Strangers and the Rental Car

The Actors in the Airport

Have you ever been in the presence of a celebrity but didn't know who they were at the time?  I was and it was amazing! Wait, I’ll tell you about it ... 

Back in the early ‘70s I graduated as a flight attendant from TWA’s Breech Training Academy in Kansas City. I was going to be domiciled in San Francisco along with three other girls from my class and we decided to get an apartment together close to the airport.

At the San Francisco Airport, we picked up our luggage and headed to the car rental booths, only to find they were out of cars until the next day.

We stopped at the first cocktail lounge we saw to plan what to do next. We knew we had to be close to the airport, but none of us knew the area, nor how to apartment hunt without a car.

Being new, we would be at the bottom of the seniority totem pole and “on call” when a senior flight attendant couldn’t make their scheduled flight. This meant we had to be available for flights on a moment’s notice, or as soon as we could get to the airport.

We agreed, having no car was a setback, because we had to find an apartment quickly. Just then, a shadow fell across our table in the lounge and we looked up to see a tall, fairly good-looking stranger and his friend standing there.

They introduced themselves and the tall one said he didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help overhearing that we were in a bind.  We needed a car and no rentals were available.

They looked harmless and seemed genuine, not to mention we were in a very public place.  We motioned for them to pull up a chair and we shared our predicament over another glass of wine.

They said they flew to San Francisco from L.A. to meet with executives from work to discuss their new jobs. The executives would have a limo, so they would be happy to lend us their rental car. It was out in the short-term parking lot.

Tall man went on to say it would help them, because the executives wouldn’t have to follow them back to their motel to drop the rental off. We could meet back at the airport the following day and return their rental car once we had rented our own.

We were thrilled! What an incredible thing to do for four total strangers.

We thanked them, accepted the rental keys, their phone number, and made plans to call the next day to discuss when to meet at the airport to rent a car and return theirs. Then we set off on our apartment-hunting adventure.

Luckily, it didn’t take long. As I remember, we saw two apartments. Both were in Burlingame, only minutes from the airport, and we settled on the second one.

Problem solved, and we had a car for the whole evening for exploring our new ‘hometown’.

Let’s skip ahead 6 months …

The four of us were all home at the same time for a change and Chrisanne was flipping through TV channels, looking for something to watch with our pizza.

Chrisanne stopped on a brand new show. Silent and dumbfounded, all eyes were fixed on the TV and the tall, fairly good-looking new friend who had so kindly lent us his rental car.

The show was “MASH” and our new friend?

Alan Alda.

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