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, Deerfield Windsor School is doing it again with their boy’s basketball program. They weren’t supposed to be very good this year but as usual Coach Gruhl has put together an outstanding team.

My wife, Barbara, and I are Super Boosters of Deerfield of their athletic teams even though we have no family member at the school. We are from the Chicago area originally and are living in Albany because we can play golf here year round. We have a lot of people, for some reason, asking us “what are you doing in Albany?” I guess the locals, for some reason, are astonished that we would come to this part of the world when we have no relatives here. We love it here!

Let’s go back to Deerfield and their Basketball Programs. It has been a lot of fun watching the Deerfield kids mature and become outstanding basketball players. Certainly Coach Gordy Gruhl is one of the finest basketball coached with whom we have ever had the pleasure of watching perform his magic year after year. He really needs to write a book that outlines his magic once he retires. It would surely be a best seller. I want the first copy!

One of his players that has developed into an outstanding work of art is Romello Carter, a junior, who reminds me of one of the Duke basketball guards. He is a remarkable player who I feel surely will be playing at the next level. In my opinion, he has all the skills it takes to play at the next level.

Another player is Sam Shellhaas, a junior, who is also an outstanding player and who is getting better every game. His father was a great player in Minnesota from where he come and as the saying goes, the apples don’t fall far from the tree. He is constantly all over the floor after the ball and comes up with some fantastic moves when passing the ball and shooting. He, like Romello, are both fascinating to watch. I am wondering just how good he is going to become and he to should also be playing at the next level. I can say this about many of those on this year’s team but I have only so much room given to me for my articles.

Saturday night, they blew out Southland, as did the girls. This is becoming a common occurrence as this team gets better and better and in my opinion this team will be going a long way in the State Tourney. Who knows what might happen in the tourney. I don’t want to say any more about how far I think that that they may go in the upcoming tourney because it might put a hex on them.

There are other players on this team that I would like to mention because they have become very good and as I said before are getting better and better each game. I am noting improved defense and shooting of both field goals and also free throws. The importance of making those free throws, especially near the end of games can’t be stressed too much. Making them will win a lot of games for a team. It appears that there is a good relationship among all the players and no one is trying to make a star out of themselves to the detriment of the team. In other words, this group is really a team and what it takes to be truly outstanding. Come watch them play and you will see what I mean.

If you love basketball like my wife and I do, I would highly recommend that you follow this year’s Deerfield boys AND girls teams and attend the games. The players need to have big crowds at their games to cheer them on. The crowd is definitely the sixth player on the team and you help them a great deal by being there. I don’t see nearly enough students and adults at these games for some reason and I am hoping that this article will encourage a lot more fans to show up. Again, they are so very important to the teams.

Other boys varsity player that are starting to look great are Weston King, Zach Jarzen, Pete Langstaff, and the Barber twins. Man, what a great team we are going to have next year too!

You probably noticed that I haven’t said much about the varsity girl’s games that start at 6:30 P.M. or about two hours before the boys play. They also have an outstanding team this year and many times play better that even the varsity boys. Players like Sabrina Curry, Courtney Kelson, Miranda Phillips and an eighth grader who is a phenom by the name of Niles are all very special and make up the heart of this team. Come at 6:30 P.M. on game nights and you will be surprised how good these girls have become. Certainly some of them will be playing somewhere at the next level.

I am already over my allowed space so I will close. People who say there is nothing to do in the Albany area obviously aren’t looking very hard! There is so much in the way of outstanding sports right under there nose!

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.

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.

It is that time of the year for your New Year’s Resolutions. Do you do them in your family? I do but my wife doesn’t. She thinks that they are a waste of time. Since she is a Type B, she takes things as they come and doesn’t worry about such things. And of course my being a TYPE A, OR POSSIBLY A TYPE AA, and a worry-wart, stuff like this is right up my alley. I am one of those folks that have To Do Lists on top of To Do Lists. It drives my wife of 52 years simply crazy but I can’t help it. I have always been that way. I guess that I have to blame that on my mother who taught me to always plan and I can’t seem to break the habit even at this stage of my life.

It is amazing to me how much I am able to accomplish by planning. Hey, if you don’t plan, it seems to me that you are just wondering around aimlessly never knowing where you are going.

Going on a trip, I wouldn’t think of not sitting down, before leaving, and planning the route we will be traveling, the stops along the way, when we will be leaving and arriving, and so forth. I never just go out in the car and take off without doing that. Yes, I drive my wife nuts with that kind of stuff but it has caused me to accomplish many things in life that I feel that I wouldn’t have accomplished if I had just let things happen.

