Ted Anderson Archive

I told you readers that I would be going to the hospital this past week to have a Heart Cauterization to find out what was going on in there. Was I having a problem with my stints or was something else wrong, or both. The stints were ok but found a vein almost blocked and some possible blockages in my lungs! Well, that certainly scared the heck out of me, as you can imagine. I have been feeling very tired and was getting worn out when walking only short distances. I knew SOMETHING was not quite right in there somewhere!

One of the results was to change my diet completely from what it has been all my life. After eating the way I have for 75 years, I am now getting the punishment for doing so. As you can imagine, I have to cut out all the foods that I have grown up on…all the ones that I love. No more fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy. No more French fries. No more skin on chicken which I love so much. No more bacon and other meat except on rare occasions…and a lot more fish, especially salmon. Fast food places are a no no.

Well, I have pretty much quit going there by now so that wasn’t a big deal! Cut out the ice cream. Oh my God, this is going to be the toughest thing on the list of changes I must make. I eat ice cream almost every night and sometimes go back for seconds and thirds. Ok, this is probably one of the main reasons I am having these unwanted problems. But, I love ice cream so much! How am I going to do it! Lose about 40 pounds. Well, that should be easy now with the elimination of the number one offender to proper eating.

After having my one and only heart attack in 2008, I had lost about 65 pounds so I know that I can do it if I put my mind to it, again.

These past 75 years, my Grandmother, Mother, and my wife have dished out all the great food, called love, to me. All three were, or are, great cooks. It is all their fault, as you can see. I couldn’t refuse their cooking. It would have hurt their feelings and you know how emotional women are, right? This love has been coming my way from my wife now for 52, going on 53 years! Mercy, what am I going to do? I guess, if I want to live to my goal of 100 or more, I am going to need to listen to my doctors. It appears, after two nights and three days in the hospital, I have really no choice. The punishment coming my way must be met directly eye ball to eye ball!

I’m surely glad that I kept all those clothes after that I lost those 65 pounds in 2008. I have a complete set of leisure and dress clothes just waiting for me in my closet. I can use those clothes as I go along every step of the way in this new exercise of mine. See, Honey, I told you not to give those clothes to the Salvation Army because I might need them again sometime. You thought that I was crazy but I am right once in awhile.

Ok, I need to get started tomorrow. I say, tomorrow, instead of today because I want to raid the refrigerator just one more time before I get started. Oh, yeah, raiding the fridge is another serious problem that I have had all my life! It is 2:30 A.M. also and I think that I can get away with it and not wake her up at this time of the morning, if I am very quiet and careful. What do you think?

Some of you readers are friends of my wife so please don’t tell her what I am doing tonight. Love you all.

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

I have recently been keeping very busy and trying to keep my mind off of a heart procedure that is coming up on Tuesday, Feb. 28th. The main problem that I have been having in recent years has pertained to my Crohn’s Disease which was diagnosed back in 1989. In recent months, though, I have been extremely tired and it has been decided that something different is going on. Tues. A.M., my doctors are going back into my heart to see what is going on in there.

In January of 2008, I had a heart attack and I have not been feeling good in recent months. It has been quite difficult for me to walk even short distances and when I do, I have been hurting all over in all my joints and muscles. I also become winded very quickly which is very unusual for me. I had a couple of stents installed after my 2008 heart attack and they now may be in need of some attention…or some other heart problem may have developed. Whatever the case, I thought that it was time to go in there and find out precisely just what, if anything is now going on.

My best friend who now lives in Ukiah, California called me recently advising me of similar symptoms to what I have been having and last week he had quadruple open heart surgery. I am certainly hoping that is not going to be the same result for me, of course. I have enough health problems without something like that happening to me especially since my oldest grand-daughter is getting married in September in Seattle and I want to be there for the big event. I don’t want to get several thousand miles from home and suddenly develop some heart problems with doctors who know little about all my other health problems. You can see why I am a little worried about what is currently going on with my body!

I am not a person who puts off any kind of problem that I might be having. I address a problem immediately and go to work at finding a solution. I don’t ever lose sleep by sticking my head in the sand just hoping things will get better on its own. So, that is where I am right now and this could cause me not to have an article in the Journal the next couple of weeks. Please wish me lots of luck and say a couple prayers for me as I work on this bump in the road that I have encountered.

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

Well, I guess that I was a little wrong about how well this year’s Deerfield Windsor School boys varsity basketball team would do in the end of the end of the year in the State Basketball Championships. Of course, at the time that I was making all the predictions, I had no idea that the boys team would end up playing probably the best team in the tourney right off of the bat…which was Griffin Christian! Griffin was as fast and as quick as Deerfield and they had three or more players who were very tall who could jump over the rims! Deerfield has a bunch of very young players not used to the wars of the final year’s tourney and they simply were run right out of the gym.

