Author: Jim Hagarty

We are being eaten out of house and home by a swelling population of non-humans that have swarmed our property like locusts in a drought-stricken wheat field.

And today, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, while most sensible 66-year-olds were rocking in their chairs and fondly remembering the good old days, I was in my car, racing up and down the streets of my town and in and out of shops in a quest for food of every description except anything that I might personally eat myself.

The supply mission began with the purchase of 24 cans of soft food for our two cats who also eat enough kibble to keep five grown horses alive. Then, to another store, where a great big bag of bird seed was bought. It’s like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie now in our backyard when I look to see flocks of every description of winged creature landing on our oversized feeder to gobble down the copious amounts of seed plopped there twice a day.

Then it was off to the bulk food store for peanuts – unsalted, of course – to sprinkle on the tops of the bird food piles for the larger blue jays and grackles to munch on.

All this food, of course, doubles as squirrel, rabbit and skunk snacks as none of these imbeciles can read and are unaware that the bag of seed is clearly labelled “bird seed.”

Off to another shop to pick up a small pill bottle full of munchies for the snails that keep the aquarium clean. Fish food stock holding strong at the moment.

And finally, in today’s lineup, a fourth store where I set down $8.93 for a bag of mouse food. If my farmer parents could see me buying food for a mouse, I would be sent to my room without supper every night for a week. Because to them, a mouse WAS food for the many cats that lived in our barns. The idea that their son would someday pay for some fancy fixins for a mouse, would perplex them to no end.

Tomorrow, it’s off to the vet’s for a big bag of dog food and two bags of cat kibble, one kind to keep their teeth clean, the other to make sure they pee straight. The condition of our many barn cats’ urinaters was never a high priority on the farm, but times change.

If I have any loose change left over, maybe I will pick up a small bag of potato chips for myself on the way home.

Which I will share with the dog.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

It is an oft-repeated recipe for staying young at heart: Hang around with young folks. Their enthusiasm for life will rub off on you and the years will fall away like darkness before a rising sun. (Actually, “hang around” is an ancient expression; you “hang with young folks”, not around them. Write that down.)

As the father of two elementary school-age children, I have had ample opportunity to test that theory, as I have found myself in situations I would certainly not have been in at my age had these kids never come into my life. I refer, for example, to an earlier column in which I detailed my life-threatening descent down a ridiculously high and straight water slide into a baby’s plastic swimming pool of water last summer. And then there was the ride I took on the “Twister” at a fall fair last year when I believe I took hanging on for dear life to a whole new level.

I’ve been “glow bowling”, ice skating, bike riding and toboggan sliding, though I am still at a loss to see what advantage any of these activities might have over a couch and a remote control. But, you’ve got to go along. Who wants to be remembered as the old grump who would never leave the house?

A friend of mine, given somehow to independent thinking, believes the kids-keep-you-young theory is all backwards. A former school bus driver, he says that, while he found the school kids to be a lot of fun, they reminded him of his age every day more than any glance in the mirror ever could. Conversely, he feels young when he’s around people who are older than he is, and so he’s now employed driving seniors to appointments and such. He also shows slides of his many travels to the residents of nursing homes. Works every time, he says. He never fails to come away feeling like a young buck.

But I’m sticking with Theory One and so it was on Sunday that I found myself standing in line with two other dads and our three sons all in the nine-year-old age range for a chance to chase each other, and a bunch of total strangers, around a darkened room with laser packs strapped to our backs, shooting each other with laser-emitting guns. I will admit that I was a somewhat reluctant participant in this activity, highly doubtful, as I was, that much pleasure would be flowing my way as the result of running around in the dark trying to hit the various flashing lights on the shoulder packs of the other players, with the ultimate object of trying to record the most hits.

However, imagine my surprise when, not a minute or two into this enterprise, I found myself involved in some sort of rapid regression whereby the years fell away and soon, there I was, a nine-year-old boy again, hiding behind trees and fence posts and playing cops and robbers with the neighbour kids. I ran up and down ramps, in and out of darkened corners, sneaking up on my prey and blasting them whenever I could. Just as often, my gun would make the tell-tale dying sound that announced I’d been shot and I would have to wait five seconds before I could fire again.

This truly was fun. My friend was oh, so wrong. Hanging around with a bunch of kids was bringing out the kid in me. I was giggling, light on my feet and as stealthy as James Bond. This is a place I’m definitely coming back to.

About this time, a young guy maybe seven or eight years old, came tearing around a corner and shot me directly in the chest, recording a hit and silencing my gun.

“Hey, I killed an old man!” he yelled, I presume, to his buddies hiding somewhere.

An old man?

For the rest of the game, I moved a lot slower. My bum knee was acting up and I could feel my blood pressure threatening to erupt in a volcano through the top of my head. The carpal tunnel pains in my fingers began shooting with every squeeze on the trigger.
My friend, in fact, was right. Next week, I’m going lawn bowling.