So that brings me to next year’s New Year’s Resolutions. I imagine that most of you who do make such resolutions every year, your No. 1 resolution is the same as mine…probably because we didn’t accomplish it last year and the year before, and the year before that, etc. Yes, it is to lose weight. Right? A couple years ago, I lost 60 pounds and swore that I would never put that weight back on! Of course, even though that I tried so hard to do that, or is it to NOT do that, I did gradually put that fat back on and mostly in the stomach. I have realized that my wife did not shrink my shirts and pants as I accused her of doing. It was the lack of exercise and all those trips to the refrigerator every night immediately after getting up from the dinner table. You don’t do that, do you?

The next one that was on my list for many years, was to Stop Smoking. A doctor did a good job of scaring me in 1989 and I quit right on the spot. He said that the combination of nicotine and the new medicine I was taking could cause internal bleeding and I could bleed to death before I got to the hospital! I’m sure that wasn’t true but it was what I needed to hear, in combination of my children’s pleading me to quit, that did the job. I have not had a cigarette in my lips since 1989! Bet that was on your list, if you are a smoker.

I used to think that I was the only person that had problems with close relatives but many people do I find. Thus, that subject is probably on many people’s list to get corrected. Who doesn’t want to fix situations like that? Usually, if you admit your mistake and ask forgiveness, this item will disappear from your list but not always. All you can do is to keep trying and hope that time will heal all wounds.

Well, that is three common ones and close to being three of yours, if you make a list. Am I right? Most of my resolutions, I have to admit, are repeats but I keep trying. Eventually, some of them, at least, get accomplished and they will for you too. Gee, I sound like Dr. Phil, don’t I?

By the time that this gets printed, it will be after Christmas and getting close to 2012. Thus, you still have time to put your “New Year’s Resolutions” together and tucked away somewhere where no one can see them but you. It’s fun to look back at them at the end of the year to see what you accomplished and what you didn’t. I’ll bet my resolution to lose weight will be on my 2013 list!

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.

My birthday is December 12, just like Frank Sinatra’s except that I am now the big 75 and planning to have many more before it is over for me on this earth. As I have said many times to my readers, I have been so lucky during my life. I grew up in farm country in Northern Illinois and had never been more that about 100 miles from home until after I graduated from college (Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois). But once I got out of college and got married, I had the great opportunity to live in a number of areas of this great country and to travel all over the U.S.A. on business and to attend business conferences several places outside of our country…one place being New Jersey about 20 minutes from New York City.

In New Jersey, our children were quite young, like about four and six. I had gotten promoted to the main office of Atlas Supply Co. a quality control company owned by the five Standard Oil Companies at that time. I had traveled the U.S.A. training Standard Oil Salesmen and Marketing personnel on Tires, Batteries and Automobile Accessories. That surely was fun especially since I had never been anywhere. Not too much fun for my great wife who had to stay home and raise our two kids, I mean children! I guess kids are goats, right? What a great wife that I have for all she had to put up with during this period of time, by herself, and quite young herself at about 26.

Anyway, it was 1965 when I got this promotion and didn’t realize how much it was going to cost us to live in this area. It was pretty darn expensive in the New York City area and I should have never takes this promotion on the raise that they had given me to do it. But I was young, like we all were once, and didn’t know any better. The company had taken advantage of me and even though we tried very hard to make ends meet, we just couldn’t. I painted interiors of houses in the evening and we didn’t spend money on things we didn’t need…..except one thing! Since we didn’t have the money to do hardly anything while we were there, I bought our FIRST RCA Color TV which was quite expensive at that time. It was a beautiful wooden set and produced a very good picture for that time in the evolution of colored TV sets. We loved it and I kept it shined up every day like I do with all my cars. Anyone who knows me knows how shiny that would be!

