Santa Barbara? Like the Soap Opera?

A bus full of seven and eight year old Croatian ski school students is about that last place that one would expect to pick up cultural insight about coping with the wars of the 1990’s. Yet there I was, seated behind rows of neon-orange vest-clad Croatian schralpers hitching a ride back down from Sljeme. One of the ski school instructors, a Dalmatian by the name of Mario, could not help but ask where I was from. I was interrupted before I could even tell him what state Santa Barbara was in. The story that he related was perhaps the most bizarrely coincidental anecdotes I have ever heard.
During “the war,” Mario’s village was completely without electricity. They had a TV in the local bar, but no means with which to power it. One of his friends, refusing to live in a village cut off from such a valuable source of entertainment and news, removed the batteries from his car and rigged them up to the TV. This macgyvered entertainment system brought the entire village together every night to watch the only two programs available in the area during the war: the news, and Santa Barbara, a soap opera set in my home town that no Santa Barbaran (myself included) has ever heard about, much less seen. Santa Barbara, it seemed, was one of the few things that brought Mario’s village together during such tough times. The Santa Barbara frenzy reached such a pitch that members of all of the neighboring villages would come together around Mario’s rigged (now region-wide) entertainment system every week to watch the latest installment. After the war, many across the region even named bars and restaurants after characters from the soap. One woman even paid for a private mass to pray for the speedy recovery of one of the show’s stars after he was hit by a car in the U.S.
Being a Santa Barbaran, and having never heard of the show (Mario was very surprised), I have begun to mention my town of origin to everyone I am introduced to in Zagreb. The response is always the same. “Santa Barbara?! Like that show we used to watch during the war?” How could one show bring together so many people? Was it simply the only thing on? Was there something about the characters that drew people like Mario (ski instructors are not the typical demographic targeted by soaps) back to the TV episode after episode? How did the show impact popular culture during and after the war? What would cause a person to name their business after a character or hold a mass in their honor? Am I just imagining that it was something more than it actually was? Regardless, being from Santa Barbara, I would like to explore this obsession further in my time here, if for no better reason than to finally be able to put a face to these characters that people like Mario keep telling me about.