Author: Jim Hagarty

By the time a man is rounding third base in this big hardball game of life, he has discovered some valuable truths that he could have used when he was a much younger version of himself.

Some men come to these verities through spiritual exercises such as meditation, others hike off into the wilderness to commune with nature (I might do that but bears live in the wilderness) while still others dedicate themselves to helping humankind, building schools and churches and digging wells in developing lands.

A few years ago, I came to my own Epiphanous Moment, which, while a little less lofty than what other men have arrived at, is of paramount importance in my life.

That Moment of Truth for me came in the form of a little clear plastic jar filled with brown, smoothy peanut butter. I had always known about the Wondrous Butter of the Majestic Peanut and fell face first into it now and then over the years, but it wasn’t until I combined it with the Clear Orchardian Juice of the Orange that I was knocking on Heaven’s Door.

PB, OJ and JH begin communing each night about midnight and these days can be seen standing over the kitchen sink repeating the cycle again at 2, 4 and even 6 a.m. These are my Mountaintop Moments.

In light of all this, it is vitally important that an adequate supply of PB and OJ be kept on hand at all times. Especially the PB. It is possible to substitute apple juice or even lemonade for orange juice but there is no replacement for the butter of the peanut.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, I have been all but locked in a shed in the backyard as it has been determined by other household members that the virus would not be kind to me, for various reasons I don’t fully understand. I haven’t minded this situation too much but it has left me dependent on others to provide me with my necessities. That system has worked out fairly well but a tragedy befell me earlier this week when our supply of peanut butter ran out. I thought we had one jar left. I was horribly wrong.

So by last night, I had gone three nights without my vital elixir. My nerves began to fray. My patience was gone. The dog hid behind the couch and the cat behind the water heater.

Each day I was told by the Authorities that my fix was on its way and each day I was let down as this reason and that prevented grocery store visits. Finally, last night, two family members ventured out to the store on a quest to find me my peanut butter. It was their Sole Mission.

Eventually, they came home, their goods were deposited here and there and they went to bed. I said goodnight and sat on the couch with my laptop and lapdog (I have a big lap), enjoying the quiet beside the Christmas tree and looking forward to midnight. Finally, at the appointed time, I ventured smugly to the fridge and poured myself a big glass of cold OJ. I opened the cupboard where the PB is kept to find a big empty space. Unfazed, I headed out to our heated garage where our Covid-19 supplies are kept, expecting to see at least four beautiful green-topped jars on the shelves.

There were no jars to be seen.

A wee bit concerned by this time, I pulled on my boots and went out to the car to see if a bag of groceries had been left in the back seat or the trunk. This has happened before.

Nothing.

When the tragic shopping trip was reconstructed the next morning, the sad explanation was offered that the two family members were occupied talking about Christmas and forgot about the only reason they went to the store in the first place, buying little useless bits of this and that instead.

Another important thing to focus on as your seventh decade on this earth draws to a close is Forgiveness. Sometimes, that commodity is harder to find and serve up than the butter of the peanut and the juice of the orange.

Nevertheless, if you want to make it peacefully from third base to home plate and beyond, it is your challenge.

Think of me. It’s getting cold in the shed.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

By the time a man is rounding third base in this big hardball game of life, he has discovered some valuable truths that he could have used when he was a much younger version of himself.

Some men come to these verities through spiritual exercises such as meditation, others hike off into the wilderness to commune with nature (I might do that but bears live in the wilderness) while still others dedicate themselves to helping humankind, building schools and churches and digging wells in developing lands.

A few years ago, I came to my own Epiphanous Moment, which, while a little less lofty than what other men have arrived at, is of paramount importance in my life.

That Moment of Truth for me came in the form of a little clear plastic jar filled with brown, smoothy peanut butter. I had always known about the Wondrous Butter of the Majestic Peanut and fell face first into it now and then over the years, but it wasn’t until I combined it with the Clear Orchardian Juice of the Orange that I was knocking on Heaven’s Door.

PB, OJ and JH begin communing each night about midnight and these days can be seen standing over the kitchen sink repeating the cycle again at 2, 4 and even 6 a.m. These are my Mountaintop Moments.

In light of all this, it is vitally important that an adequate supply of PB and OJ be kept on hand at all times. Especially the PB. It is possible to substitute apple juice or even lemonade for orange juice but there is no replacement for the butter of the peanut.