Deerfield had a great year, one that was supposed to be a rebuilding one not one to make a run at the State Championship in their classification. Wait till next year, as they say. Everyone is back and with the growth that will certainly take place over the summer; the results could be very different. Romello Carter, for one, has already got himself set up, per his Dad, Frederick, to play AAU ball to improve his game. I am sure that the other stars, or potential stars, will be doing the same. Great job Coach Gruhl, on what you were able to teach these youngsters this year. I can see great accomplishments coming next year with the likes of Carter, Shellhaas, Jarzen, King, and Langstaff, just to mention a few of the many very good players coming back next year.

Now, about the Varsity girls. They made it to the Sweet 16 this year which was the 2nd Round of the Tourney. They, unfortunately lost two of their starters to injury, Gaby Burt and Heather Lash and that hurt them considerably as they drove to get to the Final Four. They missed making that happen by one game.

That game, against Westminster, turned out to be similar to the boys game against Griffin that put them out of the running. Westminster had a couple of six foot girls that made the Lady Knights miserable all night. Miranda Phillips and Nyla Perry both played a great game and scored 10 and 9 points respectively but the efforts of all were just not enough by the highly talented team that they were up against Friday night, Feb. 17.

Next year will be a rebuilding year for the them but Coach Kinslow always manages to suit up a very good team each year like Coach Gruhl. Lost next year will be Cosby, Curry, Kelson, Phillips and Lash and all five seniors will surely be missed. Don’t feel bad, though, as Coach Kinslow has a bunch of youngsters that are on their way to making their coach and their parents proud and who knows how good they will be by season’s end.

Both the boys and the girls show great potential for the next few years based on what I saw this year. If our tall players can grown a little more and fill out those young frames, they will be able to dominate in the paint area. I already see tremendous speed in the teams as a whole so the pressing defense that Deerfield employs should continue to provide havoc to their opponents.

So fans, attend the games and support the kids as they try as hard as they can to please all those cheering them on. If the games next year are half as good as they were this year, you will get more than your money’s worth by attending.

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

How stupid can I be?  Sometimes you look back on your life and wonder what in the heck you are thinking when you out there casing girls and trying to find the right one…the one that you want to spend the rest of your life with.  Well, I was 22, right out of college (Northern Illinois University).  I had to get that plug in for my school just outside of Chicago…the city I love!

At Northern Illinois, I belonged to best fraternity on campus, the one with all the varsity and junior varsity athletes in it and we naturally had close relations with the best sorority on campus, the one with all the best looking girls.  This being the case, I had a fantastic time in college even though that I was an accounting major which meant that I had four times the homework that anyone had.  That’s the way it works when you take accounting as anyone can tell you if they also had that major.  Even so, I found time for some social life.  Back to the girls.  I never had any trouble getting a date.  I am not bragging.  If you are in the best fraternity on campus (Tau Kappa Epsilon) and you worked in the freshman girls dorm cafeteria, which I did, you got the first shot at the new freshman girls coming in.  How can you not get a date whenever you wanted to?

What I am about to get to is that one freshman girl.  You know that one that was a knockout, Mira Ballagoolyon.  Yes that was her name!  I may have the spelling off a little but that is close.  She was the one I wanted.  Trouble was, she wouldn’t have anything to do with me no matter how hard I tried.  Isn’t that the way it always is?  So I am working for Standard Oil of Indiana in Ottawa, Illinois and I ask a fraternity brother who lives there to fix me up with a date since I knew no one there when I moved into the area.  Guess what?  He fixes me up with a girl that looks just like that girl at college who had no interest in me.  I couldn’t believe it!  We started dating and I really like her.  Then on Valentine Day (See, I am getting around to the reason for this article), I did the dumbest thing I have ever done.  I bought two boxes of Valentine candy, one for her and one for a girl friend I had in Chicago, about 50 miles away.  To show you how really dumb I was, I told her where I was going and asked her not to go out with anyone else.  Ya, right!  So while I was gone on this Valentines Day date, she go out with one of her old boyfriends in Ottawa!  I got back home and I was really teed off.  I guess she showed me!  Well, I couldn’t have that, so I married her and we are now working on 53 years of marriage!

I hope that you are a lot smarter than me and not think you can get away with anything like that.  Come to think of it, maybe I was actually smart.  I got the love of my life and two wonderful children and a great marriage.  Oh yes, we have an argument now and then but the making up is great!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all!

