The sound—crackle, crackle—of the intercom came alive and pulled me back from my daydream.
It was around noon Pacific Standard Time. We had been flying for six and a half hours, give or take, from New York across the entire breadth of the United States. The captain’s voice came on, calm and slightly smug:
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying American Airlines. We’ll be landing shortly at LAX. Please fasten your seat belts.”
It was Friday, August 29th, just before Labor Day weekend. We had made it: Los Angeles. The mythical land of palm trees, movie stars, and freeways wider than rivers.
We picked up our luggage — no small feat considering it was practically a moving van disguised as Samsonite — and headed to Hertz, the only rental company we had ever heard of.
That’s where reality hit.The clerk looked at us, then at our documents, then back at us. We proudly presented our International Driver’s Licenses, fresh from Greece, and enough drachma converted cash to choke a horse. What we did not have, however, was a credit card.
The conversation quickly turned into a scene from a comedy skit:
Clerk: “Do you have a credit card?”Michael: “Cash. Much better. Cash never bounces.”Clerk: “Sir, company policy requires a major credit card.”
And so began our first American standoff: two Greeks armed with charm, stubbornness, and a wallet full of cash versus corporate America armed with “policy.”
That’s when Michael pulled out the trump card: traveler’s checks. He fanned them out like he was dealing poker in Las Vegas. “See? American Express. It even says American. We are practically locals already.”
Something in the clerk’s face softened. Maybe it was pity. Maybe it was curiosity. Or maybe he just didn’t want to argue with two jet-lagged Greeks.
Finally, he sighed and said:“Alright. But you understand, if anything happens, you’re responsible.”
Michael beamed. “But of course! Greeks invented responsibility.”
Twenty minutes later, we were ready to drive out of Hertz in a mustard-yellow Ford Pinto. It wasn’t exactly the car of our California dreams, but it had four wheels and moved forward, which was all we required.
We were free.We were mobile.We were dangerous.
We were lost.
Lost?
Back we marched to the Hertz counter, clutching the giant fold-out map they had given us, the kind of map that needed a dining table to spread out. I pointed at it like it was a treasure map and asked the clerk:
“Can you please give us directions to La Verne?”
Blank stare. “Huh?”
“La Verne,” we repeated slowly, as if pronunciation was the issue. “It should be, you know, about sixty miles east of Los Angeles.”
The clerk’s jaw dropped. He looked at us like we had asked for directions to Atlantis. Then he spun around and shouted:
“Hey Susan! You ever heard of… La Verne?”
Susan didn’t even look up from her paperwork. “Nope.”
We started sweating profoundly. My first thought: We have been scammed. There is no La Verne. There is no University. Our acceptance letters were just elaborate forgeries.
Or, far more terrifying, maybe we had landed in the wrong city.
Michael muttered under his breath, “Imagine thousands of miles, all this luggage, this Pinto… and no university.”
I was already picturing us on the evening news: “Two confused Greeks wander through Los Angeles in search of mythical college.”
Just as despair was about to swallow us whole, the clerk saw a bus driver walking slowly past the counter carrying a coffee and a donut. Hey there Wally, have you ever heard of La Verne?
“La Verne?” he asked slowly, as if testing the word in his mouth.
“Yes! La Verne! University of La Verne!” we cried in unison, like survivors spotting a rescue boat.
He rubbed his chin. “Yeah… I think I’ve heard of it. East. Out past Pomona.”
Pomona? To us, it might as well have been Mars. But we clung to the word like it was gospel. He scribbled something on the back of a Hertz envelope, “10 Freeway East, keep going… you’ll see signs.”
That was it. No GPS, no Google Maps, no helpful blue dot to save us. Just “10 East, keep going.”
So we piled into the Pinto, unfolded the map across the dashboard like amateur cartographers, and set off.
The freeway itself was an adventure. Twelve lanes wide, cars flying past at the speed of light, and us puttering in the slow lane like two shepherds who had accidentally wandered onto a racetrack. Every exit sign looked the same. Every interchange was designed to confuse foreigners.
At one point, Michael yelled over the Pinto’s roaring engine, “We must be over there!” and triumphantly pointed at a sign that said “60 East Pomona Freeway”.
Quick exit to the right. Perfect. Except “quick” in a Pinto meant wobbling across three lanes with the urgency of a donkey in flip-flops.