Since the beginning of this pandemic, I have been all but locked in a shed in the backyard as it has been determined by other household members that the virus would not be kind to me, for various reasons I don’t fully understand. I haven’t minded this situation too much but it has left me dependent on others to provide me with my necessities. That system has worked out fairly well but a tragedy befell me earlier this week when our supply of peanut butter ran out. I thought we had one jar left. I was horribly wrong.

So, by last night, I had gone three nights without my vital elixir. My nerves began to fray. My patience was gone. The dog hid behind the couch and the cat behind the water heater.

Each day I was told by the Authorities that my fix was on its way and each day I was let down as this reason and that prevented grocery store visits. Finally, last night, two family members ventured out to the store on a quest to find me my peanut butter. It was their Sole Mission.

Eventually, they came home, their goods were deposited here and there and they went to bed. I said goodnight and sat on the couch with my laptop and lapdog (I have a big lap), enjoying the quiet beside the Christmas tree and looking forward to midnight.

Finally, at the appointed time, I ventured smugly to the fridge and poured myself a big glass of cold OJ. I opened the cupboard where the PB is kept to find a big empty space. Unfazed, I headed out to our heated garage where our Covid-19 supplies are kept, expecting to see at least four beautiful green-topped jars on the shelves.

There were no jars to be seen.

A wee bit concerned by this time, I pulled on my boots and went out to the car to see if a bag of groceries had been left in the back seat or the trunk. This has happened before.

Nothing.

When the tragic shopping trip was reconstructed the next morning, the sad explanation was offered that the two family members were occupied talking about Christmas and forgot about the only reason they went to the store in the first place, buying little useless bits of this and that instead.

Another important thing to focus on as your seventh decade on this earth draws to a close is Forgiveness. Sometimes, that commodity is harder to find and serve up than the butter of the peanut and the juice of the orange.

Nevertheless, if you want to make it peacefully from third base to home plate and beyond, it is your challenge.

Think of me. It’s getting cold in the shed.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

When I was a kid on the farm, my Dad always drove to the country store in the village near our home in December, picked out a Christmas tree and brought it home. Sometimes, maybe most years, I would ride along. It was a big deal.

The year I got my driver’s licence, the job was handed off to me. There was no ceremony. Dad got busy at something and he asked me to do it. I was honoured to be given the job, as I was always on the lookout for signs that manhood was just around the corner, and Christmas tree purchasing seemed to be one of those signs.

This carried on a few years and then there was university and jobs and living in other cities. I forget how it was the tree ended up in a corner of the living room on the farm. Then along came marriage and my wife and I enjoyed choosing a tree. In fact, our first year together, we went all out and bought two trees, one for inside and one for our front porch. Then came two kids and soon they went along for the job of picking out the tree and it became a fun thing for all of us.

As the kids got older, there might have been a Christmas or two where I didn’t go along at all, for some reason or other. Last year, my daughter and I made a mad scramble to get one as we left it a little too late. Finally, 10 miles out of town, we found one. On sale even.

Today, the day came around again. My daughter is away at university, my son is over at a friend’s watching football, and my wife is visiting her aunt out of town. So, I went and picked out a tree by myself. A bit lonely, maybe, but it was okay. Another sign, I suppose, that at 67, manhood is just around the corner.

After all this time, I hope it soon shows up.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

The admission that I am a confused man will come as no big surprise to most who know me. But this time, I think I have some justification for my extreme bewilderment.

I was in a food store the other day – as in FOOD STORE – and I found myself checking out deals on VCRs, DVD players, clothing and flowers. None of these materials I can actually consume as I would, say, a potato, some ice cream or a sirloin steak (not necessarily in that order). Nevertheless, there they were. I also lingered over bins full of movies and there was also a sale on lawn furniture. In a food store.

The same day, I dropped into a big drug store. While there, I checked out some cool digital cameras and on my way out, walked by aisles of various processed foods and household cleaners. In a drug store. In another drug store, I window shopped all sorts of fancy giftware. Some pretty nifty stuff tucked away between the eyedrops, the toenail clippers and the shampoo. Plus, oh yes, the drugs.

And one big store seems to have thrown the towel in completely and said, what the heck, let’s sell it all. About the only thing you can’t buy there is a gun or a tractor. Drugs, food, clothes, electronics – it has it all.

We have tire stores that sell hockey equipment, TVs and evergreens and hardware stores that sell fancy glassware and even books. Then there are book stores that sell movies, music and magazines, and stationery stores that sell trips to New Zealand.

Donut and coffee shops sell soups and sandwiches while variety stores sell hotdogs, coffee and fresh muffins.

