This week we talk with Patrick Reynolds, a historical cartoonist, who lives out his hobby. He shares with us how he started his artistic career and how it has changed through the years. He shares with us how he has utilized his artistic abilities in several different jobs from tourism, marketing, and drawings of nuclear schematics for TMI. He shares with us that he has experienced several major events in history that he is considering making cartoons of. His cartoons have been published in various newspapers, he has published and sold books as well. We look forward to seeing Patrick's historic cartoons and learning about events we hadn't heard of in history before.
Transcription:
Intro 00:03
Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives, and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Patrick Reynolds 00:11
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to changing the rules and we have an incredible guest with us today. But before we let him on the air, I want to give you a little background, you know, we try every week to interview one of the luckiest people in the world. And the luckiest people in the world are those people who don't let everybody else control their lives, they figure out what they want, and they somehow figure a way to go do it. And you're gonna see how our guest meets those specs today. And the other thing I wanted to comment on is the name of our show is changing the rules. And the reason for that is all through our lives were given rules by everybody. Okay? When you start, your parents give you a set of rules. And then the schools give you a set of rules, and the Church gives you a set of rules and your boss gives you a set of rules. Before you know it, you got so many rules. And What rules do is two things. They tell you have to do this, or you can't do this. So the people who are independent and who become the luckiest people in the world have found a great way of changing the rules so that they get the freedom to be themselves. And today we have with us a young man, Patrick Reynolds, who is I think the best way to describe him is a historical cartoonist. So Patrick, say hello. And you can tell me that I was wrong and how he described you. Oh, hello, Ray. That's kind of accurate. I have a cartoonist that does historical subjects of places or people that you've never heard of. Or if you're familiar with them, something about them that's never known.
Ray Loewe02:01
So you found the interesting way of doing things. So you weren't always free to be you though. Warrior. Correct. So let's go back a little bit. When you are early in your life, you realize you had this flair for cartooning? Is that correct? Right. When I was a kid, and you developed it and when you had a chance to go to college or trade school, or whatever it is. You went to learn how to be a better cartoonist first.
Patrick Reynolds 02:27
I wanted to be an artist. And my hobby was artwork, okay. It would be great if I can make a living out of my hobby. So I made that decision to be an artist and I had a mentor, if you will in my hometown, who was a very accomplished artist, and I asked what's the best art school in our country? I can go to what I'm missing a beat. He says Pratt Institute, little known to me that is in the middle of Brooklyn, New York right next to the Bet Sty neighborhood. Okay. But you got through that you live through the experience. Okay, so, so early in your life. Okay. When you came out of Pratt, what did you do? I became an art director for an advertising agency in Scranton. It was sort of like getting my master's degree if you will. There's the whole thing. We can't hire you unless you have experience. So how can I get experienced? So this was it. So I stayed there a year and then I became an art director at an ad agency in Harrisburg. And I worked there for a year and then finally, the draft board caught up with me and says, you're not getting any more deferments. You have two months to make a decision. Otherwise, we will draft you. So I went in the army.
Ray Loewe03:49
Okay. And interesting. You were in intelligence in the army. Correct, Right. And it tells you something about cartoonists, doesn't it? And, you did some really interesting things. You did some aerial surveillance, and, you know, make a long story short, I understand you want up to the Bronze Star. I understand you left the Army Reserves as a retired Lieutenant Colonel. Right. Right. So this was a big part of your life. And I know you were telling me some stories when we were kind of prepping for this about how you actually wound up doing some drawing while you were doing this stuff. And, putting Mickey Mouse's on the flags just to keep yourself entertained and stuff like that. But rather than spending time there, I want to go on because I think the rest of your career was just absolutely phenomenal. I don't want to spend the time there. So you left the army. Right, and what did you do?
Patrick Reynolds 04:45
I got a job as an artist up in Schenectady for General Electric. I always want to say generous electric But General Electric. And that got me back on my feet in the art business. This. And from there, I became advertising manager of the host farm here in Lancaster. That's how I ended up in Lancaster.
Ray Loewe05:08
Okay, now I understand host farm is significant because you learned two things there that took over your career, right?
