The Red Camaro of Fate

Today marks a weird anniversary, and one that changed the course of my life. On November 8, exactly three decades ago, my Grandpop Walter was struck by a speeding red Camaro.

The accident happened on Tuesday, November 8, 1994 at 11 a.m. in Northeast Philadelphia.

At the same time, and 13 miles away, my morning was starting off on a much more promising note. My editor at Philadelphia Magazine called me into his office along with staff writer Amy Donohue. At the time I was the magazine’s 22-year-old research editor (read: fact-checker), and my first thought was: Oh fuck, did I fuck up something in one of Amy’s stories?

But no. This was good news. Our editor Eliot Kaplan was here to assign us a cover package for the March 1995 issue: a round-up of local up-and-comers called “30 Under 30.” A co-byline on cover story! Not bad for a fact-checker a year out of college. I was overjoyed.

At pretty much this same moment, my grandfather was carrying groceries when he stepped off the curb at Holme Avenue. He looked, saw nothing, then took a few steps into the road.

And that’s the last thing he remembered.

Witnesses say the Camaro was going stupid fast—approximately 80 miles per hour—when it impacted my grandfather’s body. His collarbone, ribs, pelvis, leg—shattered—and then his body sailed into another car’s path, slamming his head through the windshield, effectively pinning him to the hood of that second car. This turned out to be a fortunate thing. If he’d fallen onto the road, he most likely would have been struck by a third car.

My Grandpop Walter was rushed to intensive care. Doctors were dubious about his chances of survival. Of all the things I thought would kill my grandfather, a speeding red Camaro wasn’t one of them. I honestly thought he’d end up drinking himself to death.

My paternal grandparents divorced when my father was young. When I was growing up, Grandpop Walter and his second wife (Hilda) lived in a large rowhome in North Philly. We only saw them twice a year—Easter and Christmas. Maybe three times, if there happened to be a graduation or wedding. Walter Swierczynski was born in 1917. He was short and skinny and trembled a bit. He lost his mother and older sister to the 1918 influenza pandemic when he was only 15 months old. He lost his father when he was 15 years old. He was a World War II paratrooper. For some reason, I always associated him with Popeye the Sailor Man. He didn’t say oh my garshk or anything like that. It was more that he had the vibe of a scrappy runt—and he was the youngest of ten children. He doted on his cat Tanny. He would give me and my brother loose change. He would tweak our noses and call us schnudaks. When he was a kid, legend had it, he worked for bootleggers. He drank room temperature beer. Once he got so drunk he fell into our Christmas tree.

The unexpected thing that came out of Grandpop Walter’s accident: later that year I moved into his house in Pennypack Woods, right across the street from the scene of the accident. (His second wife, Hilda, had passed away three years before.) At the time I was living in a cramped studio apartment at 16th and Spruce that I could barely afford. Rent there was $550 a month, which was more than half of my monthly take home. My mother suggested I take over my Grandpop’s place, where rent was only $300. This made sense on paper.

My grandfather’s tiny two-story home on Pheasant Drive was part of a homeowners’ assocation. Walter and Hilda had spent years on a waiting list until a spot opened up. My parents wanted to hang on to the place in case my grandfather recovered (which wasn’t looking likely) or to keep it in the family. Foolishly, I agreed.

I moved in New Year’s Eve 1995, and stayed until Holy Saturday 1996. This, my friends, was the longest year and a half of my life. It was fun for about five fucking minutes. My commute to work went from a 10-minute walk to an hour-long slog on a bus and the Frankford El. I would write about the experience, disguised as fiction, in my 2010 novel Expiration Date. In an effort to save $250 a month, I cut myself off from everything I loved about living in Center City Philadelphia.

Everything in the house was stained with nicotine; I didn’t smoke. The first week I lived there, the woman I’d later marry came to visit for the weekend. Pretty sure the place scared her away; we didn’t see each other for a year and a half after that. I always wonder what would have happened if I still had lived downtown. Would she have wanted to move to Philly sooner? Would I have ever written Expiration Date?

My grandfather hung on until May 1997. By then I was living in Allentown, and my wife and I drove back to Philly for his funeral. Walter Swierczynski, Senior, a World War II veteran, was buried in Beverly National Cemetery.

We visited his grave on December 28, 2014. I think about him often these days, wishing I’d had the good sense to ask him about his past, his family, his life… long before that red Camaro came out of nowhere.