So it was nearly Christmas and I go to town and buy a beautiful TV costing us about $550.00, as I remember, which was a great deal of money back then. We were 500 plus miles from both of our parents homes at Christmastime and couldn’t afford to make the trip back there to Northern Illinois, especially since we had bought that new TV. We went to the stores and bought our young children some gifts but nothing for us. The TV was our gift. The gifts were wrapped and put under the real Christmas tree that we had cut from a nearby tree farm. We loaded the tree with a bunch of Japanese-made colored lights plus the many different hangings that we put on the tree every year that reminded us of our friends back in Milan, Michigan area where we used to live (near Ann Arbor, Mich.). We were all surely sad that we couldn’t make this traditional trip home to see all our relatives

So, we watched TV and made plans to make the trip back to Illinois at some other future date. The tree we had looked great and we were very happy with it. Then, something unusual…AND DANGEROUS…happened! Our children were lying close to the tree watching something like Sesame Street. I was on my way home from work and pulled up to my driveway with fire trucks out front with their lights brightly blinking! My wife had been in the back bedroom and she said that she heard a loud bang. She ran into the TV room to find the tree on fire. Our Christmas tree had caught on fire and had literally exploded which a very dry one will do when it catches on fire.

I had forgotten to make a fresh cut across the bottom of the tree so that the water we had been placed in the tree holder could get through the bottom of the tree and up into the body of the tree. When that didn’t happen, the tree naturally dried out completely and was like a bomb ready to explode if a spark should show up in the tree, which it did. The sap at the bottom of the tree had gotten very hard, almost like cement. The tree could not get the drink it so badly needed. This caused the tree to get very dry.

The cheap Japanese lights shorted out and caused the dry tree to actually explode! The ceiling of our front room, directly above the tree, had a big black area and smoke went throughout our duplex wrecking all of our clothes even those in our closets. The pine needles from the tree had dropped on top of our new TV onto the beautiful, shiny wood of the set and also the fire had burned out the speakers in the front. We sent the TV off to be refinished and to replace the area covering the speakers…right at Christmastime when a couple of young kids wanted to watch the TV! The smell of smoke was strong throughout our duplex but we didn’t move to a motel like we should have done.

It was not a smart thing to stay in that duplex and breathe in those bad smells but we did. Again, remember that we were a couple of very young parents with young children and didn’t know any better.

The reason that I am writing this is to try to protect you and your family and to not make the mistakes we did. Always cut the bottom of every new “real” tree that you ever use so the water can be sucked up into the tree and not get dried out and become a fire hazard. This can be a very dangerous situation. And DON’T stay in your home or apartment and breathe in that smoke should you have a fire. It is definitely not good for you or your family.

Have a safe and Merry Christmas and a great 2012!

Want to have the happiest Christmas that you or your children could have and that will be remembered for the rest of your life? Well, it is very easy to do and all it involves is not thinking of yourself and spent your Christmas money this year on someone else and not on yourself or your kids. Until you do something like this, you cannot imagine the joy that it will bring and it teach your children, if you have any, to do this when they grow up.

So, sit down and decide what each of you, in your family, intends to spend this year for Christmas and make a vow to spend it on someone else. After doing this, you will wonder why you haven’t done this before. Then, go to your church or some other organization that knows the names of the needy in your area. Take your money that you have budgeted and head for the stores. The feeling will be awesome as you shop for age appropriate gifts. With each gift, you will think of how happy you are going to make those individuals who will be receiving these gifts.

You know, most of us can not even think of what WE need or want for Christmas, if we are asked. Most of us have most everything a person can have and we don’t need a darn thing. As a result, doing what I suggest won’t hurt you a darn bit. It will only just make you a happier person. It will make you feel so darn good that you can’t wait till next year to do it again.

I never will forget the first time that my wife and I did this. We, and the rest of our Jaycee group bought a larger amount of groceries during the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays and sacked them up. Then we contacted and asked people we knew that were really in need of such things to come by a well-known area in the town where we lived to come by and pick up the surprise that we had waiting for them. When they came by ,with their children, many were single parent families who really needed the food that we had set aside for them. Many of them actually cried as they picked up the food that they so badly needed. I thought to myself, “Why haven’t I done this before?” What we have done has made such an important impact on all these people.

I swore that I was going to do this every year but of course like many good things we should do, we haven’t done that like we should have. But you know, if you do it just one time, you have helped a lot of people and it will give you tremendous joy. And if you will do it more than once, or make it a common practice during the holy season, you will be just that much of a better person for it.

So, this year, just once do what I am recommending and see what joy it will give to you and your family. Make someone else very happy. You will be very happy that you did.

Have a very happy and merry Christmas this year…especially to each one of you reading my article and my other articles this past year. I appreciate it and hope that some of these articles give you some joy that you didn’t already have. May God bless you for all the good things that you do for others.

Wow, how things have changed today when it comes to family get togethers during the various holidays, especially at Christmastime.  Our family is like a great deal of other families today.  We have gotten ourselves scattered all over the country.  As a result, it is getting more and more difficult to see each other.