Patrick Reynolds 05:16
Oh, well really one thing from the my boss, I still have to make up the rate brochures to tell what it will cost to stay there for at a particular holiday. And I would add matchups and what's going to cost with the type of room. And then I would get it printed out and bring it to my boss, the manager. And he'd look at it. And he'd say, I want price to visit idiot-proof. idiot-proof, what are you talking about? He says, I want it so that any idiot can look at this and not have any questions, they'll understand everything you're trying to tell them. And that became one of the keys to my writing style. Okay. And there was something else that came out of there a while ago, I'm not going to match it up correctly. But it had to do something you didn't know, oh, I worked for the after I worked for host farm, I got a job as the public relations Information Specialist for the state tourism bureau where we promoted tours around the country. And I would look at what other states are doing. And I figured I want to do what they're not doing. And 1973-74 Halloween time. And I came up with a concept of, of a tour of haunted places in the state of haunted places you can visit. And the story got picked up by the New York Daily News front page of their travel section. And a couple of months later, I met the editor of the Travel section. I said what did I do, right? And he says, you told me something I didn't know. So when I came up with my cartoons, I decided to do with a one on Pennsylvania. And it would consist of stories from history that people never heard of, or even thought about.
Ray Loewe07:17
So here we are, we're doing something we didn't know. And the cartoons gave you a medium to make them idiot-proof. Right? Well, welcome to your own world, Patrick. So this led you on a career so so go back. And there was a point in time when you took off on your own because I think you got fed up with the bureaucracy. And you had this creativity that you wanted to run but I think you told me a story of that dealt with the bicentennial. And taking off to Boston and seeing something about Yankee something or other in the newspaper. So amplifying in that.
Patrick Reynolds 07:57
I was a member of the Society of America travel writers. And we had our convention in 1975 in several cities, and one of the first one was Boston. And on Sunday morning, right after the that previous Saturday night, I was in my hotel room and I watched this TV show you just came on Saturday Night Live 1975. Anyway, the next morning, I pick up the Boston Globe, and they had a cartoon, it was on their front page called Yankee almanac. It was a whimsical treatment of Massachusetts Bay Colony history for back in the 1600. And I said that is the coolest idea ever seen, I could do something like that for Pennsylvania. And at the time I was bucking for promotion to be our director of my bureau. At the time, I had delusions of grandeur. And so I did three of them. And one of them had to do with the July 3 and three significant events and PA and places that you would visit such as Gettysburg. Another one was on the mammoth fossil found in Pennsylvania, which is on display at the State Museum, on and on. So I did these three gave them to the higher up and didn't hear from them. And then what they did was they hired a guy from Virginia for the job that I wanted. And I thought I'm not long for this job. So he came to me and said, the powers that be were impressed by your comic strips, how long is it going to take to do one of them things? I said to myself, I'm not going to give this to the state. I'm keeping this for me. So I said four days a week, you know, wow, that's a lot to do. I said, Look, you're the boss. I'm going to do what you direct me to do and what you want done, I said but I'd like to do this on my own time. Therefore, I'd like you to get a letter of understanding from the powers that be that I can do this on my own time and sell it to the newspapers. And next day come back with a letter of understanding. And that's how it started. For there, I marketed to all the newspapers, I can in the state, I ended up getting picked up by 20 newspapers. But none of them were in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, one of these papers now became a Pittsburgh paper. But that was long, many long years later. So I did that for a couple of years. But still, I got I had time. Oh, after that cartoon started, it took me two years to leave my state job, because I came out with books on it. And the books sold fantastically, which I printed myself, by the way. And so after two years, I forgot I could make this on my own. So now you emerge as one of the luckiest people in the world. Right? Exactly. Because now you're doing your passion. Right. And there are two passions that I detect. One is cartooning. And the other is these historic events that you pick up. And you can make come to life for people, right? As if you're there. And you could do this and figure out how to get paid for it without putting up with the bureaucracy of the state of Pennsylvania, or somewhere. Exactly. Great. All right. So now we know why you were dealing with the luckiest people in the world. So over the years, what are some of the best topics that you uncovered? You mentioned the haunted houses, but what are some of the other ones that you found fascinating that you were able to turn into comics so that everybody could understand they were idiot-proof? And we tell people something new? Right, right. Well, sometimes I try to tie them in with a current event. For example, January 6, last year, the raid on the US Capitol, I got an idea of a different type of a mass gathering in Washington, one of the first ones and that was the Bonus Army that took place in 1932. What the bonus was, was Congress passed an act in 1924. That gave a bonus to every soldier that served in World War One. And that bonus was going to be paid in 1946. So at the time, in the 1920s, people were making a living, it was a great time. And then the Depression