\u201cSo, you guys got any tattoos?\u201d said Carl, my Navy bestie\u2019s dad.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo?\u201d he said. \u201cHow come?\u201d As if a tat was something issued with your seabag.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever saw a tattooist I saw who I thought did good work,\u201d I said. I figured that was as conciliatory an answer as it got.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever wanted one,\u201d Dale said, in his usual laconic manner.<\/p>\n
Ignoring both our reactions, Carl plowed on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got this one in Karachi,\u201d he said, pointing at his left forearm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the wings,\u201d he said and tapped a spot. \u201cAnd this is the star.\u201d He tapped another spot under the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis says USAAF,\u201d he said (five more taps). \u201cStands for United States Army Air Forces. Wasn\u2019t called the Air Force \u2018til AFTER World War Two.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not that they needed the name change to be shot out of the skies aplenty, I thought, though I said nothing.<\/p>\n
I looked at his tattoo. It existed in name only. In reality it was just a big blue blob. To label it a specific shape would\u2019ve been fanciful, at best. It looked to me that Kushroo, of Kushroo\u2019s Tattoos Ltd., had copied it from his favorite book \u2014 The Idiot\u2019s Guide to Rorschach Tests.<\/p>\n
If Carl had asked Kushroo what went wrong, he probably woulda said, \u201cNothing personal. Just business.\u201d<\/p>\n
And guess what? He would\u2019ve been right.<\/p>\n
Almost all those early-to-mid 20th-century tats looked like hell after a bunch of years. Tattooists could\u2019ve made mistakes that caused tats to screw up. For example, not put them in deep enough, in which case they faded; or put them in too deep, in which case they blurred like crazy. But mostly they were at the mercy of their equipment and the lack of tattooing knowledge at the time.<\/p>\n
Often, the ink\u2019s pigments were huge, which caused the body\u2019s immune system to attack them and break them down. Or they were not commercial-grade tat inks, but something like India ink, which blurred in short order. There was no enlightened aftercare, and people never wore sunblock, thus inviting Old Sol to make tats vanish like mist o\u2019er the moor. And I\u2019m sure there were other reasons I don\u2019t know, but after a couple of decades almost all those tats had aged as bad as the rest of us.<\/p>\n
While tattoos were a rare sight \u2018til very recently, when I was in the Navy, they were fairly common. Still, it was nothing like now. For example, the average freshman gal in my class had more tattoos than almost anyone I ever even saw in the Navy. Most of the guys who had one, had just that \u2014 one. And most guys had none at all. They were more prevalent among the lifers because the tats shouted \u201cSailor,\u201d which of course was how the lifers defined themselves.<\/p>\n
Because the rest of us were in for one hitch and gone, that drive to identify wasn\u2019t as strong. But while most Navy personnel were young kids who\u2019d never left home, before long, they became very independent. And while their peeps back home might have disapproved of tattoos, that held little sway. Plus I think even if parents didn\u2019t want their sailor to get a tat, if he did, they\u2019d let it go as either part of the experience or the folly of youth. Or as was more likely the case, both.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m doubt my mother would\u2019ve been so lenient. In fact, I know it. Her response would\u2019ve been something to the effect of (if not EXACTLY): \u201cYou can come in my house \u2026 but your tattoo can\u2019t. Or if you really want your tattoo in my house, YOU stay out!\u201d Period. She did not negotiate with terrorists.<\/p>\n
Along those lines, was my pal Wally\u2019s girlfriend\u2019s reaction: He told her he wanted to get a tat; she absolutely forbade it.<\/p>\n
Now a note about Wally. He was about my height, stocky and had a pixyish look and a puckish sense of humor, and between the two I never knew when he was serious. He was one of those rare guys who knew who he was and didn\u2019t care a tiddly-doo what anyone thought about him. He got along with everyone, did his job well, didn\u2019t aspire to either getting approval or making rank, and just toodled along in his own Wally way. So when he said he was getting a tattoo, it meant he was getting a tattoo. As for his g.f.? Well, according to him, that was HER issue.<\/p>\n
Of course, things are rarely so simple in the World of High-Flung Romance. And they sure weren\u2019t in this case, since Wally and his girl were getting married in four months, after he finished A school. While Wally came from a blue-collar family from Brooklyn and was about as down-to-earth and non-materialistic as they come, his girlfriend\u2019s family wasn\u2019t. They had big bucks, lived in one of the tonier sections of Long Island, and had planned a wedding that would\u2019ve rivaled Scarlett and Brett\u2019s.<\/p>\n
You know the bit: First, the bride, in a hand-sewn silk gown, flower girl and ring boy ahead; a 20-foot train with more adorable children behind, descending a three-story spiral staircase, with a cage of doves released at each. The groom and the groomsmen in Confederate army costumes; the happy couple leaving the church under an arch of crossed swords, whisked away in a vintage Rolls to some club that would\u2019ve made Gatsby look like a putz and a piker. After that, a honeymoon in Bermuda.<\/p>\n
Complicating this scene was a real fly in the ointment. Or in this case, TWO flies: Wally\u2019s girl was six months pregnant \u2014 with twins!<\/p>\n
We talked about this the weekend before Wally was getting his tattoo.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo,\u201d I asked, \u201cwhat\u2019s the latest with the wedding?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDunno,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess it\u2019s moving right along?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t know?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNaw,\u201d he said. \u201cListen, none of this is being done for me or my family\u2019s sake, so I let hers worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo are you still gonna get the tattoo?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarnum and Bailey got clowns?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know any Yiddish?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m from Brooklyn,\u201d he said, as if that answered it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, Wally,\u201d I said, \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing I can say about you, it\u2019s that you got some serious chutzpah.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shrugged, signaling I\u2019d just told him what he\u2019d always known.<\/p>\n
Finally, T-Day arrived. Wally went off base in the early afternoon and came back a couple hours later sporting a jaunty fouled anchor on his left bicep.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, how ya like it?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks good to me,\u201d I said. \u201cBut whattaya think your girlfriend\u2019ll say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m about to find out,\u201d he said, as he shook a ditty bag full of coins and headed off to the pay phones. He was back in a few minutes, an almost undetectable smile on his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what\u2019d she say?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust that there\u2019d never be a tattooed arm in her bed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou say anything back?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d he said. \u201cI said it\u2019d be a hassle sleeping night after night with my arm over the side of the bed, but if any man can do it, it\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good old Wally \u2014 ever the diplomat.<\/p>\n
We stayed pals through A school and wrote for a while afterward, but then lost touch. Decades later, after the internet became a way of life, on a winter night whim, I tried to find him. It took a while, but I finally found his address and phone number and called him up. It was like Old Home Week, shooting the breeze about this and that from our barracks days. Then he brought me up to date. He and his instant family had moved to Louisiana, as far away from his in-laws as he could; he got work in the oil industry and he\u2019d done well for himself.<\/p>\n
He told me he was a grandfather, and was still married to the same woman. It was an opening I couldn\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill got the same wife? \u201c I said. \u201cAnd still got the same tattoo?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYup,\u201d he said. \u201cSmartest thing I ever did.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe wife or the tattoo?\u201d I teased.<\/p>\n
There was a sizable pause; then he spoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019re you doing next week?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSame as this week,\u201d I said. \u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood,\u201d he said. \u201cSo how about doing me a favor?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCall me then and ask.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSo, you guys got any tattoos?\u201d said Carl, my Navy bestie\u2019s dad. \u201cNo?\u201d he said. \u201cHow come?\u201d As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[105282,2692,9,11,10,49,51,50,299],"class_list":["post-273439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-ade","tag-columns","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}