Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty

I tried to stop it. Brexit. Not the referendum by the British to leave the European Union. I couldn’t stop that.

I tried to stop the suffix “exit” from entering the lingo but it’s too late. Journalists have grabbed onto it and away we go.

France might be the next to go. That will be the Frexit. The headline on my morning paper today asked the question, Quebexit? Separatists in the Canadian province of Quebec are encouraged.

But get ready for a few painful months of “exit” at the end of everything. Garbage day: Traxit. Divorce? Weddexit? Leaving home? Nestkit?

I can’t think of all the ways it will be used just yet but I know that headline writers are losing their minds this weekend at the prospect of a whole new world. I know because I used to be a headline writer. We are a simple people, easily amused. But then I retired.

Or retirexit, if you will.

By Jim Hagarty

Please forward all future mail to my new home in the Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, all 58 letters of it. I had grown tired of living in a town in Canada with only 9 puny letters.

In English, that translates St. Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of Saint Tysilio of the Red Cave.

Before I moved last weekend, I checked out two other villages before deciding on the one in Wales but I found that the people who live in A in Norway and Y in France keep things just way too simple for me.

By Jim Hagarty

I am mad at my cat Luigi. Really mad, in fact. If he lived at your house, you would be too.

The reason I am upset is the boy will not look after his teeth. I have told him and told him to take better care of them, but he won’t. He is stubborn as a billy goat.

As a result, the vet has recommended Luigi be administered the Dental Preventative Package. This will cost Luigi $473.41. As he does not have a very high income at the moment, I will be forced to take it out of his weekly allowance, a bit at a time.

However, if in the course of getting the Dental Preventative Package, it is discovered the Luigi will need a tooth pulled, he is going to have to cough up $8.14 per minute for 30 minutes of surgery for a cost of $244.20.

Of course, he will also require 30 units of Isoflurane Maintenance at $3.30 for another $99. He will also need $71.46 of pre-anesthetic/surgery blood work. And finally, Luigi will have to dig into his mad money to come up with $30.50 for the blood collection fee.

The total for all this work will be $976.44 taxes included. That is if he needs only one tooth pulled. If he needs two, the price would rise by another $503.03 for a total of $1,479.47.

To recap: to clean the cat’s teeth will be $473.41 and to remove one tooth will increase the price to $976.44, two teeth, $1,479.47. To fix the teeth. Of a cat. A cat.

I have lectured Luigi till I am blue in the face and he hides behind the water heater because he doesn’t want to listen any more. But it’s clear. He is going to have to get a job. If we pay all his bills for him, how will he ever learn to be responsible?

Those mice don’t catch themselves, I have told him. He doesn’t listen. To him I am just a great big can opener with an attitude.

He does like my big toes, however. Every once in a while, he likes to sink his teeth into them.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was an old baker named Joe
Who died face down in his dough.
No one could guess
The cause of his death
But I think he kneaded to go!

By Jim Hagarty

Over the past few weeks, I have being writing (almost) daily tips on how to do genealogical research and family history projects. Today, I wrote tip number 25 and I think I will leave it at that for now. They are arranged from last to first but tomorrow I will reverse the order. The tips are located by clicking on Genealogy. My credentials are this: I have published a 400-page, hardcover book of family history and through my research I was able to find my family’s long-lost farm in Ireland in 1994. The house they lived in till the early 1850s was (and is) still standing. It can be done.

By Jim Hagarty

There’s a place I know
Where you don’t want to go.
You’ll regret it if ever you do.
Cause the folks who live in Curmudgeonville
Will point out what’s wrong with you.

Not one happy face
In this weird little place
Will you find if you wander the town.
Cause the folks who live in Curmudgeonville
Are always gloomy and down.

They wake up grumpy.
Their cereal’s lumpy.
And it’s all downhill after that.
Cause the folks who live in Curmudgeonville
Are sullen and angry and flat.