Insurance companies sell investment “vehicles” and everybody sells insurance including universities.

Farm stores sell everything city folk could need while arenas have fast-food restaurants and pubs housed within them.

Might this all be called diversification? Or might it just be harking back to the good old days of the country general store and even the city department store where the idea seemed to be to meet as many of the customers’ needs as possible to prevent them from moving on down the street.

The general store in the village near where I grew up (population 50) stocked literally something of almost everything except cars and trucks (and still does). And the store, located in an old hotel, had trouble accommodating all the merchandise and so it was displayed from every square inch of wall and even ceiling space. There were logs and fence posts, and Christmas trees outside, huge bags of peanuts and kids’ wagons inside. A visit there for a boy was better than a school field trip. It was impossible to get tired of scanning the place for unusual items.

And yes, there were guns. Shiny new rifles for farmers to protect their crops and livestock.

It would be interesting to know what this movement towards generalization by the big stores, especially, represents, from a sociological point of view. Of course, the profit motive plays a big part and so stores will sell “anything for a buck” like the hillbilly characters Larry, Darrell and Darrell from the old Bob Newhart Show.

But why did they move away from that early rural concept in the last century to the era of shops that specialized in one thing only? And why do they now seem to be moving back again?

Are merchants in our city, as I’ve heard it speculated a few times, just doing their best to get ready for Walmart, slated to open soon?

Meanwhile, the big players in the newspaper industry I work in have started TV shows of their own and publish telephone directories.

But if next week, as a newspaper reporter, I am selected to host the News at Noon on Channel 52, I might be forced to retire. So I can have more free time to hang around the gas station. Washing my car.

©2006 Jim Hagarty

As they usually are, dogs have been front and centre in the news lately and so they should be. Man’s best friend too often gets buried (like a bone) somewhere in the back pages. (Brings to mind the old joke: My dog loves your newspaper; I saw him pouring over it last night.)

However, the poor critters featured in recent headlines are in desperate need of some public relations management. These stories do anything but show them putting their best paws forward.

First off is the media coverage of the scrawny little mutt called Elwood who has won the title of World’s Ugliest Dog. Pictures of him on TV and in newspapers confirm that the judges probably did not make a mistake when they voted. He is to canine pulchritude what the horsefly is to the majesty of winged creatures such as the eagle. The two-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix from New Jersey is dark coloured and hairless except for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head. He has bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue which, as shown on TV, seems incapable of staying in his mouth.

Now, to be ugly is one thing, but to be entered in a World’s Ugliest contest is quite another. It is a question whether or not Elwood had any say in the entry plans. My guess is he wasn’t consulted at all which raises the issue of animal abuse. Is this recognition injurious to poor Elwood’s self-esteem? To make things worse, Elwood’s title comes with $1,000 reward for his owner. Shouldn’t that money be Elwood’s to spend as he sees fit on bones, chewtoys, a supreme makeover, etc.?

A second story is about poor Duncan M. MacDonald who is registered to vote in Washington State but who will now not be allowed to do so, thanks to a narrow-minded judge. The unfortunate Australian shepherd-terrier had voted in three elections, but alas, his experiment with democracy has come to a halt. He might have gotten away with this illegal venture, too, except that he signed one of the mail-in ballot envelopes with his pawprint.

His owner is trying to claim some high ground, arguing she signed up her pooch for voting privileges to protest a system which she says makes it too easy for non-citizens to vote. She put her phone bill in Duncan’s name, then used the bill as identification to register him as a voter. This landed her in court and the clever quip from prosecutor Dan Satterberg was that his office simply couldn’t look the other way. “They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can’t let voting dogs vote.”

No word on whether or not Duncan plans a run for city council.

And finally, a dog in Minnesota is an accessory after the crap, so to speak, now that his owner has been found guilty of putting his pet’s feces in a parking ticket envelope and sending it to city hall. The dog’s master has been ordered to pay nearly $3,000 to a woman who became seriously ill in April after opening the envelope. He also must write an apology letter to the victim and pay a $300 fine.

When the office employee opened envelopes from the drop box, she noticed a brown fluid leaking from one envelope. The fluid got onto her hands and she awoke the next day with a headache and vomited repeatedly and was hospitalized for about two days with an undetermined illness.

This is the sort of thing that destroys trust between dog and owner and that is a crime in itself. When can this poor doggie ever again believe what his master plans to do with his doo doo?

