Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty

I left the windows down in my car last night and it rained sometime before dawn.

So I had to get a blanket to put on the seat and the windshield was all fogged over so I wound up the windows, turned the heat onto blast and headed out at 6 a.m. for a coffee.

Already a little grumpy, my mood took a further nosedive when I realized I was sharing the cabin of my car with a flying object of some description which began buzzing my bare legs and the back of my neck as I putted on down the main street.

I finally got a semi look at the intruder. It appeared to be a moth if a moth can be almost the size of a small hawk. Yet it was too small to be a bat.

Oh my God!

I have a car that is even too old for the classic car shows so I had to reach all the way over and manually wind down the passenger side window, then the driver’s side, all while piloting my bucket of bolts to Coffee Land. The moth took the opportunity to escape the crazy man it had so recently met.

I am not a moth psychologist – they are known in the business as mothologists – but something tells me my visitor was happy to be free.

By Jim Hagarty

My aunt and uncle were farmers in southern Ontario, good-living people and strong Catholics who got down on their knees to pray every night. My uncle enjoyed a beer now and then but between the two of them, I doubt if they had many sins to bring to the priest in the confessional every month.

One day in the ’70s, as they were getting on in years, they made the three-hour trip to visit my parents on their farm near Stratford. Not wanting to land in on their hosts at noon, they decided to stop at a hotel in the town of Mitchell to eat some lunch before heading out to the farm. So they found a nice table in the beverage room of the Royal Hotel in Mitchell and ordered up some sandwiches.

As they were waiting for their meals to arrive, a pretty young woman wandered over to a juke box in the corner of the room and punched a few buttons. When the music started playing, she walked up onto a small platform that served as a stage, only a few feet from my relatives’ table, and began dancing to the sounds. Now, the dancing was rather entertaining but what came next put a few more white hairs on the heads of my Dad’s sister and her husband.

The dancer began methodically removing articles of her clothing and it didn’t appear that she was doing this because she was too warm. It seemed as though she was intent on continuing to disrobe in an effort to entertain the mostly male clientele who had dropped into the hotel for lunch.

This was a shocking development, indeed, but it posed somewhat of a moral dilemma for my aunt and uncle. With a meal on the way, they could hardly go running out of the place without paying. And once they paid for their food, they couldn’t leave it there and not eat it. They had lived through the Great Depression and weren’t ones to toss away their money.

On the other hand, they were only a couple of arms’ lengths away from a woman who was determined, it seemed, to keep peeling off her clothes till she wore nothing but a smile. Leave their food behind and be wasteful or dine in a strip joint and be sinful. Not an easy predicament.

However, it might have been predicted that the couple would finish their food rather than flee so that is what they did. They kept their heads down and ate while the dancer got down to the bare essentials. Still in a daze, they finally left town and drove to the farm, relating their traumatic experience to my parents the moment they entered the farmhouse.

I don’t know how my mother reacted to the news but my father would laugh long and heartily every time he recalled the story in the years to come. And while my aunt related the harrowing tale with great concern, apparently my uncle hadn’t looked so cheerful in a long, long time.

At least their priest wouldn’t be so bored the next time they went to confession.

By Jim Hagarty

My old friend Jack Sass used to tell this one on himself so if he was still here, I don’t think he’d mind me telling it. He used to say to people, “Hey, whenever you’re in town don’t forget to look up Jack Sass.”

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I knew a bad singer named Hearst
Whose warbling was really the worst.
He would take a nice song
And do it all wrong.
His vocal cords must have been cursed.

By Jim Hagarty

I’m 65 and sometimes I wonder how my life is going. A 61-year-old man in Windsor was charged after 155 cats were found in his freezer and 49 live ones were discovered in his apartment. My life is going pretty well.

By Jim Hagarty

In my teens I drove around looking for parties where young single women might be.
In my twenties I drove around looking for pubs with cold beer.
In my thirties I drove around looking for coffee shops.
In my forties I drove around looking for hamburger joints.
In my fifties I drove around looking for ATMs.
In my sixties I drive around looking for places to pee.

By Jim Hagarty

I was just now playing chase with my dog Toby in the backyard. He was really bootin’ it. But he had just eaten his supper. So he stopped and soon was staring down at the very same supper, displayed nicely on the grass. He came over to me, looking sad. I patted him, told him not to worry. And went to get the equipment necessary to clean up the mess. But when I returned, it was to discover that the equipment was not necessary. Apparently, and this can be the only explanation, someone climbed the privacy fence into our yard, sneaked over and stole our doggy’s supper. How mean. Toby, meanwhile, seems to have recovered.

By Jim Hagarty

A robin landed on my lawn today
And looked at me in a funny way.
This robin and I are buddies fair.
I was glad to see him there.

I first met Robin in my yard when
I was digging in my garden.
He waddled along close behind
And ate the worms that I would find.

And every spring since that first one
He returns for a visit home.
He lands beside me on the lawn
And wonders where my shovel’s gone.

So from the shed I get my digger
And Robin’s eyes could not be bigger.
As I turn over robin food
He feasts like every robin should.

So you might laugh and not agree
A bird would find a friend in me.
I have to say, it does seem odd.
I can’t explain it, go ask God.

There are countless reasons I am glad to live in Canada. This is one of them.

Years ago, the government decided to get rid of our green one dollar bills. I forget the reasons now, but the plan was to introduce a gold-coloured, one-dollar coin. The change was made, and the transition went smoothly. We already had a one-dollar coin which we all referred to as the silver dollar, but for some reason, all governmentally like, it was decided a second coin was needed.

Also needed was a name for the new coin. We had the penny, the nickel, the dime, the quarter, the fifty cent piece and the silver dollar. What would this new dollar be called? The government dragged its heels.

So Canadians took it upon themselves. One of our favourite birds up here in Canada is the loon. Most often found in forested northern areas near lakes, the loon lets up a hauntingly beautiful cry.

Hence, our new one-dollar coin became the “loonie.” The name stuck. No official name was ever conceived of.

A few years later, those crazy government people were at it again. Time to get rid of our red two-dollar bill. Another new coin would be struck, this one a mixture of gold and silver.

Almost before the first one rolled off the assembly line, Canadians got busy. A loonie was worth one dollar and now we had a new coin that was worth two dollars. Nothing to do but to call it a “toonie.” We have no bird in Canada called a “toon”. But a loonie doubled just had to be a toonie.

There are a lot of government naming specialists looking for work today.

Now there is talk of issuing another new coin to take the place of our blue five-dollar bill. I am looking forward to the name this one will get. A “foonie”, maybe. A fivey. Or a “funny” to rhyme with money.

Back to why I love Canada.

We manage, somehow, from time to time, to still keep things pretty simple.

©2016 Jim Hagarty