mariachi music, the streets astir with dancers she knew.
Back in the day, she said, she used to sew clothing for the Fiesta.
“People used to dress more or less like her, but now you don’t see it as much anymore. Just a handful dress up,” Bermundez added. “But before, everyone would dress up for the occasions.”
Vigil worked for years at New Mexico Public Education Department and once owned a bar and lounge in Pecos with her husband. She now has three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
She said she encourages younger people to travel while they can because she finds she has limited interest in that now.
“Except for a dance,” Vigil said. She’ll travel for a dance.
She recalled dancing at past Fiesta celebrations. “Anyone who wanted to join the dances jumped in,” she said.
Vigil joked that she’ll be on the lookout for someone to dance with at Fiesta this year. “If Zozobra was there, I would dance with him,” she said.
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