©2016 Jim Hagarty

I was sitting at my desk this morning, quite placidly, reading the hair-raising news on the Internet. The phone rang at 10:50 a.m. It was the vet. I was supposed to have our dog Toby there for his annual checkup at 10:40. Sorry, I forgot. Rescheduled to 11:20.

Quick, try to convince Toby, at that early in the day, to go for his noon-hour walk. He knows when his noon-hour walk is. Took some pleading and trickery. Get his sweater on. Can’t find his booties. Walked him up the street to pee and poop. He did the former, not the latter. He knew something was up.

Got him in the car. He started crying. Cried all the way from my house to the vet clinic. Got him out of the car, still crying (both of us, by this time), and into the big building he knows and hates so well. Sat on my lap in the waiting room, crying. Finally taken to an examination room. Put him up on the table. He spent the next 10 minutes trying to get off the table. Wrestled with him like I might an angry cobra. Thought he might jump out the window.

Aw, finally, a vet. Short interview. Answer lots of questions. “The vet will be in soon,” she said. Rats. Thought she was the vet. Twenty minutes go by. More cobra wrestling. Finally, in comes the vet. More questions. Doggie’s teeth, ears and eyes checked and he gets a needle. He likes getting needles as much as I do. All clear given. Meet you at the front counter.

Go out there, let Toby run around. My bill is produced. Can I pay that in monthly instalments over the next five years? No instalment program available. Look down after paying to see a large dog poop nugget. Then another. Five in all. Fish out a doggie bag to pick up my poodle’s excrement. Lots of sorries all around. Sorry for missing my appointment, sorry for the dog poo, sorry for sobbing when presented with the bill.

Then I looked up to see a slide show playing on a computer screen. A bunch of nice pictures and “did you knows”. Did you know cats can crawl up in your engine to stay warm in winter? Check. Did you know dogs can get frostbite if left out too long in winter? Check. Did you know winter sidewalk salt can hurt their paws? Double check.

But the best one of all:

Did you know people who have pets live longer, have less stress and fewer heart attacks?

Nope. Didn’t know that one.

Went home. Fell into recliner exhausted. Toby ran around like a well-fed cobra, recently freed from captivity.

Looking forward to living longe

©2018 Jim Hagarty

I just got some great news.

Starting in March, residents of my town will no longer have to separate our recycling. We will simply dump all our recyclables in blue boxes, unseparated, and set them at the curb. The guys who pick them up will just toss the items in the truck and take them to the recycling centre where they will all be sorted.

An announcement that I won a huge lottery would make me happier, but just a bit. I have been sorting all this crap for the past 25 years and this practice has been the source of many a tantrum accompanied by language that would make a pirate say, “My, my!” Because it is a loathsome task, I normally save it till late Monday nights and while others are sleeping, I am filtering through cans, bottles and papers. It will be so nice not to have to worry about whether this piece of paper belongs in the fine paper box or the newsprint box and a dozen other silly decisions.

I have been doubly afflicted because I am a perfectionist and therefore agonize over getting it exactly right. And then there are the days I go to the curb to bring the boxes back to the shed only to find that a lot of what I have carefully sorted and included has been rejected, not because it is not acceptable, but because a new driver has taken over the route and he has different rules than the one who picked it up before. It’s embarrassing running down the street after the recycling truck waving a plastic pop bottle at it because it was obviously mistakenly missed.

Oh man this is going to be great.

Actually I feel a bit sheepish at this news too because at a relative’s place in another municipality one day, I saw the recycling guy dump all their carefully sorted recyclables in the same bin and my paranoid mind instantly assumed that all this was going to the dump instead of to a place to be recycled. Now I know better.

It pains me to use a current expression, but “My Bad.”

©2011 Jim Hagarty

It probably doesn’t require a person to be of a certain advanced age for an expected peaceful shopping afternoon to devolve into an adventure of jangled nerves.

Be that as it may, when I walked through the back door to our pharmacy today, I was startled to see how much it had changed since my last recent visit. The back staircase had been carpeted and the walls along the stairwell, which had formerly showcased newspaper clippings from past stories about the drug store and its long history, were now lined with boxes. I was impressed with the carpet, but instantly missed the framed newspapers, including one I used to work for.

About that time, I spied rows and row of shoes as I left the stairs and entered the shop and I wondered when it was my pharmacy started selling footwear. Almost instantly, although it was like looking for a lighthouse in a thick fog, I started to wonder if I had taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

Sure enough, the store people told me I might be in the wrong place, and taking a look at my white hair, grizzled face and rubber boots (not bought at that shoe store), they helpfully suggested I might be looking for the pharmacy, one door over, surmising a relic in rubber boots with snow white hair might be in need of some medication.

