By Jim Hagarty
This is a song from an album called Remembering Rankin by my friend and fellow singer-songwriter Ted Schinbein. For years Ted has hosted weekly jam sessions in his studio and now and then, I sing this song. In the early ’70s, Ted worked for a few years in Rankin Inlet in northern Canada. In 2004, he released this CD as a tribute to those times and the people he met. The CD is available in the Corner Store.
Did You Ever Wish You Were a Cowboy by Ted Schinbein
By Jim Hagarty
Many years ago, at the end of our one and only date, the young woman I had escorted to the movies turned to me, before she jumped out of the car, and declared, “You are the most miserable man I have ever met.”
This was a big and bitter pill to swallow. Especially since I thought I had been on my best behaviour. And given there was an entire two-hour chunk of silence between us while we watched the movie, how had there been enough time left over for me to reveal such extreme miserablness?
Later, I thought about this rather startling reaction from this nice young woman.
Here is what I concluded.
She was possibly an excellent miserable detector. (I met her Dad. Yikes!)
She had possibly not dated enough miserable men to draw such a definitive conclusion.
Our date hadn’t gone that well.
By Jim Hagarty
Where is my friendly bumble bee spotter when I need him?
Last summer I was walking across my front lawn when a 30 something man pulled over in an old car, rolled down his old window and asked me if I had seen any bumble bees. I prepared to hand over my wallet and plead for my life. But he was serious. He was a bumble bee spotter. After a 10-minute conversation with him, I was ready to forfeit my wallet and my life.
Today in my travels I have seen two gigantic bumble bees. Where’s Mr. Bee Man now, I wondered.
Then I wondered how much bee spotting pays.
If it’s lucrative, I’d be happy to get buzzy.
By Jim Hagarty
Apparently “Wii” doesn’t include “Mii.”
I was looking forward all week to my son heading out for a few days houseboating with friends far away. It meant I could once again gain admission to the fabulous mancave my son has fashioned in our backyard.
The shed is off limits to me when occupied by its creator. Even though I built it years before he was born. Since its transformation from extreme clutter collection depot to nicely turned out hangout for people many decades younger than I, my presence within its four walls has not been required.
But when the usual occupants of said shed are hours away, floating along on some lake, my presence is not only permitted, it is essential.
Located in the shed is a nice big TV hooked up to various gaming machines, one of which, a Wii, is the perfect conduit for shows on Netflix.
Five minutes after the houseboaters left our driveway, I was situated in front of the TV, all the fixin’s I would need carefully lined up on the table beside the couch. Four days of nothing but Netflix stretched out before me. I turned on the TV, then the Wii and …
Nothing.
I tried a few desperate repairs.
Nothing.
I frantically texted my son who at that moment was en route. What is wrong with the Wii, I wanted to know. “Nothing,” came the reply. “I was just watching Netflix before my ride came.”
That was Friday at noon. My efforts at Wii revival continued all Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday and for a half day on Monday. There were wires everywhere, plugs unplugged and plugged, buttons pressed, machines reset. My final resort might have been to completely disassemble the shed and start over.
Monday afternoon, my son returned.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do about the Wii,” I told him when he finally came into the house.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “It’s working fine.”
Another father might be suspicious there is a Dad Disabling Key I don’t know anything about. But not me, of course.
I guess the answer is the Wii is for thee and not for me.
What else could it be?
By Jim Hagarty
I might have tried to help you
If I’d known what to say.
I wouldn’t want to misspeak
And watch you run away.
I might have tried to help you
If I’d known what to do.
I wouldn’t want to misstep
And end up losing you.
I might have tried to help you
I’m sorry that I let
My fear stop me from trying.
That’s something I regret.
I might have tried to help you
By being a good friend.
That’s all I have to offer.
I’ll be here till the end.
By Jim Hagarty
Are “dead-tree” newspapers in trouble?
I have no access to credible data with which to answer that question, yes or no.
But as someone who spent his career as an “ink-stained wretch” in a day and age when ink was actually bought by the barrel, I have an observation or two, from personal experience.
I haven’t bought a newspaper in a couple of years. Not many years ago, I might buy two national dailies a day, if there was a big political story in the news. And I read the darned things, wall to wall.
Being cheap, I mostly made do with the free papers in the coffee shops. I would spend an hour or two at my table, papers all spread out, soaking up every word.
Now I go to coffee shops and walk right by the papers. Their news will be old and their commentary mild, focused mainly on being careful not to piss off advertisers who are becoming as rare as top hats in Tennessee. When the readers leave, the advertisers eventually follow them and it’s only a matter of time.
And if the newspaper in industry has lost me, a lifelong lover of the papers, my guess is they are in trouble.
