I was just a boy about 13 when I began to be interested in tattoos. I met a lot of guys around the boxing gym who were tattooed. I asked a lot of the usual questions. Did it take long to do? Did it hurt? Did it bleed a lot? etc. etc. Then when I was 15, I went to an old carnival tattooer who had a parlor, which was an old time carnival trailer on wheels set up permanently on blocks, in Alamo Plaza in San Antonio, Texas. His name was Bob Tryon and he went by the name of "Painless Jack". Who knows how many tattooers before him wore that same name. I later met a lady tattooer in San Diego who called herself "Painless Nell". Anyhow for the record NONE of them are painless. Their machines drive from 1 to 3 to as many as 8 needles at about 800 rpm about 1/8" deep into whatever part they want to place the tattoo. Some arms and legs take a slightly longer stroke to penetrate deep enough to leave the ink. My very first tattoo was just a simple name and a little flower by it. It was more of a pretty name than most guys would have wanted but Jack added the flower for free to dress it up. Jack (Bob) had very little overhead and there were few customers in the middle of the month. His big days were around the first when the armed services paid their men. San Antonio had 5 bases around the area by then. There were Randolph Field, Kelly Field, Fort Sam Houston, Brooks Field, and Lackland AFB. In the WWII time all of the "fields" became AFB's.
The conditions were far from sterile at Jacks, or for any tattoo shop at the time. A bucket full of water was used to wash the needles off between colors and also between customers. I remember Bill "Buzz" Clayton later filling his bucket for a day of tattooing. I learned later that most of the inks were moistened with Listerine and a very few with rubbing alcohol. Not isopropal alcohol but grain rubbing alcohol. The spot for the tattoo was first washed with a tincture of green soap (hospital soap), shaved with a strait razor, patted dry and then lightly smeared with carbolated Vasoline which was used to hold the stencil of the chosen design on the tattoo site. The old way to put the design on was to have a stencil precut of all the designs that the "artist" had on his pictures up on the wall. These design pictures are called FLASH. When a design was picked from the FLASH by the tattooee, then the corresponding number was fished out of a series of folders, wiped off with a towel that could be pretty dirty if it had been used all day and you were getting tattooed late, and a salt shaker of powdered black charcoal was shaken on the stencil and filled the scratched-in design. The artist would then put the stencil against the Vaselined spot and a crude outline would be stuck on the skin and held in place by the vaseline. The trick was for the tattooist to learn to work on the tattoo from the bottom to the top so as not to smear the design and have to re-apply it. Very often they did have to re-apply the design and blood would get on the stencil only to be wiped off or washed of in that bucket of water by the tattooers station. When the tattoo was finished it was bandaged with a paper table napkin held in place by a couple of strips of masking tape. These old tattooists mostly worked with thick black outlines from different inks such as India ink or a charcoal based color. I remember being tattooed and watching others being tattooed both before and after me using the same ink supply. The thick colors were in small jars in a lazy susan type turntable. The germs must have had a field day! Still I only knew of a very few who got their new tattoos infected and most of them went into the ocean before it had healed which is a major no no. There were those who would pick at the scab that formed over their tattoo and if they picked it off then some color would come out and the tattoo was messed up. It could be touched up later but 5 or 6 weeks was the standard time before any new work could be done on the new tattoo.

All this lack of sanitary conditions came to an end by law in the 1980s. When hepatitis and then HIV came to call on the world, laws were enacted to make tattooing sterile. In an effort to ban tattooing altogether, some places passed laws that a medical doctor had to be on the premises for anyone to be tattooed. This didn't stop the practice of body art anywhere that I know of. It drove it underground. Lots of traveling tattooists sprung up in cities all over the country. Finally laws were enacted not to outlaw or deny tattooing but to just regulate it to keep it clean. Individual little cups that were disposed of after each use became manditory, as did the sterilization of needles. Many of the artists today throw away the needle points after any tattoo is finished. This is expensive and time consuming if the artist solders his or her own needles, but certainly the best practice. Antibiotics became standard instead of Vaseline and the carbon stencil was replaced with an indelible design that adhered to the tattooee while the work was being performed. Of all things, it was discovered that Right Guard stick deodorant was perfect for sticking the new type of stencil to the skin and it really stuck there. Tattooists are everywhere and some are artists in the truest sense of the word. Two such men are George and Dan Makolondra of the Golden Dragon Tattoo Studio in Denver Colorado. They both do fine work and I sport a tattoo on each arm from each of their talented hands. While some use the term "artist" and some call themselves "tattooers", I diferentiate between the two by natural talent. A good tattooer has a touch for the needles and rarely cuts skin. Since the skin must be stretched tight to do the artwork, else the needles would either bounce off or penetrate too little for an even line, being a good freehand artist is not very much of a plus. Where it may help most is in the design of new flash. The reputeable artist will do his part to insure that the tattoo is done sanitarily. After that it is up to you to protect it while it heals.

One final word. Think long and hard before sitting in the tattooers chair. A tattoo can be removed but it is a hassle to take it off and far more painful than the original application. Just be sure you want a lifetime design, where you want that design, and wait until you have checked out the artists former work (most have an album of pictures their work but of course only the best of their work goes into that album), and finally don't go for a cheaper design than you really want just because you want the tattoo NOW. Wait until you can afford exactly what you want and don't haggle the price with the artist. Some will give you a cheaper price and then shortcut the coloring and shading of the tattoo when a customer who haggles the price. Wait until you can afford what you want. Then pay what the artist asks for their work.