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I am sorry we missed last week’s article, but we were in Tennessee. My mom, who was 94, went to Heaven last Sunday June 7th.

I have been employed in many different types of work from Ford automobile assembly plant, finance company, department store, truck driver, refinery, grocery store, farming, just to name a few. But the most enjoyable was with the airlines. I had a great 30 years with American Airlines. I had great benefits such as being able to travel just about anywhere in the world, to being able to take off just about any time I wanted by simply getting a fellow employee to switch days off with me. It would be hard for me to work a 9 to 5 job Monday through Friday week after week. Working at the airport, dealing with all types of people from all walks of life was fun and interesting. Let me tell you of some of the fun times we had.

One of my friends worked baggage service at Boston Logan Airport before transferring to DFW. One day while at Boston Logan he was meeting a flight arriving from Los Angeles. The ramp attendant came in and told him that they had a little white dog that had died in his kennel. While wondering what to do the idiots decided that they would go to the nearby pet kennel and purchase another white dog identical to the dead dog. So they told the passenger that the dog had missed the flight in Los Angeles and that it should be on the next flight in order to give them enough time to make the switch. Well, this may or may not be true, and it probable isn’t true, for I don’t believe anyone would be that stupid. But here is the rest of the story. The next flight arrived and the white, live dog was placed in the original kennel and placed on the arrival bag belt. As soon as the lady saw the kennel from a great distance she said, “That’s not my dog.”

The agent ask her how could she tell from that distance that it wasn’t her dog she said, “My dog was dead and I was bringing him home for burial.”

You never could tell who might walk up to you next. I visited more than once with Steve Mcqueen, Danny Thomas, Marlo Thomas, Debbie Reynolds, Tex Ritter, Elvis Presley, Feron Young, Frank Sanitra, Rex Allen, Ross Perot, and others, but the one that I really enjoyed visiting most with was Richard Farnsworth. He is dead now but he was really a nice, soft spoken gentleman. Elvis was always very nice and addressed me as “Sir”, although we were the same age. Pat Boone was running late for a flight and scratched his arm slightly on the boarding door one time, and he too was a very nice, polite gentleman. One day I rode first class with Willie Mayes from DFW to Phoenix. He was headed to an autograph session. We had a great conversation about the National League losing all of the All Star games that year. .

Thanks for your time and God Bless.

Harold Castleman www.llanotravel.com