So is your old man. Harry Harrison has spent his life in odd jobs: as a British merchant navy barber and steward and a Liverpool bus driver. Gerald Ford moved from model and lawyer to the House of Representatives, and last August into the White House. Still, the two men have something in common. When Harry dropped by Salt Lake City's Salt Palace to see his son, ex-Beatle George Harrison, 31, now touring the U.S., he ran into Jack Ford, 22, one of the President's boys. Said George proudly to Jack: "This is my Dad. If your Dad is half as good a man as he is, the country's in good hands." When Dad looked puzzled, George explained: "He's the President of the whole gig."

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People were doing their own thing last week at the San Francisco Opera. First, Mayor Joseph Alioto chose to publicize his crusade to make San Franciscans use public transport by arriving for a performance of The Daughter of the Regiment on a bus. Then oldtime Upstager Hermione Gingold, 77, made her operatic debut in the tiny role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp and turned what should have been a brief appearance into a runaway slapstick turn. Finally, some 3,552 emotional fans gave Soprano Beverly Sills an ovation for her courage and her performance. It was barely four weeks after major but successful cancer surgery, and Sills was making the first of five performances scheduled for the next two weeks. She was 40 Ibs. lighter and, except for her voice, clearly tired. She is an indomitable optimist, however. "I was lucky the cancer was contained," she said during the intermission. "Never in all the years in this business have I slept on the day I was singing. I used to go to the movies. But today I had a nap. I kinda liked it. I have a clean bill of health, and after my usual December holiday I should be back to normal."

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"Honey, if I was Wilbur, I'd never let you go in the water," quipped an elderly wag to Burleycutie Annabella Battistella, alias Fanne Fox, 38. The somewhat dampened Argentine firecracker was in Boston's Pilgrim Theater making her first public appearance since she leaped from Representative Wilbur Mills' limo and took a header into Washington's Tidal Basin. After nursing a couple of shiners in her Arlington, Va., flat (in the same building as the Mills' apartment), Anna returned to the career of burlesque dancer she gave up on Mills' advice a year ago. In no time she landed a U.S. tour at $3,000 a week and new billing as the "Washington Tidal Basin Bombshell." Mills was dismayed. Confided Anna, "He thinks I am making a big mistake because I was going back to school." She asked him to see her act, "because when I take my clothes off, I don't think I do it in a dirty way." Despite their disagreement, Annabella remains on good terms with both Wilbur and his wife. They all went dancing at Washington's Junkanoo restaurant before she left for Boston. "Mrs. Mills is a very, very nice lady," declared Anna loyally. "We all play bridge together. She and I are partners and Mr. Mills sits across from the dummy."

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From jungle to jungle goes Lieut. Hiroo Onoda, 52, late of the Imperial Japanese Army. Since last March when Onoda emerged from the Philippine jungle where he personally continued to wage World War II for 29 years, the doughty infantryman has been mulling over his future habitat. Finally he settled on Brazil. "It offered me many more job opportunities than Japan," he said as he learned how to samba in a Rio nightspot. He was not referring to Brazil's secret police, who war against enemies of the state, but to a farm in the interior run by 36 Japanese families. Before deciding to turn cattleman, however, Onoda will publish his memoirs, Thirty Years in Lubang, and visit New York City, but he does not want to live there. Said Onoda: "I don't think there's much work there that would suit me."

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