Down by the River
By Mr. G
My name is Mr G. I was born in June of 1950 in the middle of a cornfield, in a small town on the banks of the Wabash River. I was cut from the womb and raised on animal milk, with a fishing pole in my hand. To readers that may not know me, I have been tattooing for twenty-one years. I live in the back of a traditional street shop called Triangle Tattoo & Museum with my beautiful date, Madame Chinchilla. Perhaps what I write will enhance your appreciation of this intriguing art.
If only it were true, I could tell fairytales of my role in the “good old days of tattooing.” I would love to write stories about drinking a fifth of booze while tattooing sixty sailors in two hours. Maybe weave a yarn about lighting cigarettes off the sharp, blue spark of a red-hot Jonesy, plugged straight into a wall socket. In reality, my experience is from a more recent chapter.
I was first tattooed in the early 1970s. My sweet, dead mother had told me never to get a tattoo, so, of course, the first time I ever saw a tattoo shop, I could not resist. It was a wild, rebellious act. I was a country boy, and our town never had tattoo parlors to walk past. In this age, with tattoo shops in every strip mall across America, we forget that, in the past, not every city had one. Big cities had maybe a couple tucked away on a side street. To see a real, bona fide tattoo parlor, you had to go to the proverbial “bad part of town.”
If only Mom had not preached to me so intently. Often, from nowhere, sometimes at a peaceful Sunday dinner, she would spew her anti-tattoo sermon, dramatically using my ex-con uncle as an example. Uncle Dick, re-buttoning his shirt as he reached for desert, would mumble, “It’s forever, kid, so don’t get a woman’s name.” He’d then pass the cherry pie.
I pursued my destiny. On payday night, I headed to the tattoo shop down by the river. It was the bowels of Cincinnati. I called it “Hillbilly Town,” where honky-tonk neon and loud electric bluegrass drove the Appalachian factory workers into temporary oblivion. I forget the club’s name, but I remember the “Devils slop” served in Mason jars. In the sick silence between closing time and dawn, I found myself at the tattoo parlor.
Stoney St. Clair
Jonesy Squareback Tattoo Machine Handmade by Lyle Tuttle
The red plywood dragons caught my eye. They protected the plate glass of the ancient barbershop from the skid row junkies. The Saturday bums hovered like flies, but never near the lone Harley chopper parked out front. The long-haired biker with a snub-nosed .38 tucked in his belt, stared into my eyes as he unlocked the gated door. The smell of green soap lured me into an antique, secret lair. Hundreds of pictures covered the walls, and dozens more decorated the arms of the mysterious artist. I craved one of everything. This was my very first time.
It was all over too soon. I wanted more. I was scratched in a place that had itched forever. I wanted bigger ones, a dragon here, a skull there. I had tattoo fever.
The biker’s stories flowed like the ink running down my arm. Never in my life had I heard such compelling stories, tales of rough and tumble adventure outside the boundary of what was normal. He spoke of working in the circus sideshow, living on the road months on end, and learning to tattoo from his master, Stoney St. Clair. In that moment, the words were sacred. He was a shaman planting the seeds of my future. His stories foretold my own exciting destiny, yet, at the time, he was just a tattooed biker packing a blue-steel revolver
I feel fortunate to have stumbled that night, in the dark, forbidden streets along the Ohio. I received that tattoo at an early age, over thirty years ago. Yet, I have forever etched that moment in my memory.
When we revisit our own marks, our tattoos, with curious new minds, then we will discover lessons we have overlooked. Our tattoo past provides clues to the puzzles before us.
Tattooing; as ancient as time, as modern as tomorrow.
—Mr.G
g@triangletattoo.com
