GILROY
– Robert Bagnatori prefers the personal touch.
The retired sign painter worked for more than 20 years
hand-painting signs for service stations around Northern
California.
GILROY – Robert Bagnatori prefers the personal touch.
The retired sign painter worked for more than 20 years hand-painting signs for service stations around Northern California.
Bagnatori, 82, then went to work for Diamond Advertising, in Gilroy, until he retired in 1986. Afterward, he painted signs part-time for Pay Less Drug Store.
“They’ve got computers now. They can put it in the computer,” he said. “The free-hand sign painter really doesn’t exist anymore when you’ve got a machine.
“It was an art.”
Some of the signs he crafted by using a felt-tip pen were featured in the May/June 1996 edition of “SignCraft” magazine. He has painted signs on multiple surfaces, including silos, trucks and windows and for businesses that sell everything from auto parts to groceries to Chinese food.
Now, computers can nearly replicate his old-time art and dominate the industry.
“I notice the difference if you look at a computer sign,” he said. “If you see a hand-painted sign, it has a human touch.”
He stumbled into sign-painting upon returning to San Francisco after four years in the Navy. He served in the South Pacific for 22 months during World War II on the USS Piedmont.
Hand-lettering the signs for the gas stations was a well-paying union job, he said. But it was difficult work, often requiring him to paint the service station, as well.
“That was a hard job,” he said. “You had to work for it.”
But hard work wasn’t new to him or other members of his family. The youngest among four children, he spent most of his childhood in San Francisco. His mother, Teresa, was forced to get a job in a cannery after his father, an Italian immigrant and well-known prize fighter in San Francisco, died at 42 of pleurisy. Bagnatori was only 4 years old.
With his mom as the sole provider for the family, Bagnatori had to learn how to take care of himself, including walking himself to school. His mother would give him his lunch money before she left for work.
“Before lunchtime, I would spend it on a toy or an ice cream bar and the by the time lunchtime came around, I had no money,” he said.
He never married, although he said he dated. He just never met the right girl, he said.
Retirement forced the busy sign painter to slow down.
He still dabbles in sign painting to supplement his Social Security income. He paints the name signs for bowlers who score 300 at Gilroy Bowl. The signs are plywood with the number 300 painted in gold.
He also draws in his sketchbook to pass the time. It features lifelike portraits of famous people, such as Julia Roberts, John F. Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey and Clint Eastwood.
He’d rather be working so he could stay busy. Instead, he watches too much television, he said. His favorite program to watch on TV is the coverage of the Iraq war on CSPAN.
In fact, he thinks it was viewing television that may have sparked a heart attack three years ago. He suffered the heart attack shortly after seeing the airplanes crash into the World Trade Center towers.
“I was kind of upset,” he said.
He is doing fine now.
“At 82, I’m sort of lucky. A lot of people don’t live to be 82,” he said. “And I kind of consider I’m on borrowed time. What am I going to do if I live to be 100? Sure as heck, I’m not getting any younger.”