I never will know
What laid them so low
But one thing I am certain of:
The people who live in Curmudgeonville
Have forgotten what it is to love.

By Jim Hagarty
Here is another song from When the Day is Over, a CD by my friend and fellow singer-songwriter Caroline Danowski Burchill. It is called Vivien, My Friend. The CD is available for purchase at the Corner Store.

Vivien, My Friend by Caroline Danowski Burchill

By Jim Hagarty

What is it about gun nuts that makes them so darned easy to make fun of?

An Oregon man openly carrying his brand new handgun was robbed of the firearm recently by another armed man. The 21-year-old victim, who had bought a semi-automatic .22-calibre handgun earlier in the day, was openly carrying the weapon down a street when another man approached him and asked for a cigarette. The man who asked for a cigarette pulled his own firearm from his waistband and said, “I like your gun, give it to me,” according to police. The man then fled after the victim handed over his new purchase.

I can’t even think of anything funny to add.

Perfect irony writes its own endings.

By Jim Hagarty

“What should I do with the old brine tank?” I asked the plumber, as we looked at my unrepairable water softener.

“Just get rid of it!” he answered.

Typical plumber, I thought to myself. All he saw was a four-foot-high plastic tank that used to hold salt for the softener. A creative and imaginative person such as I am, on the other hand, saw before me a thing of beauty (the tank, not the plumber, though he was handsome in his own way, I should mention him to a single woman I know) that was being set free to take on a new life in any number of directions. My mind was abuzz for the possible uses for it, but I settled on a bucket for yard waste collection days. I already had a yellow “Yard Waste” sticker to attach to it and it had a nice lid. The only drawback is that yard waste containers have to have handles on both sides and the tank had none, so I would have to work on that.

Today, my first chance to use my new yard waste can arrived as I was taking a load of garbage to the dump. So, I filled the former brine tank with garbage, popped the lid on it and very wisely duct taped it closed so it wouldn’t fly off on the ride to the dump, as it stuck out of the trunk.

When I arrived at the dump, it was to discover to my horror that the lid was gone. It had flown off somewhere on the one-mile trip from home to landfill. Rats and double rats and I am not referring to the ones at the dump.

I quickly threw my refuse into the dumpster and raced back along the route to find my lid. I arrived home lidless and discouraged. So I took the other garbage cans out of the car along with the brine tank, and headed back for another search. This time, I found it, lying lonely on the four-lane street under a railway overpass.

This is a busy street on a Saturday morning and long steel fences on either side of the underpass are designed to keep people from walking along that area. But a man in search of a brine tank lid regards steel fences as mere speed bumps on the road of life (terrible metaphor, yuk, but best I can do as I need some potato chips soon and have to get this done.) So, there I was, on the wrong side of an underpass fence on a mission to retrieve a plastic brine tank lid when it occurred to me that my life was in danger. Angry drivers whizzed by me and shot me looks that were not pretty. People are mean and lack proper brine tank understanding, in my opinion.

But I came for my lid and I would have it. I dashed out and picked it up, in much the same way a turkey vulture grabs some raccoon guts just before the car gets him though I am much better looking than a turkey vulture if only half as smart. When I got a chance to inspect it, I became aware that someone had found my lid before I did and ran over it. Maybe more than one driver, in fact. I’m pretty sure some of them did it deliberately.

I took it home and put the sad affair on top of the brine tank. The only good thing was the fact that it no longer fit tightly as it did before and, because half the side was missing, it actually went on and off pretty easily. I started thinking about how I could fix it. Maybe get some plywood, tape, screws (but none of that frickin’ duct tape) …

I related all this news to my wife when I got home.

“What should I do with the old brine tank?” I asked her.

“Just get rid of it!” she answered.

There must be an echo in here. (Or she’s been hanging around with that plumber.)

My tank conversion days have come to an end.

Sadly.

(With apologies to plumbers and turkey vultures)