When I was young, growing up in Illinois, our family, our grandparents, our Uncles and Aunts, nephews and nieces, and others, always got together at least on Thanksgiving and Christmas at a minimum to celebrate.  And what a great time we would have when we did.  One of my most remembered, and happy, memories was with my Grandfather playing penny-ante poker.  That included all his grandchildren and he playing with their own pennies they brought with them to our get together.  My grandfather would laugh so much as he took all our pennies away from us!  We couldn’t wait for each year’s holiday to come so that we could try to get our pennies back from him.  You know, this is one example of how important grandparents are.  We loved him so much.  I spent as much time with him as I could.

When I was real young, he would take me on his ice delivery route delivering the ice to all the farm houses in the area for their “ice boxes.”  For you youngsters reading this, I am talking about the first refrigerators before the electric ones became common.  He also took me on many of his nightly trips to the Chicago Stock Yards when he delivered hogs and cows, etc.  I can still remember the smell of the stockyards when we go there.  I didn’t care for the slaughtering of the animals that I got to see.  I am not one for killing anything!  If I had to do it, I wouldn’t be eating any meat, I guarantee you that!

But the thing that we all looked forward to was the great meals that my Grandmother and Mother used to fix.  My Grandmother was German and she always fixed German Potato Dumplings which looked like dirty snowballs.  They were fixed with duck and with the duck juice they were heavenly!

We would usually have about 20 people on these occasions.  What fantastic memories we had of those days.  Today, it is so much different, for a lot of families.  My wife and kids, regardless where we lived, Chicago, Joliet, Kankakee, Park Forest, Illinois or in New Jersey near New York City, Wausau, Wisc., or near Ann Arbor, Michigan, we always returned home to my folks or my wife’s folk during these holidays but that all changed once our children got married and moved away from home.  Our son, Mark, and his family now live in Scottsdale, AZ which is a couple thousand miles or so away.  Our daughter, Sherry, and her family, live in Lansing, Michigan, a little over a thousand miles away.  And here we are in Albany, Georgia.  As you can see, that puts us all a long ways away from each other and that makes it quite difficult to get together like we would like to especially during Thanksgiving and Christmas.  That is especially true as my wife and I get older and really too old to be driving those very long distances and with the cost of flying getting much more expensive.

So things are very different these days.  No more fantastic dinners together.  My brother, Tom, and I are the only ones left that love those German Potato Dumplings, anyway.   No more penny ante poker.  Today, it would have to be Dollar poker, I suppose, since money isn’t worth much anymore!  And most importantly, my fantastic Grandfather and Grandmother are no longer with us.  We are the Grandparents now but we will never compare to those Grandparents we had back then.

Yes, things have changed a lot.  The Good Ole Days are long gone and I miss them a lot.  But, heck, today we have the computer and all the things we can do today that we couldn’t then so I shouldn’t complain because I like using the computer so much.

Merry Christmas, as we Christians still say, and I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas and a great New Year.

A special TV program was aired a couple weeks ago about all the jobs available in Williston, North Dakota and it immediately made me think about a trip I had there when I was a Division Manager for Bandag Inc. Bandag Inc. is the largest truck tire retreading company in the world and I was responsible for about 120 of their 400+ manufacturing franchises. Almost every truck rolling down the super highways of the USA today has Bandag Retreads on it which outwear new tires.

The TV program was alerting all people looking for a job to head for Williston because jobs of all kinds are waiting for you there. Some of the largest stores of oil can be found there and that area needs a lot of people to fill all kinds of jobs in that area that is growing extremely fast from McDonalds all the way to those jobs tied to the production of the oil from the ground there.

Williston is a small town at this point but that is changing rapidly with all the people that are headed there. Who knows how big it is going to get! The town is in Northwest North Dakota 40 miles south of the Canadian border and 15 miles east of its western state border. It is literally is the middle of nowhere and few people, until recently, have ever heard of it…but not for long!

I flew into Williston with my usual pin striped black suit, black winged tipped shoes, black hat and black top coat. I must have looked like a coroner to the fellow who picked me up in a very dirty pickup truck! I felt pretty darn foolish when I arrived. I couldn’t believe how dirty that pickup was inside and out and how ridiculous I must have looked. I hated to even get into that truck with its extremely dirty seats that were typical in any oil field operation. No one told me, of course, how I needed to be dressed that week. My District Manager flew in to meet me and we handled our business there as soon as possible and took off to see other Bandag manufacturing plants elsewhere.

