Smiley Anders has been writing a column six days a week for The Advocate since 1979.
Smiley, who received B.A. and M.A. degrees in journalism from LSU, joined The Advocate in 1973 as business reporter after a 13-year career as a business journalist (he was oil and gas editor of The Shreveport Times and edited business publications for the Louisiana Farm Bureau and Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce).
His column has won first place in the items category of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' annual competition (the Herb Caen Award) on four occasions (in 1985, 1997, 2004 and 2005). He was named the first "Communicator of the Year" in 1975 by the Public Relations Association of Louisiana. He served as president of the Press Club of Baton Rouge in 1976 and 1996.
He is married to the former Katherine Scales. He has two children and six grandchildren.
Send your e-mail items for Smiley’s column to smiley@theadvocate.com or call him at (225) 388-0639.
Dear Smiley: Speaking of colloquial ways to say things: Our friends, Glenn and Sandie, came through Baton Rouge the other day on their way to Gulfport, Miss., to re-establish their lives there after living for several years in foreign countries like Kuwait and Dallas.
The English language is a wonderful thing. I love all the clever ways people use it. For instance, Keith John Paul Horcasitas says Bob, the president of his subdivision organization, came up with a phrase that would no doubt please this column’s wordsmiths, such as Ralph Sims.
“I am working here in Saudi Arabia and read The Advocate every day online,” says Wayne Cambre. “I see where the Mississippi River was the highest it has been in 35 years. “Where we are gasoline is 60 cents a gallon. Water here costs more than gasoline."
The proposal in the Legislature to arm college students seems to me likely to activate the old Law of Unintended Consequences. Let’s say you’re a college professor facing a classroom full of students — and you know they’re packing heat.
A “loyal reader and Istrouma High grad” (I like both of those descriptions) sends in this “only in Louisiana” item: “I was a guest recently at a crawfish boil celebrating two graduating high school students.
After a reader told of having a crutch stolen from her truck, I heard an example of “some people will steal anything” from Dudley Lehew: “I know it’s true, because I was working in New York City when it happened.
Dear Smiley: Over the past 25 years I have returned to Baton Rouge several times a year for various reasons. And I’ve jokingly stated that the two best sales jobs in America are light bulb salesman in Las Vegas and traffic signal salesman in Baton Rouge.
Tammy Smith, of Zachary, offers these memories from 11 years of LSU baseball games at Alex Box Stadium: “My son Landon being taken into the LSU locker room by some players when he was about 4, and thinking the guys were ‘naked’ because they had on no shirts. They were playing pool; he thought that was cool.
It started 18 years ago when Mike Arnone, a Baton Rouge native living in New Jersey, got homesick. Mike decided to hold a backyard crawfish boil for a few friends. Today that boil has grown into the annual Crawfish Fest, a mini Jazz Fest.
In addition to the usual Mother’s Day gift suggestions — flowers, jewelry, cosmetics, clothing — some Advocate advertisers are offering more creative gift ideas.
When I discovered Mildred P. Worrell’s “Southern Exposure” column in Country Roads magazine years ago, she became my favorite columnist. She managed to capture all the joys and sorrows of growing up and remaining in the small-town South.
I read with interest our Wednesday story about the two gentlemen from Mississippi who had an unfortunate experience with anhydrous ammonia on Interstate 10, resulting in the busy highway being closed for three hours. What caught my eye was this paragraph:
Dear Smiley: When the ol’ Mississippi overflowed in 1927, I was 6 years old. My daddy took me in our T-Model Ford downtown (we lived in Istrouma) to see it. I think we were on Main Street at Lafayette. There were big houses, several stories high, along Lafayette at that time.
To keep from spurring needless and fruitless conflict, I avoid discussing politics, religion or comic strips. I know no amount of talk will change your views on any of the three. (No matter how wrong you are and how right I am.) Supporters or opponents of various comic strips hold passionate and inflexible opinions.
The Ascension Parish crackdown on ecdysiasts has, as you might expect, attracted the attention of my readers. Dale J. Ulkins was especially interested in the fact that one of 12 employees arrested at a Prairieville, uh, “gentlemen’s club,” was charged with “dancing without a license”:
Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences! I haven’t been a fan of speed traps since the ’70s, when I got nailed twice in two weeks in Krotz Springs for going 45Ø mph in a 45 mph zone.
A word about the selection of items for this column. Sometimes I pick items because they are about historic events that alter and illuminate our times. At other times I select items that I feel will make my readers more informed, well-rounded citizens.
How to tell if you’re a true Cajun
Dear Smiley: I think Police Chief Jeff LeDuff deserves a tip of the hat. Recently he pulled over my second-eldest daughter for not wearing her seat belt. She assured him that she used it regularly, but had just pulled out of the parking lot and had not yet had an opportunity to buckle up.
Who needs “Survivor”? Baton Rouge has its own reality show, starring Kevin Reilly Jr. of Lamar Advertising CEO; his wife, Winifred; Louisiana Nature Conservancy director Keith Ouchley of St. Francisville; and nine other daring souls.
This story by Jennifer Prather shows how firmly the riverboat casinos have become established in our community’s psyche: “About once a month my husband, 3-year-old son and I eat dinner at the riverboat casino buffet. “We like the variety of foods served, and my husband usually has a coupon."
Baton Rouge hasn’t always been known as a town that celebrates diversity, so it’s heartening to get a note like this one from “Missing-My-Child Mom:” “After growing up in Baton Rouge, my daughter moved from New Orleans to attend Loyola."
Vernon Yielding reminds us of bygone days, when consumers factored in the availability of trading stamps before choosing a retailer: “In the late ’60s as my wife and I were driving to north Louisiana to visit her parents, I noticed we had three-fourths of a tank of gasoline."
Doug Johnson, of Watson, adds to our discussion of the art of playing hooky with a tale from his boyhood in Waverly, Tenn.
Dear Smiley: I was doing some family research when I came across an article in the Bedford, Pa., Gazette of Oct. 23, 1903. A distant cousin of mine, Christopher Snell, was running for “poor director.”
Today is National Columnists Day. The date was chosen by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists because on this day in 1945 the great World War II columnist Ernie Pyle was shot and killed on a Pacific island.
I was recently invited to Career Day at Zachary High to explain the exciting world of mass communication to Mark Moreau’s ninth-grade algebra classes. The most positive reaction I had was when I told the students that I would not talk about algebra at all during the class period.
