Words on the Street

I have a friend from Germany, but we both now live in Oregon. When my friend was a newcomer, she did a lot of shopping downtown. She had a habit of writing down the name of the street where she parked. One day she called me, frantic, saying she had walked for almost half an hour and couldn’t find her car. “There are so many streets with the same name!” she said. Dubious, I asked her to tell me the street name. In her heavy German accent, she said, “VON VAY!”

—Gerry Lott Beaverton, Oregon