Couch, remote: Wait up for me!

©2005 Jim Hagarty

This is written with love about all the introverts and extroverts in the world. I guess we are all one or the other or a combination of both, although the combination never seems to be 50-50.

I thought about the differences this week during a seven-hour journey in my car. These days, I have no music blasting as I did in my younger days. I use the time to think, much like, I suppose, an introvert would. And, for better or worse, here are the results of all that thinking.

If, for some unknowable reason, an introvert was locked inside a garden shed with no way to escape, this would not represent any sort of opportunity to panic, or even be very concerned, as long as someone kept sliding trays of food under the door from time to time. A week could go by and this is what he would do.

The suddenly incarcerated introvert would find and dust off a lawnchair, and seat himself comfortably in it. He would look around for something to read and seeing a lawnmower manual, would ingest every single word inside it, marvelling about how much he was learning. Then, to his relief, he would notice a recycling box full of old newspapers that were being kept to help start backyard fires. He would read every word in those newspapers, though they were months old.

Then, our ever-shy hero would nod off into pleasant naps now and then, and dream pleasant dreams. As time went by, he would notice various spiders and other bugs occupying the shed with him and he would attempt to befriend them.

But mostly, the introvert would use his break away from humanity to think. Good thoughts, bad thoughts, the subjects wouldn’t matter. He would think about his life and the lives of those around him and about what he might do if he ever was released from the shed.

In other words, leaving an introvert totally alone for a week is not exactly the best way to punish him, if that is what you had in mind when you locked him up. If it was punishment you wanted to inflict, you needed to take him to a place where 500 people were wildly celebrating something and leave him there with no way out.

An extrovert, on the other hand, is as different from an introvert as a dog is from a bird. If you locked up an extrovert in a monastery occupied by Trappist Monks who rarely speak from one year to the next, the extrovert would somehow have a square dance organized and underway within an hour of his arrival in his new digs and the head monk would be doing the calling. He would organize regular Saturday night hoedowns, weekly casual attire days, and happy hours at a local bar on Friday nights.

Introverts are oriented inward, and extroverts, outward. It has been ever thus. And it has been my observation that trying to get an introvert to be an extrovert, and vice versa, is like trying to get a left-handed person to write with his right hand. Our orientation to the world seems to be baked in at birth. In any family, raised in the same environment by the same parents, there will be a mixture of introverts and extroverts. Almost always.

I have no opinion on whether one orientation is better than the other, but I do know that it is painful, for example, for an introvert to try, even for a short period, to be an extrovert. And, I assume, the same would hold in reverse. An introvert locked in the monastery would settle in, put on a robe, and be hardly noticed by the end of his first day. An extrovert locked in a shed, even for a few hours, would kick out a wall and escape at his first opportunity.

But here is where I think the world needs both character types. I have noticed that it is usually introverts who create art, whether it be music, novels or sculptures, and it is extroverts who help those creations see the light of day. Elvis Presley, Anne Murray and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song in their lives, that I know of. But they gave the world wonderful renditions of what writers had created in their studios or their bedrooms late at night.

Some extroverts do create, some introverts do perform. But these are exceptions, I would argue. Stage fright is the introvert’s unwelcome but steady companion, aloneness plagues the song-writing extrovert.

So parents, teachers and preachers, please don’t spend much time, or any, trying to change the two “verts”. Be aware that they will not, maybe cannot, alter their personalities. Instead, find ways to encourage each character type along the paths that seem to have been set out for them.

The shy will create, the bold will perform. And the world will keep on turning.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

Every night when I go for my walk which my doctor told me I have to do or die, I walk down Oxford Street past a factory that takes up an entire city block. Half that space is parking lot, storage for trucks, etc., and the other half is this great building that looks like what I imagine the largest ship in the sea must look like at night. Lights everywhere, inside and out.

And the noise that comes from the open windows is a calming, nice sound, not jarring at all.

It is the sound of human beings making things.

From stacks on the roof rises some sort of mist, whether smoke or steam, I can’t tell. But that just makes it even more like an old ship.

On the grounds outside under a bunch of young trees is a picnic table and on nice evenings there are usually workers on their breaks, laughing, having a cigarette, eating a snack. It makes me feel good to see this scene every night as I march by on my life-saving trek.

I worked in a couple of factories when I was young and I have to say, I don’t think I had the pleasant feelings about them that I do about this factory near my home.

And it makes me feel bad that come the end of this year, this big, beautiful ship will be pulling into the harbour for the last time, never to go sailing again. FRAM, which makes auto filters, has been in Stratford for longer than I’ve been alive but you know how it goes – it was bought by a big company a few years ago and we all know what big companies do. They go where they can pay people less and where the environmental rules are more lax.

What a shame for the people who will be left behind by these profit-seeking nomads. My neighbour across the street has worked there for years but she saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and has been preparing for a second career. Still, you can tell she’d rather not have to move on.