hit. Now, half these veterans, several million of them are destitute, their farms are being repossessed by the banks. So Washington had to do something. We need that money now not 1946. So Wright Patman from Texas voted in favor of it, but no one went along with it. The House passed, the Senate wouldn't. So a couple of guys, one guy in particular in Oregon, decided to march on Washington. So how are they gonna get that had no money. So what they did was they hitchhiked or they hop on freight trains. And they got as far as and this made the news. So other veterans from the rest of the country said we're gonna do the same thing. So they started hitchhiking and train hopping, trying all converging on Washington, DC, eventually, 20,000 veterans showed up and waited for the pressured Congress to and they're very organized, by the way, since these are military. And we're gonna stay. The chief of police got them to stay in some of the abandoned buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue because PA Avenue was being rebuilt. So what it looks like today. So where do you find this stuff? I read a lot. Okay, read a whole lot. And by the way, I've been doing this long before the way hadn't Google and stuff like that. Okay, so give me another example. So that's something I didn't know. Okay. And I think I understand it. So give me something else. Well, I got I gotta tell you the kicker on the Bonus Army, okay. They Congress voted against it. And it was dead. So half the veterans left DC the other half stayed there. And most a lot of them settled in in camps, and Anacostia, which is across the Anacostia River, and, and several many 1000s were there and he built their own shacks. Some of them lived out of their own jalopy cars. And when they refused to leave, President Hoover gave the word to his Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur to get rid of them, and General MacArthur along with his, Adjutant Major Dwight Eisenhower, when it's action, and they organize the two troops of squadrons of cavalry, and a one, two battalions of infantry to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and just kick everybody out. The infantry carried tear gas. The cavalry carried sabers. Commanding one of the squadrons was Captain George Patton. They eradicated everybody and he ended up burning all or setting fire to all the stuff at Anacostia. So it ended in a disaster. And when this hits the news, Franklin Roosevelt in his home in Hyde Park was the Democratic candidate for president that year. He just sat there told his aide, we don't have to campaign anymore. Wow, just lost it. Wow. So this is the core kind of story that you tried to tell in your publications. Is that right? Right, right. Okay. So, unfortunately, we're getting near the end of our time, and I want to hit something because you're kind of at the end of your publication experience. You told me you're going to retire. I don't believe that. But we'll assume that you're correct for the moment. What are you going to do and writing about your life and your history? And you I think you said that we're for events, you're gonna have to give us a short version here. But go ahead. My editors asked me the question, are you gonna do a special goodbye, and I says, Look, I not only write history, but I've lived through force. I consider four significant events in American history. The first one, I was a senior at Pratt, I was given a freelance job to help this woman in her business. Her name was Melee Dufty, a renowned civil rights leader, who owned a booking company for burlesque acts in black burlesque theaters across the country. And she needed someone to work on her book, which is a page-by-page bio of each person, I had to do the lettering on it. So I can free her up so she can make phone calls all over the country to bus companies. And these bus companies were gonna meet at churches, black churches throughout the country, and carry people to Washington DC for the 1963 march on Washington. At one point, I asked her the dumbest question in my life. I said, Do you think you're gonna get many people to show up? She says you'll see. And that summer 1000s I think over a million people showed up to listen to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. Then during when I was in the Army active duty to participate in the Tet offensive of 1968. As a reservist in the army, I was activated to my company was activated that I commanded to take part in the rescue mission of from Agnes, the Agnes flood that day to Pennsylvania. And the last one was after the TMI accidents. I got a phone call from the public relations director of TMI. That's Three Mile Island Right Three Mile Island, the nuclear plants. And the what happened was the nuke the core of the one reactor virtually melted. And he called me and he says, are you comfortable with coming onto TMI? I said are you going to pay me? I'll be there. The job I had was to interpret engineer schematics, which I had experience in before, and making them into illustrations of these tools that they're going to use to break apart the core, and then pick up the pieces. I did maybe a dozen of these things. And they made a video out of it. And they never used the video because they've decided not to go into the core at all. So there's the fourth TMI accident.
Ray Loewe19:21
Okay, so amazing. Okay. And, you know, all I can say is welcome to the world of the luckiest people in the world. You're there, okay? We're going to have to do an encore to this because I just see the list of stories here. You can go on and on and on forever, probably. And I think the lesson that we hope people learn is, you know when you get frustrated in your career, you know, think find that key, find how you can use your passion and go off and become one of the luckiest people in the world. And, Patrick, thanks so much for being here. And Luke, sign us off and we'll see everybody next week. week
Outro 20:03
thank you for listening to changing the rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.