Charlie Hacker is still gobbling life with a ladle. He's 82, a crumpled back has reduced his once six-foot-plus frame to five feet and change, and he's licked cancer. He can't understand why everyone runs around trying to "squeeze two lifetimes into one" - but he's one to talk.
Hacker, himself, can't sit still, or accept that he has the option to relax. "Gosh, there's so much out there to be gleaned," he says, sounding like a regular Natty Bumpo, the early American literary figure agog at the wonders of the New World. "I've seen so much and done so much and still there's so much to do."
Today, Hacker is bound for Millers Island to see if his friends at Pelican's Bar & Grill Restaurant have finally hung his sketches of historical Chesapeake Bay watercraft. "You're on the water," he told the proprietor. "You need a nautical theme."
Hacker lives in the restored streetcar barn at Lombard and Grundy streets where he once reported daily as a motorman and conductor. He worked on the fabled Red Rocket that ran on the No. 26 line to Dundalk, carrying folks to Sparrows Point, the Strand Theatre, Western Electric Co. and Bay Shore Park.
Officially, the apartment complex is the "Highlandtown Plaza Co-op," but Hacker, one of the first residents in 1996, still calls it the "car barn."
After an earlier stint, Hacker didn't think he'd be re-elected the co-op president, but he was. "My family's not very happy," he confides. "They think that at 82, I should be taking it easy, not taking care of 80-some old people."
The car barn's halls are decorated with Hacker's paintings and drawings, mainly stately portraits of streetcars. His apartment is filled with seafaring and spiritual scenes.
Once, Hacker made a name for himself as an exacting boat-model builder. He could eyeball a bugeye, skipjack or bay schooner and build extraordinary replicas to scale. His boats have been displayed around the world and are part of many public and private collections.
Hacker kept the last boat he completed in 1991. The topsail schooner Dapper Tom was a Baltimore-built privateering ship used during the War of 1812 to help break the British blockade.
The hull was carved from a block of soft basswood and its rigging made of waxed thread. The eagle beak figurehead was hand-carved. Hacker wove the ratlines with needle and thread.
