When I started this project, photography was my passion, but I worked full-time for W.A. Normally one would find W.A. dressed in a business suit and tie, and perhaps best described as the strong silent type. I’ll never forget the day he called me into his office and asked me to shut the door. Uncertain what I had done wrong, I closed the door with some reluctance. As I spun back around to face W.A., he began unbuttoning his shirt and asked, “Do you want to see my new tattoo?” Not knowing the exact location of his body art, my response: “I’m not sure that I do.”
A huge Jimmy Buffet fan, W.A.’s tattoo placement involved a scarlet macaw etched on his right bicep. I had no idea my boss was into body art. Here is a man that earned a six-figure salary removing his jacket, tie, and Oxford dress shirt to reveal a very large colorful bird. I mentioned the body art project on which we were working and he willingly consented to come in to participate.
“I love the tailgating and going to the Buffet concerts,” W.A. explained. “I went on the internet and found pictures of scarlet macaws and printed them off. I brought it to a local guy with a good reputation and it took about two hours. It was my 59th birthday present to myself. The tattoo cost about $150.00.
I think that good advice to anyone looking to get their first tattoo is to have it placed in an area where they control who who gets to see it and who doesn’t. I love mine and so does my wife. I think the artist did an excellent job.”
The macaw, however, was not W.A.’s first bird. “I was 26 years old and probably heading back from a party when I got my first tattoo,” W.A. explained. “I don’t really recall because it was 33 years ago. I was riding down Route 2 and saw Tatts Tommy’s sign. My younger brother had had a tattoo by Tatt’s Tommy, and I had had a few beers and thought it was time for one for me. Tommy would not tattoo me. He told me if I was really serious then I should make an appointment and come back when I was completely sober. I really enjoy birds, so I drew the silhouette of a crow shown in the front of a Petersen’s guide the next day and brought it over. Tatts Tommy made a tattoo template and applied the tattoo.
The next day I stopped at a store in Palmyra and the guy behind the counter had a lot of tattoos. ‘What’d ya get,’ he asked me. “ I thought he was obviously hip to that I had gotten a tattoo because it was taped up with masking tape and napkins with blood soaking through, so I said ‘A crow.’ His response, ‘A crow did that to you!’
That was 1972 or 1973 and cost me $16.00. At that time, in the State of Maine, you could not be tattooed above the neck or on the neck. You could not be tattooed beyond the wrist or below the ankles. Time’s have changed, the law has changed, and people’s tastes have changed.
Asked how he reconciles his business suit personality with the man who stands before me, W.A. simply replied “That’s what I do. This is who I am.”
