<Begin Segment 14>

LG: So you went back to Temple, got your degree, and then what happened next?

MR: What happened next? I was just working as a drafter, and I think because I had worked in the gear factory and gotten paid so well. My salary was pretty good, so I just kept on going. There was a point where the other, some of the other drafters really hated me, because I got paid more. Just because they'd come out of, I don't think I did any better work than they did, they just had been in a technical school, so their salaries were below mine, and they really resented me quite a bit, I think. And then, oh, one time, there was one woman, a lady engineer, this other thing that made them, my fellow drafters sort of dislike me was that she had me go out to Kansas, wherever the company was working for there, they were based in Kansas, and I got to hang out in Kansas for some reason. [Laughs] Yeah, wow. I don't know what I did there, I was supposed to talk to the company or learn about the company or something like that, and I just remember staying in a hotel and things like that in Kansas. And I'd never been to Kansas before, it was amazing, so flat. But I know that the other young, two other young drafters were, didn't like that very much. [Laughs]

LG: Jealous that you got to go to Kansas?

MR: Yes. And also they had an idea that I was being paid more, and I said, "I'm sure I didn't do any better work than they did." That was sort of at the end, towards the end of my career, I think, in drafting. And eventually I kept getting, I got laid off, I guess, from that company. And I would go another, I went to another, I did some more drafting, I think, and eventually, I think I began to collect social security at an early age, age sixty-two, as soon as I could. I always liked being laid off because I could collect unemployment, it was nice to not work.

LG: So during this time, was Seymour a professional painter?

MR: He was painting most of the time, yes. And yeah, I think I was earning the income, I think, at that time. He would sell his works in Rittenhouse Square, and he did make a good bit of money, mainly because he didn't tell them how much he was making. He would only say, "I sold five paintings," or something like that, and he would sell a whole lot more than that. [Laughs] They never charged very much, so people really bought... what was it, that person that was just talking to you? You were on the phone? He probably bought that painting.

LR: "Oh, give me fifty dollars."

MR: Yeah, yeah, something like that.

LR: But he wouldn't take it back, he had to go back to a storefront and write down everything that was sold, and then maybe take a percentage.

MR: That's probably... they would take --

LR: That's right.

MR: Oh, that's why he never went back there, right, okay.

LG: What sort of stuff did he paint? Do you have some...

MR: Yes, they're in the other room if you look... oh, that's one of his turnips, and there are some nice portraits of Lucas around the corner.

LR: His big thing was cityscapes.

MR: Towards the end of his life, yes, he would walk around the city and sit down someplace or other, and paint what he saw. And many of these buildings in the old neighborhoods don't exist anymore. So that's another thing. People would come by and say that, architects or people like that, and come by and say, "Oh my gosh, I knew that place. It's not there anymore." [Laughs]

LR: So he grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, the working class section, and so he was always drawn to those kind of communities, and he would literally sort of pack up. And I remember he would pack up in the morning, pretty early, and then just go off in the day and then come back with lots of stories and paintings. [Laughs] And again, he was attracted to those areas, especially loved to go along the river. I remember that, he used to go along the river.

MR: Uh-huh.

LR: He went straight up the river, and so all the abandoned Domino Sugar before they came, it's a... what do they call it now? Casino now. But back then it was just hunks of metal, and he was just attracted to the shapes of this post-industrial landscape as well. So he had a lot of paintings like that. And of old storefront churches...

MR: Sometimes people really nervous when he was in the neighborhood, because they didn't know, who is this guy? Is he police sitting there? They got very nervous about it. I think one time he was mugged out that way.

LR: Oh, he was there a few times when he was...

MR: He was mugged, attacked? I knew of one time. Yeah, yeah.

LR: Hours and hours.

MR: Hours?

LR: He called them, he was a Vietnam vet, he had some serious, he was very mentally unstable, and Dad would talk about how he had to talk to this guy, he just literally spent hours talking to this guy just so that he can get of this situation. Do you remember that?

MR: I don't remember that, all that. I know he was mugged.

LR: That's why he was by the train tracks.

MR: Yeah, he was by the train tracks. [Laughs]

LR: But he was there, and this guy caught him in there and he had him tracked, so he had to talk his way...

MR: Oh, I don't remember all that, okay. I know there was some incident like that, wow.

LR: But he had plenty of other stories when he would come back and talk about all these kids gathering around him wanting to learn how to draw, and he would show them how to draw superheroes and things like that. He had many more stories about having really good interactions with people than he did with having bad ones.

LG: So you have a son who keeps talking off the screen here. Was this your only child?

MR: Yes.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.