Update on dad

Dad's temperature is normal, his incision site appears okay and he doesn't look jaundiced anymore. The bad news is that one of the stents they put in a couple of weeks ago is "cracked," whatever that means. We're waiting to hear from the doctors in Houston to find out our next step.

Now, a funny dad story. As I've mentioned before, dad not only retired from one of the local refineries, he has been a professional clown for over 50 years. Back in the '70s, dad also did some Ronald McDonald work for the southeast United States. He was even in the Orange Bowl parade one year as Ronald McDonald.

Dad would fly out to do Ronald McDonald work on the weekend and be back on Monday to work at the refinery. One weekend, he had a layover flight in Abilene and the stewardess told dad the layover would be about 30 minutes. In those days, there was no security and at the smaller airports, passengers walked right up to the plane, climbed the stairs and boarded on the runway.

Dad left the plane and, as it turned out, the layover was 5 minutes and not 30 minutes and the plane left without him. Dad freaked out because he had to be at work at the plant the next morning. He looked around the runway and saw a private jet boarding a couple of passengers. Dad walked up to the man getting on the private jet and asked him where they were going.

The man, his wife and secretary were flying to a private airfield in Dallas and offered dad a ride to his connecting flight. Dad got on the plane and the private jet guy called ahead and had a taxi waiting for dad at the private airfield which took him to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Dad made the flight with five minutes to spare, boarded the plane and sat in his seat.

Shortly after he got to his seat, the stewardess walked by, looked at my dad, dad looked at her and she walked away. He never did tell the stewardess what happened.