Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I would tell you a tale about Mary,
But no words I can find rhyme with Mary.
Not even one.
Hey, this is no fun.
So my next poem will be about Harry.

By Jim Hagarty

Up here in Canada, we are celebrating our 149th birthday today. We were actually around a century or more before that but in 1867, we finally got our act together and became an official country. The United States had just finished a Civil War and we were afraid our southern neighbours might just keep on marching north one day.

And now, the president of that gigantic southern neighbour, while visiting our country this week, said the world needs more Canada. How does a Canadian respond to a compliment like that without resorting to bragging? But bragging is not in our nature, so we just let it pass.

We have accepted into our country the downtrodden of the world and we still do. And those millions of people have made a great nation. My ancestors left Ireland during the Famine and have found a wonderful home here and in the U.S.

If there is one thing we can be a little bit cocky about is our tendency to marginalize the crazies in our society, and we have lots of goofballs. We steal their good ideas, if they have any, but we manage to keep the goons on the bench and give them little ice time.

Our Constitution contains, within its opening lines, the phrase, “peace, order and good government” as a guiding principle. Not to criticize our southern neighbour, but their constitution stresses the importance of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

That might seem like a subtle difference but I think it explains a lot. In Canada, the individual is part of something bigger. In the U.S., the individual is supreme. The European migration that ended up in each country, came to those places with different motivations.

But nothing is perfect.

To paraphrase Barack Obama: “Canada needs more Canada.”

By Jim Hagarty

I once roamed our farm with a gun
And shot cans off fence posts just for fun.
It beat trying to hit them with stones
Like I used to do, next to our home.

But one day I looked up to see
A hawk flying high above me.
Temptation to shoot was too strong
And I fired, though I knew it was wrong.

I missed and I’m thankful I did.
But my father yelled at me, “Hey kid!
“If I ever see you do that again
“Your gun days will end there and then.”

I was shocked as I thought at the time
Everything was a target of mine.
And one day, I was bored, I suppose,
I threw stones at the cans on the posts.

By Jim Hagarty

This was the day I knew I worked for a good newspaper.

All the editors were called into a meeting with the owner of the small-town daily. This might have been our first and only such meeting.

The subject at hand was whether or not to use the eff word in a story on the front page of that day’s edition.

The day before, a judge had dismissed an assault charge brought by a police officer against a young man who had told the officer, during an encounter, “Fuck off, cop!” In my view, to his credit, the judge decided that the young man was not telling the policeman to do anything carnal, but instead, his words meant, “Go away, cop!” Spoken crudely, of course, in today’s vernacular, but not really meant as an assault on the officer.

You can’t walk 20 feet in my town without passing a church. We are a conservative community, plopped in the middle of a large and prosperous farming territory. To put the actual word “fuck” on our front page, might be the end of something.

But the family who owned the paper were not shrinking violets. They had voluntary banned all cigarette advertising long before our governments got involved and made it the law. In doing so, they gave up many thousands of dollars in revenue. One day, the owner banned smoking in the newsroom.

So it was that “fuck” appeared on the front page of our newspaper. We got a letter or two of protest. But there was barely a ripple. Although the owner was in no rush to see the word on the front page again.

Of the things that offend me in this life, and the list is too long, I guess, swearing is right at the bottom. I think there was a study released not long ago that said it is even good for a person to swear.

What offends me more than swearing are people who take to the ramparts and prepare for battle when they hear a bad word or two. They are welcome to their opinion, but if I was ordered by a judge to have a coffee with a swearer or a person mortally offended by swearing, I’d pick the swearer.

He may be crude and rude but probably not a judgmental prude.

Spare me five more minutes in this life in the company of one of those.

From a friend:
A man full of fear is like an angry wolf, chasing all creatures great and small away from him if they venture too near. A man full of love is like a big shade tree on a hot summer’s day. Everyone crowds around him for shelter from the elements.

By Jim Hagarty

I was busy loading up the car last night for a trip down to Delmont, Pennsylvania, when the thought struck me that the United States of America truly is the best nation on earth.

Where else could an entrepreneur imagine and then make real an idea such as the one Nick Fratangelo had for a drive-through strip club near Pittsburgh a while back?

In an age when it seems there are few things you can’t get passed to you through one of those pop-up windows, it makes perfect sense that cheap thrills should be included among those items. Because as things are, it is altogether way too difficult and even scary to be a practising voyeur in today’s society. To venture a visit to even the most upscale strip club is to rub shoulders with a lot of unsavoury types such as bikers and drug dealers, not to mention bankers, lawyers and high-school principals.

Putting up with the smoke, the loud music and the profanity has been awful and I’m just talking about the church-basement bingo hall I have to walk by to get to my local strip bar.

Yes, this is a real breakthrough and I applaud Fratangelo for adding this feature to his strip club at Delmont. No more the need to elbow my way up to perverts’ row along the stage to get as close to the action as possible. No more being drooled on by the loudmouth guy in the seat beside me who has trouble corralling the emotions set free in him when the dancer discards yet one more garment. No more summoning up the great courage needed to wander into the strip club’s men’s washroom which I’m very sure would make the Depths of Hell look almost livable by comparison.