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

Please understand what entitlements are and what they aren’t…esp. what they aren’t! This is especially important to understand this at this time during the election year when we have politicians out there spreading a lot of mistruths. One very important thing that entitlements are not is our Social Security. I guess that they think we are all stupid! Well, we aren’t all stupid!

Let me again make this very clear. Social Security is not an entitlement like politicians are stating. They don’t have to reduce it. It isn’t their money. It is all our money, every bit of it. On top of that they have been stealing it from us! You and I, and our employers too, are the ones contributing to this fund which totals 15 percent. Not one penny belongs to the government and they have been taking money out of this fund to pay for things where their programs are running short. This is definitely stealing and we need to get it stopped immediately.

This is a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever even imagined and it has been going on a long time, I guess, because the citizens of our country don’t realize what is going on back there in Washington along with a lot of other things. We don’t have the money for a lot of things we are doing especially with regard to foreign countries including the homes of our enemies like Bin Laden.

For one thing, we are sending aid to Haiti, Chile, Turkey, and Pakistan. Hundreds of billions of dollars and tons of food is going to these and other countries while we have homeless all over the place in THIS country camping out under bridges! Many of our seniors are living in poverty because they are on small fixed incomes. We say that we don’t have money to take care of the wounds of our fighting men when they return home after risking their lives many times for people who come right out and shout that they hate us as they burn our flags! We have orphans who need a lot of help that aren’t getting it. America, shame on you!

How dare that our leaders allow this to happen. How do they go to sleep at night knowing that this is happening on their watch? All this is going on as our politicians live the life of luxury especially after they quit and continue their income until death, then their wives have that income to their death, and while they are alive, they have also a special medical care program different than ours, the general public, and which takes care of them very well. Shame on all of you responsible for this!

One last thing, I am told the following to be true. We and our employers put about 15 percent into the Social Security Fund so we can take care of ourselves after we retire (if the government doesn’t steal any of it). If you averaged only $30,000 in wages per year over your working life, you would accumulate about $220,000, I am told. If you received a simple 5 percent interest on your money, the future value of your money accumulated would be about $892,919 after 49 years. If you took out only 3 percent, I understand that you’d receive about $27,000 per year and it would last for 30 years! If the government left our fund alone, we would have reasonable amount to live on…not the way it is today. We are being robbed by our government which is not big surprise to me. Is it to you?

All this is going on as our government officials and employees live the life of luxury including the Golden Parachutes that they have set up for themselves. Get educated to what is really going on and don’t let these politicians fool you with all their lies.

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

As most of you know, Dearborn, Michigan has a large population of Muslims and now, I understand that they have threatened and convinced the State of Michigan to allow them to apply their laws to their people living in that state.  That’s right, they are living in the United States and they don’t have to pay any attention to OUR laws……only their own Sharif Law.  That’s like saying that they are taking over now that we allowed them to come to our country and live here.  Can you imagine us going to say France and telling them that we are moving there and not paying any attention to their laws?

Why are we letting them get away with this behavior?  Remember, regardless what others are saying, these people are our sworn enemies and it is their object to get rid of (literally) anyone that doesn’t agree with the Koran or their way of thinking.  It is their way or the highway.  They have everyone afraid of them and who wouldn’t be with all their threats and living in many countries that are extremely afraid to stand up to them.  And now we are starting to fall into that same category here in the good ole USA.  It is time to stop all this type of thinking and get us a strong President not the type that we currently have in place at the moment.  I have never felt so embarrassed as I have since the Liberals voted in Obama.

How about you?  Or do you think that we are a strong nation with a lacking in the area of programs that provide a living to those who refuse to work and who want Big Government to take care of them?  I certainly hope that the past four years have demonstrated how very weak Obama is and how lacking in experience he is pertaining to being the leader of the Free World.

I will bet that you have heard what the President in Australia is making very clear in her country.  Australia is their (Australia’s) country and those who come there to live must speak THEIR language, follow their laws, and if they don’t like it, they can leave their country immediately.  They aren’t putting up with any of the horse manure that is going on in our country these days.  It seems to me that WE used to be strong and were in control in this land of ours.  What happened here?  Oh, how I would like Ronald Reagan to reappear and make us feel good again about our country.  There has to be another Ronald Reagan out there somewhere that we could convince to run for our President.

Written by Ted Anderson. Insurance agent Ted W. Anderson worked in sales for half a century, has lived in Albany since 1993. He is president of Dover Lane Neighborhood Watch. Send email to him at aj@thealbanyjournal.com.