But a more worrisome development is this. I have a son, 20, and a daughter, 18. They are up on the news. They love the news and follow it almost as much as I do. And as far as I know, they have never bought a newspaper in their lives. I don’t know if they ever will. They follow the news electronically, as I do these days as well.
We have two papers coming into the house. A free weekly which nobody even looks at. And a daily, my old stomping grounds, which we pay $18 a month for and keep getting, partly out of loyalty and partly for the fact that it is still the only credible source of local news. But today, opening it up is like opening a big bag of potato chips only to find it is 80 per cent air. When I was an editor there, 16 of us toiled away for good paycheques and produced some pretty good journalism. Now there are five people in the newsroom.
We do subscribe to a weekly newsmagazine but it mostly gathers dust. It is as good as it ever was but there is just to much competition at our place with four active laptops in the house (and a couple of standbys), four smartphones, and four plugged-in TVs with a few others waiting their turn.
When I was five years old, my parents took a photo of me standing beside a gigantic workhorse in our laneway. The horse was on its way off the farm and was our last one. We used to have several and they pulled all the farm implements for generations.
I need to have another photo of me standing in our driveway with the delivery boy when he brings us our last newspaper.
Probably some day soon.
By Jim Hagarty
Makin’ Do is another cut written and recorded by singer-songwriter Michael “Earnie” Taylor on his album Folk ‘n’Western, available in the Corner Store. There are 15 songs in the wonderful recording.
Making Do by Earnie Taylor
By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker
We once had a goose named Zeke.
He hung out down by our creek.
He waddled and honked
But then he got bonked
By a rock and boy did he shriek.
By Jim Hagarty
Somebody realized a lot of people in North America can’t read and so now we have an illiteracy problem. Maybe we’ll do something about it.
Personally, I have a literacy problem. I can read very well. The problem is, I can’t stop.
Somewhere along the line after I’d learned my ABCs, I gave up reading for pleasure and information and started reading just to read. Like a gambler unable to walk by a slot machine or a glutton by a buffet, I can’t pass by a bunch of words without finding out what they say.
“Why don’t you just read what you want?” you might ask. That sounds simple except when you realize you can’t possibly know whether you want to read something until you have read it. You can’t do anything else with words except write them and read them. And the advantage the writer has is he already knows what the words he’s written say. You don’t. So, he’s got one up on you unless you read what he wrote.
It gets a hold of you. To illustrate: I sat down in my favourite coffee shop Wednesday night to read a newspaper and have a cup of coffee. Noticing my disappointment, the waitress broke it to me that the papers usually waiting there had been thrown out. “But,” she said, amused, “there is a department-store catalogue here.”
“I’ll take it,” I said, and I did. For the next half hour, I read about flannel shirts, winter coats and computers. It wasn’t Gone With The Wind, but it was entertaining enough. Did you know you can buy electric boot warmers?
I always read through the lottery literature a popular magazine sends me and all the information on breakfast cereal boxes. I read three or four newspapers a day and various magazines throughout the week. I’ve read through the manual to my television set and I read politicians’ pamphlets at the door.
And the posters in store windows.
I just finished reading a pamphlet on urinary tract problems in neutered male cats, a fascinating treatise. I read up all the old journals in doctors’ offices and barbershops and have been known to lose my place in the haircut line while engrossed in an ancient newsmagazine. I read in the bathtub and on other fixtures in the bathroom. I read at the kitchen table during meals. I read in bed and sometimes I go out on the front porch and read outside. I read on buses, in restaurants and at the newstands in stores.
Basically, I’m a wordaholic. There, I said it. Sometimes when my system gets low, I just need a quick fix. A few hundred words about anything at all, to relax me again. A paragraph or two. A couple of sentences. A hasty browse through some junk mail.
On a boring Sunday afternoon, on my fourth time through the Saturday paper, I can even get all the way down to reading about the marital troubles of lesser-known actors as well as articles on preparing your lawnmower for winter. I read one this Sunday on how to remove stains from a concrete floor. I don’t even have any stains on my concrete floors. But, if I ever get any, just see how long they stick around.
It has been so long since the days when I couldn’t read, I have forgotten what it’s like to be illiterate. Except that I was a pretty happy guy back then. Maybe not reading about tragedies, turmoil and terrorists and problems, problems, problems, kept my mind freer for the odd uplifting thought that might want to float into it. As it is, where is there room in there for a pleasant idea?
Like the alcoholic who gets a job as a bartender to be close to a ready supply of booze, I made my living for decades serving up the very words I’m hooked on.
It’s The Curse Of The Grammar Book Demon.
And to think it all started with Dick and Jane. And their dog Spot. I never did like Spot. He was always running.
Running.