Straight from that nerve-wracker, it was off to the bulk food store to stock up on bulky stuff. Today was seniors’ day so this time, I was in the exact right place. And today was special for another reason. I would get $10 off if I spent $30. PLUS THE SENIORS’ DISCOUNT.

The cash register rang me up. I was 81 cents short. Story of my life. Day late and 81 cents short.

Up and down the aisles. Jelly beans? Candy Santas? Spirally canes? Peanuts. Finally. Peanuts it is.

How many peanuts does a man need to satisfy the cashier still waiting at the till? Tight as bark to a tree, I couldn’t overshoot.

I overshot. The other story of my life. By $3. My savings of $10 had somehow dwindled to $7.

I took my bulky stuff, including peanuts, my rubber boots and my now diminished bargain and went home.

Where I thanked the stars for my medications!

©2024 Jim Hagarty

I was sitting at my desk this morning, quite placidly, reading the hair-raising news on the Internet. The phone rang at 10:50 a.m. It was the vet. I was supposed to have our dog Toby there for his annual checkup at 10:40. Sorry, I forgot. Rescheduled to 11:20.

Quick, try to convince Toby, at that early in the day, to go for his noon-hour walk. He knows when his noon-hour walk is. Took some pleading and trickery. Get his sweater on. Can’t find his booties. Walked him up the street to pee and poop. He did the former, not the latter. He knew something was up.

Got him in the car. He started crying. Cried all the way from my house to the vet clinic. Got him out of the car, still crying (both of us, by this time), and into the big building he knows and hates so well. Sat on my lap in the waiting room, crying. Finally taken to an examination room. Put him up on the table. He spent the next 10 minutes trying to get off the table. Wrestled with him like I might an angry cobra. Thought he might jump out the window.

Aw, finally, a vet. Short interview. Answer lots of questions. “The vet will be in soon,” she said. Rats. Thought she was the vet. Twenty minutes go by. More cobra wrestling. Finally, in comes the vet. More questions. Doggie’s teeth, ears and eyes checked and he gets a needle. He likes getting needles as much as I do. All clear given. Meet you at the front counter.

Go out there, let Toby run around. My bill is produced. Can I pay that in monthly instalments over the next five years? No instalment program available. Look down after paying to see a large dog poop nugget. Then another. Five in all. Fish out a doggie bag to pick up my poodle’s excrement. Lots of sorries all around. Sorry for missing my appointment, sorry for the dog poo, sorry for sobbing when presented with the bill.

Then I looked up to see a slide show playing on a computer screen. A bunch of nice pictures and “did you knows”. Did you know cats can crawl up in your engine to stay warm in winter? Check. Did you know dogs can get frostbite if left out too long in winter? Check. Did you know winter sidewalk salt can hurt their paws? Double check.

But the best one of all:

Did you know people who have pets live longer, have less stress and fewer heart attacks?

Nope. Didn’t know that one.

Went home. Fell into recliner exhausted. Toby ran around like a well-fed cobra, recently freed from captivity.

Looking forward to living longer

©2018 Jim Hagarty

Every time I went to the malls many years ago, in the 1970s and ’80s, I headed straight for Radio Shack and spent a half hour there drooling over all the techno goodies on the shelves. Sony Trinitron TVs, Panasonic VCRs, wonderful stereos. I rarely bought anything, just did a lot of looking.

This week, a flyer came in my mailbox from Radio Shack, since renamed The Source in Canada, and I looked it over with extreme intensity. Two things jumped out at me. I do not know what the function is of at least one-third of the items in the flyer. Little gizmos that have no meaning for me at all. But the bigger realization was that probably 95 per cent of all the items in the flyer (and in the store itself) were not even invented when I was wandering around that shop 35 years ago.

Yes, I was using a computer at work back then but it was a primitive one that would have not appeared out of place in Fred Flinstone’s stone house. But absolutely everything else – flat screen this, smartphone that, and Google the other thing, has come along in the past few decades. But the changes came about slowly as to be hardly noticeable.

One thing still haunts me though. Where did all the stuff go that filled the Radio Shack stores back then? Quietly discontinued, not re-stocked, currently unavailable, no longer sold due to low customer demand.

But that’s okay. I was at a Ford dealership a while back and I noticed there was not even one new Model T on the lot.

Times change.

©2018 Jim Hagarty