Al
Herman, known from Madagascar to Sandy Hook as "Dutch," was the leading
artist of the tattoo needle in the world.
Here in his corner, surrounded by the molding symbols and slogans of a
dead world, Dutch is rounding out his career--a Silenus in exile, his
eyes still bright with the memory of hurdy-gurdy midnights.
"Long ago," says Dutch, and his sigh evokes a procession of marvelous
ghosts tattooed from head to toe and capering like a company of debonair
totem poles over the cobblestones of another South State Street. But the
macabre days are gone. The Barnum bacchanal of the nineties lies in its
grave with a fading lithograph for a tombstone. Along with the fall of the
Russian empire, the collapse of the fourteen points and the general
dethronement of reason since the World's Fair, the honorable art of
tattooing has come in for its share of vicissitudes.
"Oh, we still do business," says Dutch. "Human nature is slow to decline
and there are people who still realize that if you got a handsome watch
what do you want to do to it? Engrave it, ain't it? And if you got a
handsome skin, what then? Tattoo, naturally. And we tattoo in seven colors
now where it used to be three, and use electricity.
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