20 years

Tomorrow is a special day to welcome all the freshmen to Carroll U in downtown Waukesha, it was also a special day 20 years ago for me.

I started my college internship with the late Bill Hanson at Waukesha Custom Tattoo, which became Black Dragon Tattoo later, and it was the beginning of my career in tattooing. Thanks to Ms. P, the chair of the Carroll Art Department, she gave me the OK to start.

The first day was quite eventful, Bill and John Marks were the only two tattooing at the time. My first task of the day was to make a stencil. It required me to put a piece of tracing paper in between sheets of themofax paper, put it in a plastic carrier and send it through the machine.

The trouble was that no one told me nor show me what to do, and I sent the wrong end of the plastic carrier through the machine and it was stuck. The thermofax is heat based so that machine started to smoke and caught on fire. The belt inside was melted to all the gears. The expensive machine was destroyed. A good 3M machine back then was 7-800 bucks, and even today it is still in that range.

That was my first day, and Bill was very very angry because he did not really have the budget to replace the equipment with him just bought the shop, but it was not my fault because I was not taught what to do.

Sometime we are all surprised I lasted 20 years with that kind of a start... :)