Yes, I have been lucky, or fortunate, in my life and travels to play on a number of very good golf courses throughout the U.S.A. and I have a story connected to just about every one of them. These adventures, or misadventures, are often thought of on a day like today, Jan. 7, 2012 when it is 70 degrees instead of 30 degrees that it should be here in Albany, Ga.  I thought that I would tell you about a few of those that you may find interesting.

To start with, I had the opportunity to play Spy Glass which is one of the Pebble Beach golf courses in California and I jumped at the chance even though it was rather pricy.  It  was a few years ago and even then, they were getting $150.00 a round!  Believe me, I am not used to paying that kind of money to play golf!  But what the heck, I figured that I might never get the chance again to play such a wonderful course.  And I was right.  I have never been close to Pebble Beach again and I have not even had the opportunity to even step on such a prestigious course.  Let me tell you, if you haven’t ever played a tough course like Spy Glass, it lets you know just how good, or poor, you are at this game and makes you wonder how these pro golfer are able to not only play it well but to get fantastic scores on it.  It was so darn beautiful that I could care less how well I played and it was terrible!  I was in the sand or ice plant areas all the time and a number of my balls went into the Pacific Ocean.  We had a 6:35 A.M. tee time and lucky to get  it.  The entire No. 1 fairway was covered in fog as we started out and I lost 5 balls going down it and never found a one.  It was downhill after that all the way around the 18 holes.

Another Southern California course that I will always remember was Rancho Bernardo and how that I embarrassed myself on that course. I remember teeing off on No. 1 with who lot of people standing around anxiously waiting to get started.  I stepped up to the tee and went through my usual routine before swinging at the ball.  When I did, I took about an eight inch divot on this beautiful tee!  Oh my God, I wanted to find some place to go and hide!  Man, I hate to tee off with a whole lot of people watching me tee off!

I was in San Antonio, Texas calling on an old friend of mine who had a Bandag Inc. franchise, the company I was representing.  He had just got word that he had cancer and he wasn’t interested in playing any golf at the time.  I happened to have my wife, Barbara, and this trip with me and she is an avid golfer, as you know, if you know her.  Anyway, we were at the Old Dominion course their and my friend, Ted Leijenwald, paid both of our green fees and cart fees and we played the course by ourselves.  I don’t remember any problems on playing this course.  I just mentioned it  because it was so beautiful and possibly you were familiar with the course.

Barb and I both play a lot of golf and we moved to Albany, Ga. because we were looking for a place where we could play year around.  A few years ago when I was playing quite a lot more than I am today at age 75, I was getting to the point where I thought my next step was to break 80.  I was at Doublegate Country Club here in Albany and playing in some charity affair.  I shot a 37 on the first nine and stopped at the restaurant for something to drink.  I was certain that that was the day I would break 80 as I headed for the 10^th hole and the back nine.  Well, I promptly shot a 57 on that back nine to my great embarrassment.  The Pro at Doublegate, Ed Everett,  still doesn’t believe it!  That is how crazy this game of golf really is!

One last adventure and I will bring this article to a close.  This one is unbelievable……but true!   Those of you who know me know that I have Crohn’s Disease which I was diagnosed with when I was 53 years old.  I had it long before that but I didn’t know the symptoms and was never treated for it until I got to be 53.  This disease is a problem with the immune system and causes you constantly to have a restroom within site.  When I play golf, I always have the urge “to go” when I get the furthest distance from the Club House.  One day when my wife and I were playing the Brickyard course in Americus, Ga., we were the furthest distance from the clubhouse and this situation came about.  I told my wife to take the clubs she needed and to keep playing.  I would run to the clubhouse and I would meet her at the next hole.  I got into our golf cart and went like a bat out of hell towards the clubhouse.

On the way, I saw a Port-a-John so I stopped and decided to use it instead.  I am sitting in it when I notice fire ants on my shoes and starting to crawl up my ankles.  Then, I feel them where I was sitting!  Oh my God, I was sitting in a large bunch of fire ants that where everywhere!  All I could think of was what I had read recently in a golf magazine.  The article stated that if you were bitten a large number of times, the stings could actually kill you.  Anyone who has been bitten a few times on the ankles knows how painful just a few bites can be!  I got the ants off of me but not before I was bitten at least in 50 places.  Thank God that I wasn’t bitten in certain areas that you are thinking about right now.  That could have been a real problem!  We all laugh about this now but at the time it certainly was NOT funny.

Hope you enjoyed reading about some of my golf course experiences.  I have more but this article is already too long per the publisher’s guidelines.  If you have any true golf stories that you think I would be interested in, please send them to me.