Now, instead, for the price of a trip to Pennsylvania and from the comfort of my own old jalopy, I can gaze to my heart’s content at the wonderful scenes unfolding before me.

But, being a realist, I know the drive-through idea will be as flawed as are the drive-throughs which dispense other commodities. How long will it take, for example, until I am treated to a five-minute performance by a hairy male dancer, instead of a sleek and oily female, because the person taking my order had trouble making out my words through the cheap intercom system hooked up for that purpose? What if I order a short dancer and get a tall one? A brunette instead of the blonde I wanted? A big-boned gal instead of a slim one?

And how will I summon up the patience to sit in line behind a carload of young yahoos who have ordered a half-hour’s performance?

What sort of specials will be offered? And will there be a kids’ menu with toys accompanying?

I eagerly await the inevitable migration of this brainwave northward to Canada but I already feel a bit sorry for the dancers who’ll brave the elements when those windows slide open at the drive-throughs in Yellowknife, Edmonton, Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump (real place) and other points up here in the middle of January. But if there’s a buck to be made, I can imagine the priciest item at the clubs in those locations will be the Frostbite Special. I hate to even speculate about the troubles of black-fly season.

Then again, I know that inevitably, some enterprising American wizard is working on the problem as I write.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was a young fellow named Pete
Who was badly addicted to meat.
He ate a whole cow
Then a hen and a sow
And left only their tails and their feet.

By Jim Hagarty

Hi, my name is Jim and I am a recovered road rager.

This is my story.

My problem started 49 years ago when I was 16 and got my driver’s licence. Before then, I had had only minor attacks of RR, though signs that I would one day be afflicted by the disorder were already there, now that I look back on it. For example, I used to yell after cars that would spray me with stones as I rode my bike home from school along the gravel roads that led to my farmhouse. And later on I’d mutter and scowl at truckers that would come close to squashing me like a bug as I putt-putted one of my father’s old tractors along the shoulder of the road.

But these mild traffic tantrums were just a foreshadowing of the ranting and raving that would ensue once I was given that little green piece of paper that allowed me to guide gas-powered tanks of plastic, steel and glass up and down the highways of the world. How was I to know that sharing those thoroughfares with me would be some of the biggest jerks to ever strap on a seatbelt?

I have been tailgated by tandem trucks, cut off by compact cars, held up by happy holidayers and petrified by pea-brained passers. I was once slammed into from behind by a driver too busy kissing his girlfriend to bother jamming on his brakes. Another time I was hit broadside by a woman who put on her blinker but just for fun, I guess, as she didn’t bother to make the turn she was indicating she would. Most recently, I was hit head on by a cab driver who pulled out to pass a parked car and didn’t see me there, so small and invisible was I in my full-sized, family lumberwagon.

So, my torment mounted over the years and I fought back. I used every imaginable inappropriate behaviour possible to display my dismay until I finally saw the light. I won’t go into details about how I carried on. But let’s just say that the normally meek and mild me could, at the honk of a horn or the sound of “Learn to drive, loser!”, instantly transform into a frenzied freeway Frankenstein, though I never took to brandishing a pistol or baseball bat.

The good news in all of this, however, is that I have not had even close to one incident of RR in over 20 years. With any luck, I may never again give in to the urge to vent my bruised feelings while cruising along life’s highways.

Here, in nine simple steps, is how I overcame my affliction. Perhaps this will work for you too.

1. In a shopping mall parking lot, back your vehicle out, somewhat prematurely, perhaps, into the path of an oncoming car, forcing the driver to apply his brakes to avoid hitting you.

2. Look in your rear-view mirror to see the big guy behind you losing his mind and listen with blossoming anger as he honks his horn long and loud at you.

3. Flip up the forefinger of your left fist and hold your thus-saluting arm out the window of your car to acknowledge your appreciation of your fellow motorist’s concern over your driving skill level and the perceived deficiencies in it.

4. Watch in dismay as your new-found foe practically locks the front of his car onto the back of yours and prepares to follow you out of the parking lot in this two-ton tango.

5. Realize with growing panic that this demented maniac – obviously released just that day from a maximum-security prison – now intends to follow you in this fashion until you run of gas at which time he will then administer, on your head, a little road rage of his own.

6. Begin to shake uncontrollably and break into a cold sweat as your parking lot pal soon takes to pulling up beside you as you drive along and shaking his fist at you in a preview of how he intends to exact justice once he somehow gets a hold of you.

7. Realize forlornly you can’t go home as you’d rather not share your address with your suddenly acquired, not-so-silent stalker.

8. Head for the local police station and watch in relief as the tactic finally shakes your tormentor from your tail.

9. Wonder for three days after whether or not your own personal road warrior might suddenly appear again as you’re driving along somewhere and least expect to renew your acquaintanceship with him.

I’m cured.

Now, in the fashion of all who’ve suddenly changed their ways, I’d like to cure the rest of the world too.

I propose the opening of a boot camp for road ragers. Hire the guy who chased me around to chase them around. The only thing on the menu would be great spoonsful of Your Own Medicine.

It tastes awful, but served up by the right physician, it’s been known to work wonders.