We somehow survived the merge, spun around on what felt like a 360-degree corkscrew ramp, and emerged into an intersection. Right in the middle of it.
Californians around us were honking, swerving, and giving us the kind of looks reserved for escaped zoo animals. We, of course, were completely calm. Why? Because in Greece, the traffic light is before the intersection. So naturally, I stopped the Pinto right under the red light — which in California meant smack dab in the middle of the crossroads.
Ooops.
There we sat, a mustard-yellow Pinto idling proudly, while cars tried to figure out if we were broken down, insane, or staging some kind of protest. Michael kept waving his arms out the window, yelling, “It’s the light! It’s the light!” as if that explained everything.
I remember thinking, If the University of La Verne exists, I hope they have a driving class.
We landed in Inglewood, of all places.
To us, it was just the first patch of America beyond the airport. But the whole area felt… unsettling. The streets were lined with tired-looking motels, their neon signs proudly advertising Free HBO and Air Conditioning as if these were luxuries fit for kings. We thought, how nice, so many places to stay near the airport.
Little did we know.
Those same streets is where crack-fueled gang wars would rage in just a few short years. At the time, we were blissfully ignorant. To our eyes, it was America, big cars rumbling at stoplights, drive-through fast food on every corner, and billboards the size of apartment buildings. But underneath, there was an edge. Groups of kids hung around corners eyeing us like we had crash landed from Mars. Strangers shouted things we didn’t quite understand, and the constant roar of jets overhead made it feel like the ground itself was vibrating.
We didn’t yet grasp the reputation of Inglewood. For us, it was just the first stop on our California adventure. But something in our stomachs told us this wasn’t the paradise we had seen in the movies. This wasn’t Hollywood. This was something else entirely raw, loud, and a little dangerous.
I was driving, white-knuckled on the Pinto’s steering wheel, when I said, “Hey Michael, lower your window so we can ask for directions.”
“Nope,” came his answer. Flat. Immediate.
“Come on! Just a little,” I pleaded, still inching us forward. “If we don’t get directions, we’ll be spending the night here.”
Michael stared out the window, horrified. “Are you crazy? They’re going to kill us!”
I glanced outside. Groups of guys leaned against parked cars, boom boxes thumping bass so hard the Pinto’s mirrors shook. Women in bright clothes stood on the sidewalks shouting across the street. It wasn’t Athens, it wasn’t Piraeus.
“But we’re lost!” I insisted. “We can’t just keep circling forever.”
Michael shook his head violently. “Better circling forever than ending up in the morgue.”
Right then, another jet screamed overhead, so low I could almost read the tail number. The Pinto rattled like it was about to come apart. I gripped the wheel tighter and thought: Wonderful. We flew across the Atlantic just to die in Inglewood traffic in a mustard-yellow Pinto.
Somehow, don’t ask me how, we got the directions. Maybe it was luck, maybe divine intervention, maybe someone took pity on two terrified foreigners in a Pinto. Either way, we made it back onto Freeway 10, heading East.
For miles, there was nothing but asphalt, billboards, and an endless stream of cars. The city stretched on forever, but it felt strangely empty. Then, at last, a green sign appeared: West Covina.
“Ok,” Michael said, repeating what Wally the bus guy had told us, “keep going until you see the sign for Pomona.”
So we kept going. And going. And going. The Pinto buzzed like an overworked donkey, the California sun blazed through the windshield, and every exit sign looked like a cruel trick.
But then, there it was. The treasured word: Pomona. We screamed with joy, like marathon runners spotting the finish line.
We took the exit, rolled off the freeway, and found ourselves on Holt Avenue. Later, we’d learn that Holt was more than just a street. Back then, it was a dividing line — one side the “good” neighborhood of Pomona, the other side… well, not so good.
To us, it all looked the same: gas stations, liquor stores, motels with peeling paint, and the occasional grocery store. But the locals knew better.
And soon, we’d learn too.
to be continued on October 9th…
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At some point during the flight, Michael and I switched seats and I wound up in the aisle. The stewardess rolled up with the cart, gave me a smile and said, ‘Now I can touch you!’ Then she leaned closer and asked, ‘Coffee, tea… or me?’
to be continued on October 9th…
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