In pursuit of early 1950s cool, my Uncle Victor defied his hard-ass Spanish father in ways that never occurred to me a generation later when I dueled with my Dad in the epoch of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
Early in the Ford Administration, I wanted a pair of platform shoes to go with my cuffed, corduroy canary yellow overalls. I coveted the stompers my heroes wore: Bowie as Ziggy, Keith Moon and Frank Zappa as well as the long-haired freaks I ran with in high school.
The old man wasn’t having it so I settled for a pair with modest (quite tame by New York Dolls standards) soles and heels. The really funky stuff was made by brands like Famolare. Mine were Thom Mcan.
Victor Alvarez, however, was not a man to compromise. He was a Lucky Strikes and vodka tonic guy who knew that Sinatra’s “My Way” was written for him. At the same time, he learned the hard (and sometimes painful) way not to knock heads with his padre, a stubborn shipyard worker from Galicia, Spain.
Back in the day he was known as “Boopie,” a Highlandtown bad-ass with matinee idol looks for whom many a Catholic girl swooned. With wild night calling, Vic would leave his parents’ house on Macon Street in jeans, white t-shirt and everyday shoes. In hand, a bag of clothes for a quick-change where the party was gearing up.
“I had a pair of blue pants with buttons up the side and a yellow jacket. I’d buy all my outfits at Tru-Fit on Eastern Avenue without my mother and father knowing it,” he told me a dozen years ago.
My father’s younger brother and my godfather, he was describing zoot-suit fashion favored by young men known in Baltimore as “drapes,” the rocking flip-side of Joe College boys.
Drapes and squares face off in John Waters’ 1990 film “Cry Baby,” in which Johnny Depp is the cool guy in the duck’s-ass pompadour with a spit curl dangling on his forehead, just like Uncle Vic in his high school portrait.
When the movie came out, Waters was asked if the Highlandtown corner boys were the kings of the Drapes.
“No contest,” the director replied.
Pants were “pegged,” so tight from calf to ankle that some came with zippers. Shirts, almost like a blouse, were as vibrant as Easter eggs. Shoes had Cuban heels and if a drape turned up the collar on his corduroy sport coat, the pattern beneath might be leopard. Unless it was zebra print.
“It was a guy thing,” said Uncle Vic. “And the girls loved it.”
The girl who especially loved Victor Alvarez was 16-year-old Catholic High School of Baltimore student Claire Wiegmann of South Clinton Street. He first saw her at the Arundel ice cream parlor hangout in the Highlandtown shopping district.
Claire’s parents were less than thrilled when their poodle-skirt wearing daughter brought “her guy” home to meet them. But once the love birds were married in 1957 at Sacred Heart of Jesus on Conkling Street there wasn’t much they could do about it. The union lasted for 64 years, ending with Claire’s death in 2022.
“God he was so sharp,” said his daughter Donna Alvarez Mislak. “No wonder my mother fell for him.”
From dramatic drape to Rat Pack suave
Victor Alvarez died in his sleep on April 17th at Donna’s home in Freeland. He was 88, passing away on the same date as his father 34 years earlier.
A graduate of Mergenthaler, the vocational high school near Lake Montebello, he learned tool and die making which became his lifelong career.
One of the stories that was never told at Sunday spaghetti dinners at my grandparents’ house was how Uncle Vic wound up at Mervo. Apparently he started out at Patterson Park High School like his siblings (my late father and older sister Dolores) but for some forgotten infraction was asked to leave.
“Mervo was right up his alley, it was the best thing that could have happened to him,” said Donna. “After graduation he apprenticed at Middlestadt,” a machine company at Chesmont Avenue and Belair Road.
Donna, an only child and 1976 graduate of her mother’s alma mater, did everything with her parents while growing up on Lyndale Avenue near Herring Run Park. When she was a student at the Shrine of the Little Flower on Belair Road there was a “generation gap” dance competition in which the groovy generation would jump around to the Monkees and Herman’s Hermits before the jitterbuggers took the floor.
“My parents were great dancers but they came in second,” remembered Donna. “I always thought it was rigged.”
Father and daughter bought cheese and salami at a long-closed Pastores on Belair Road near Erdman and picked out the family Christmas tree each year on Sinclair Lane. A Charlie Brown tree? Forget about it.
“Dad would argue over the price for the biggest, fattest one for our little two-bedroom rowhouse,” said Donna.
Friday nights were for going back to the old neighborhood for ravioli at Illona’s down the street from his childhood home and pizza at Genova’s, a small corner restaurant at Eastern and Highland.
By the time I was old enough to play Beatles records with Donna at our grandparents’ house (she loved Paul, I was taken with John), Uncle Vic had evolved from a dramatic drape to Rat Pack suave.
He drove a midnight blue 1966 Pontiac Grand Prix, a marvelous vehicle some 18 feet long and wore dark suits with matching vests. As the years passed, he resembled his father – with whom he went squirrel and rabbit hunting as an adolescent – in both attitude and looks.
He tracked pheasant, deer, goose and duck, frequently saying he should have been born on a farm. “My mother wasn’t crazy about that stuff,” said Donna, recalling the night pheasant was served at dinner. “Sometimes she’d go with him and once got snowed in alone in a cabin while my father hunted during a blizzard.”
Like combing his hair, laying out his clothes and making sure his tie was fixed right, Claire did it for Vic.
With my father and my brother Danny, Vic went fishing and crabbing on the Choptank River (their small boat under constant repair), having moved to Cambridge in 1983 for a job with the Airpax Corporation after long years with King Seeley and Tate Engineering. He retired at age 63 in 1998.
A World Series foul ball
I have many memories of my favorite uncle, most of them – like his homemade ravioli on Easter Sunday after his mother died and the bouillabaisse he made for his father’s 70th birthday – shared with the rest of the family.
But one I’ll never forget was just me and him and 51,700 other baseball fans at Memorial Stadium. It was October 13, 1970, the third game of the World Series between the Orioles and the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati, forever known as the Brooks Robinson World Series for the third baseman’s MVP heroics.
I was 12 and it was the game in which a pitcher – the O’s Dave McNally – became the only hurler to hit a grand slam in a World Series. Since pitchers don’t bat anymore, it’s unlikely it will happen again.
My most vivid memory of that 9-3 Orioles victory was a foul ball that came to us in the upper deck behind home plate on the first base side.
Uncle Vic – cigarette in mouth – jumped up and for a split second had the ball in his bare hands. I have no doubt that if he had held on, the ball would have a place of honor in my house, the house where he grew up.
A Mass of Christian burial for Victor Alvarez will be held at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 4 at Sacred Heart of Jesus at Conkling and Foster streets in the neighborhood where the coolest guy in East Baltimore had the time of his life.
Rafael Alvarez has been writing about generations of his Baltimore family since 1977. He can be reached via orlo.leini@gmail.com
