Traveling man

By Guy Keeler
The Fresno Bee
(Published January 17, 1999)

One day last summer, a Fresno sign painter pointed his 1977 Winnebago south on Highway 99 and took off for a trip across the country.

There's a little bit of tumbleweed in everyone. Even those firmly anchored by job and family often wonder where wind and whim might take them if they had the nerve to break loose.

That's why men like Francisco Vargas fascinate us. Last summer, he did what most people only dream of doing. He temporarily closed the book on his life in Fresno and hit the road.

His first goal the Biosphere 2 Tucson Az

"This was going to be a working vacation," he says. "My goal was to make it to Key West Fla.."

Vargas set out without a detailed itinerary. He simply pointed his 1977 Winnebago south on Highway 99 and took off. The 47-year-old sign painter and artist, who was born in Washington and grew up in Fresno, figured he could work his way across the country, stopping here and there to earn food and gas money as needed.

"It was an adventure," Vargas says, speaking with the experience of someone who has come within a few dollars of getting stranded a thousand miles from home. "It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be."

Vargas, whose engaging brown eyes and easy smile form instant bridges with people he meets, was gone four months and put 10,000 miles on his motor home. He dodged hurricanes and nearly ran out of money a couple of times. At one point, Vargas got so fed up with the gloomy weather and uncertain job prospects that he turned around and headed home, traveling about 50 miles before deciding he had come too far to quit.

"Big Pine Keys" 30 miles from Key West, Florida

Technology has changed the work of sign painters like Vargas. Hand lettering is being replaced by computers, which allow anyone to create vinyl letters up to 4 feet tall with a machine. These vinyl letters can be used to create signs on anything except textured surfaces.

Vargas uses both paintbrushes and computers in his work. In addition to signs, he does murals and fine-art painting. Vargas did the 8-by-12-foot painting of Marilyn Monroe on the Weco Supply Co. building in the 3700 block of East Ventura Avenue. He also created a 4-by-14-foot mural inside the Coffee Thoughts Cafe at 7191 N. Cedar Ave. and did the outside signs and some inside graphics for Las Margaritas Restaurant & Cantina at Ventura Avenue and R Street.

The desire to roam the country as an itinerant artist burned within Vargas for years before he decided to follow his dream.

"I always wanted to travel, but I never got the chance to do those kinds of things when I was younger," he says. "I was busy raising my daughters. But they're grown now, and all I was doing was working. There was nothing holding me back, and something within myself told me I could do it."

Traveling from place to place in search of work is nothing new for sign painters, says Vargas. Centuries ago, these artists learned their craft from masters and were expected to prove their worth for a time by traveling from town to town, working as they went and picking up new ideas along the way. Craftsmen who gained experience in this manner came to be called "journeymen."

Vargas was operating a janitorial service in San Jose in the 1970s when he got the urge to paint.

"I went to a painter to have some business cards made," he says. "I felt painting was something I could do. I watched other sign painters and learned a lot on my own."

Vargas moved back to Fresno in the late 1980s and eventually started his own sign-painting business.

  Although he was following in the footsteps of others in making his summer trip, Vargas knew before he set out that tradition would not pay his food and gas bills. He would have to find work from strangers in strange towns - or starve.
Vargas took some money with him but was not able to save enough money in advance to cover all his expenses.

"The RV is a gas hog, and your bills at home don't stop when you're away," he says.

The Blacksmith Shop, Jean Lafitte, New Orleans, LA

Vargas was undaunted by the prospect of scouring the countryside in search of faded signs, then making cold calls on proprietors to ask for work. But he knew there was a better way.

Before leaving Fresno, Vargas posted his travel plans in an Internet chat room operated by the Letterheads, an organization of professional sign artists. Vargas billed himself as the "Traveling Millennium Sign Artist."

Other sign artists from as far away as Ireland and Minnesota responded to encourage Vargas on his trek. Several along his route invited him to stop and see them and offered to provide leads on jobs.

Vargas left Fresno on July 3 and spent some time in Los Angeles and San Diego before heading east to Calexico; Tucson, Ariz.; and El Paso, San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston, Texas. He stopped at public libraries and other computer outlets along the way to file periodic trip updates so Internet browsers could follow his progress.

Si Allen, owner of Allen's Signs in La Mirada, helped Vargas find work in Los Angeles and San Diego.

"I knew he was an experienced sign painter," says Allen. "I figured why not give him a shot? He stayed at my place overnight, and we got to be good friends."

Weather created problems in Gulf coast states. Wind and thunderstorms spawned by Tropical Storm Frances and Hurricane Georges made it difficult to find work in coastal communities where precautionary evacuations had brought life to a standstill. By the time he reached New Orleans on Sept. 10, Vargas yearned for sunny California.

Cisco writing in front of the Guadalupe River, Seguin, Texas

Vargas informed his Internet followers that he was heading home and was surprised at their reaction. Some were critical; others came to his defense. Their comments made him wonder if turning back was the right thing. A few days later, while driving west, Vargas turned around, convinced it was better to risk the unknown by heading to Florida than live with the knowledge he had quit without reaching his goal.

Vargas pushed on, passing through the Florida cities of Pensacola, Gainesville and Fort Lauderdale before reaching Key West on Oct. 14.

"What Francisco did was a pretty bold adventure," says Chad Schmidt, who owns a Fresno computer network engineering company and agreed to keep an eye on the sign painter's house while he was away. "He basically piled everything in his RV and took off."

Schmidt has known Vargas for several years. Schmidt's father was a sign painter who worked with Vargas, and Schmidt managed his father's business for more than three years before getting into computer work.

"I think the Internet played a major role in the success of Francisco's journey," says Schmidt. "Meeting people through the chat room is what made the trip possible.

"Francisco posted reports as he moved from city to city. He'd find a library or a Kinko's and sit down with his laptop to tell us all the happy and weird stuff. It was pretty neat to turn on the computer and find out where he had been."

"It was like an education," says Vargas, summing up the value of his quest.

Besides soaking up local culture and meeting new people, Vargas shot more than 50 rolls of film on his trip. Most of the shots depict interesting works of art that he intends to use as ideas for future projects.

Vargas says his most memorable painting job came in Birmingham, Ala., where he had to operate a boom more than 100 feet high to repaint the sign on a factory tower.

A Pat King Project. Birmingham, Alabama

When he reached Key West, Vargas had his photograph taken in Sloppy Joe's Bar (Ernest Hemingway's favorite watering hole), then had friends post the photo on the Letterhead Web site to celebrate his accomplishment.

Vargas also did some work in Key West, such as repainting signs for Robert's Plumbing and Paradise Glass & Mirror.

People were friendly everywhere he went, says Vargas.

"Florida was pretty cool," he says. "It reminded me a lot of California."

While painting a sign in hot, humid Florida, he says, a woman even took pity on him and handed him a beer.

Later that month, with more bad weather brewing in the Atlantic, Vargas pointed his motor home west. In six days he was home.