We decided to take a train east from there to Grand Rapids, Minnesota. It was an over night trip with dinner served on the train. I hadn’t been on a train in a long tine or ever eaten a meal on a train so that part was a lot of fun. At the end of the trip, we took a bus to reach our final destination. That week turned out to be a lot of fun and I learned to check on the area I was visiting before packing my suitcase and getting dressed for the trip so that I was never embarrassed like that again.

My suggestion to all of you who are looking for a job is that you head for Williston. It sounds like, no matter what you are looking for, that an opportunity is waiting there for you. Don’t worry about the location of Williston and what is available there for you and your family. When you have been out of work for a considerable time (like I was once), you will take anything you can find to take care of yourself and your family. You can always change to another area later if you don’t like it there. First things first. You need money at the moment to buy groceries and to pay for a home, etc. And take it from me and my wife who have lived in a lot of different places in this great USA, you might be really surprised how much you will like this new area and all the nice new people you will be meeting. Sometimes the best experiences in your life will come from moving to area that, in the beginning, didn’t look too good. Our move to the Detroit area in 1968 would be the perfect example of that.

So do like one of friends told me to do regarding my decision whether I should make a job change when my kids were in high school and would be soon going to college. Look you are still young. Don’t be afraid to make a change. It might be the best thing you ever have done…and IT WAS!

Most seniors are baffled by the medical insurance that is available to them once they reach the age of 65. In fact, most people don’t understand insurance, in general and run away from it every chance they have. I, did too, until I got into the business. It was to me like a different language. Now, after attending insurance school and having the experience I have had over the years, plus getting older and becoming a senior, I can understand how it works. But the average person doesn’t have that background and insurance scares the heck out of them. One of the main reasons that I write for the Albany Journal is so that I feel that I can help seniors, as the saying goes because “I are one” and I feel that I can explain it in terms other seniors can understand.

Let’s take a look at Medicare, Medicare Supplement, and Medicare Advantage in their simplest terms. I will try to eliminate the fear that may exist and cause a person to slip into a coma when someone brings up the topic.

Medicare health insurance is made up of four parts: First, there’s Part A, which helps cover the patient care in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and in hospices plus certain home health care. You pay no premiums for this because you paid medical taxes while working.  Next is Part B, which helps cover the cost of doctor’s services, outpatient care, and certain other medical services. You pay a premium monthly for this care which is deducted from your Social Security Check. (Parts A and B are often referred to as Original Medicare or Traditional Medicare)

Then there’s Part D: This is a separate plan that covers prescriptions. Prescriptions used to be covered by Traditional Medicare but not anymore. Now you must go online and look at the various plans that are approved in your state and pick the one that best fits your needs. The plans vary by the medicines they offer, by different premiums, deductibles, etc. It is a little complicated for the general public so have your insurance agent help you with choosing the plan you should be on.

Finally, there’s Medi-gap or Medicare Supplement Insurance: Since Traditional  Medicare Ins. Doesn’t pay for everything, you need to have this insurance  to take care of the medical insurance that fall in this gap that aren’t covered.  It is standardized insurance since about 1992 and the only differences are what you would pay in premiums and who you buy it from. For example, a plan F, which most people get, is the same regardless of who you buy it from. Private insurance companies sell this insurance so go see your favorite trusted agent, like me to get it.  Shop around for the least expensive plan F you can find.

Your other option is not take any of the above and instead get what is called a MEDICARE ADVANTAGE Plan that is offered by private insurance companies. All the elements we talked about above are in one of these types of plans. To get on one of these plans, you must drop your Medicare Plans that you have paid into all of your life. They operate like a PPO plan and have deductibles, and co-pays, etc. If you are never ill, they could end up saving you a lot of money but as we get older that usually is not what happens to us. We usually start having health problems and then these plans could end up costing you a lot of money.  I have a lot of health problems and since I have been on Traditional Medicare, it hasn’t cost me a penny except for private hospital rooms that I have chosen. There are lots of things you need to watch out for if you decide to go this route so you definitely need to see a trusted insurance agent to help your decide if this is the route you should be traveling.

The best advice that I can give anyone is not let the government get involved in any of our insurance plans. Anything the government gets involved in, they seem to mess it up. As long as things are the way they currently are, your best friend should definitely be your insurance agent and I am not saying that because I am one. When you figure out how much of your total budget is involved in insurance, you need an expert in the business to help you make the best decisions that you can in these matters.