Playing for Tattoos

Keith Ware is a Pool Shark: Some people bet money and others wager pink slips but body art enthusiast Keith Ware plays for tattoos. The former Infantry Solder won 80 percent of his tattoos playing pool everywhere from Texas to Italy against other soldiers.

Ware voluntarily joined the U.S. Army when he was 17 because he wanted to help his country toward the end of the Vietnam War. One year later while he was stationed in Georgia he received his first tattoo- a picture of Speedy Gonzales on his upper left arm. For no particular reason, he and another friend in the military got the same tattoo with the saying “Keep on Truckin” wrapped around it.

“I got hooked on tattoos from the first one,” Ware says. “They are very addicting”.

But for Ware, “addicting” is an understatement. With a total of 35 tattoos completed in a four-year period, his tattoos became more to the 52-year-old than just ink. He says every tattoo on his body “tells a story about his life.”

“People at home would always ask me when I came home on leave what new tattoo I got this time. They told me I hadballs for getting one so often,” Ware says.

He explains that because very few Soldiers got tattoos back then, people would often ask if he was in the Navy or the Marines.

“They didn’t care for my tattoos in the military,” Ware says. “They were seen as rebellious.”

Regardless of what his commanding officers thought of his tattoos, Ware continued to collect them, especially since they were free for him. His tattoos cost his pool opponents more than $1,000 altogether.

“I would walk into a bar with friends and challenge people at pool,” he explains. “The winner could go two doors down from the bar to the tattoo shop and the loser would pay for any tattoo they wanted, no matter what the price.”

The tattoos he won then would be a lot more expensive if his opponents had to pay for them at today’s rate. If he were to get all his tattoos done today they would probably cost around $5,000.

“Two out of three times I always won the game and that’s how I could afford all these tattoos,” he gloats. “I never played for money though.”

Although he claims to still be quite the pool shark, Ware admits he was better back then. When he was 11, he started playing at a local pizza parlor in Hawthorne, Calif. He cleaned tables for free pool time and taught himself the skill he became known for. He mastered the skill of shooting pool one handed and gained notoriety for it in South Bay pool halls.

Not long after receiving his first tattoo, he was onto his second: The Zig Zag man. When he was stationed in Italy, he and his infantry buddies would smoke pot and he wanted to commemorate that.

This tattoo, along with all the others, where picked right off the shop wall. Although he doesn’t regret any of his tattoos, he does regret etching out his fathers name on the outside of his right calf when he was stationed in Georgia.

“I was so pissed at him but I can’t remember exactly why I crossed it out. It must have been very stupid.”

His fathers name, “Kenneth L. Ware Sr.” was written just above a colorful rattle snake and the inscription, “Gardena California” on his calf. The area where the name was printed has been replaced by 14 dark, filled-in black squares.

He plans on getting his now deceased father’s initials tattooed on his left shoulder to match his mother’s initials on his right shoulder which is his most recent tattoo. He says he will never get the crossed out name covered up because he just has too many tattoos on hisleg already.

Of all the other family members he has tattooed on him, there has only been one cover-up: his ex-girlfriend Susy.

In 1971 when he left for the military, she fell in love with his older brother Butch and later had a child with him. Although he was devastated, he soon recovered and knew he was better off now without her.

Out of all his tattoos, he admits that his favorite is the image of Jesus Christ on his chest. He received the intricate tattoo when he was 19 while on leave in Long Beach, Calif.

“Jesus Christ means the most to me because in God I trust and because I believe,” he says. “As soon as I saw

it on the wall, I knew I wanted it.”

His second favorite is the spider web and the words “Speed Kills” he has tattooed on his right inner calf This piece of art was a tribute to a fallen military buddy who died in a drunkendriving accident when he was stationed in Georgia in the early ‘70s.

“It’s definitely a conversation piece but people always look at me and think I was is prison,” he laughs. “I’ve never even been to jail.”