And soon I’ll have to walk by a big darkened building and watch the windows get smashed one by one and the graffiti appear along with the grass in the cracks of the parking lot pavement.

And no more smokers at their picnic table. Some of those women were not too hard on the eyes. (I didn’t just write that.)

But the only thing that never changes is that everything always changes so I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and keep on walking and not dying.

©2011 Jim Hagarty

(Update 2023. Not all cha1nge is to be feared. The factory closed 12 years ago. The property – a full city block – was sold and the factory was torn down. In its place are four apartment buildings, a beautiful medical centre, an emergency services headquarters, a construction company main offices and a two-storey building hosting several businesses. These are definite improvements for our community.}

Scholars and other smartypants are debating when the decline and fall of modern humans began. I wish they would save themselves the trouble and just ask me because I know precisely when things all started going wrong. It was June 3, 1996, at 3:25 p.m. I walked into my local coffee shop and ordered a bran muffin, as I had done daily for many years. It was then I was informed that the “store”, as these national restaurants now call themselves for some reason, would no longer – as in never, ever – offer plain bran muffins again.

The dinosaurs will return before bran muffins do.

I well remember the feeling. I thought I might collapse and lose consciousness. But, and this is a testament to my great strength of character, I pulled myself together and started screaming instead. I was the first person ever, on that day, to use the expression: “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

The young server was not kidding me. Instead, she began negotiating, offering me alternatives. One of them was the raisin bran muffin, a complete abomination. A raisin bran muffin is a terrible creation, similar to a cherry pie stuffed with mushrooms, if someone was ever so demented as to try such a thing. But what was I to do?

I ordered a raisin bran muffin. It tasted even more awful than I imagined it would and I don’t know if I even finished it. A 10-year period of mourning began, during which time I ordered and ate a raisin bran muffin every day. Then something strange happened. One day I realized that I liked raisin bran muffins. A lot. Like in oh my God these are good. On the occasional special day, I would eat one and order another one right away.

That was in 2006 and the world seemed to be righting itself. But that was an illusion. On June 19, 2014, at 2:21 p.m., I walked into my favourite local coffee shop and ordered a raisin bran muffin. It was then I was informed that the restaurant would no longer be offering raisin bran muffins. As in never, ever again.

Neanderthals will once again roam the earth before raisin bran muffins appear again.

A shock and a sadness overwhelmed me such as I have not known since the day they stopped making Massey Ferguson tractors. I felt the tears filling up the cavities behind my eyes but I held it together.

“What else have you got?”

It turns out they had several new offerings. There was a rhubarb/flax/mustard seed/green pepper/wild carrot/burdock/clover muffin. Also a crabapple/black currant/white potato/green bean/dandelion/seedless grape/brown rice/whole wheat/chives muffin. Several other such combinations too hideous to describe were rattled off for me till I felt like someone had blindfolded me and spun me around six times just to watch me fall down.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the server. “There’s fruit explosion.” An explosion in that restaurant that day would have suited me just fine but the closest I could come was a fruit explosion muffin so I ordered it. It tasted like you stuffed 12 fruits in your mouth and they exploded. I would have rather eaten my car’s spare tire.

So I went back the next day and ordered another one. It’s going to be a long 10 years.

(Update 2019: A couple of years ago, the restaurant brought back the raisin bran muffin, probably because of popular demand. But it was too late. I had moved on. Besides, if they could bring it back, they could make it disappear again some day. On Saturday, I had a banana spice almond, or some such contraption. It was okay.)

©2014 Jim Hagarty

In the college where I once tried to teach journalism, there was a sign posted in one of the classrooms: Write to express, not to impress.

Most journalists, I think, try to do that, if only because many of us are kind of simple minded. But bureaucrats try not to. And usually succeed. Impressing, in fact, is the order of the day.

As has been long known and written about, the average paper pusher simply cannot help himself: He has to dream up and use fancy words that convey the impression that there is more going on in that announcement or new program than is actually the case.

Therefore, you get a Canadian health minister announcing that his department is going to “incent and reward” as a way of attracting the best health-care professionals to take jobs in the government system. It would be beyond him, I suppose, to “offer incentives”; that would sound too ordinary. So, make a verb out of a noun and you’re off to the races.

In your day-to-day life, have you ever heard anyone say they were going to incent someone else to do something (even though such a word does exist)? And the first rule of bureaucratese is always use two or three words where one would do. So, we have incent and reward. Is there much of a difference?

I can remember a time when we used to give each other gifts. No more. Now, we gift each other. “The employees pooled their resources to gift their retiring manager with a DVD player.” Press releases that cross my desk often use the word “gifting.” I would like to gift them back to their senders. I am not impressed.

Recently, school boards in my part of the world were given grants to enhance their programs aimed at “recapturing dropouts.” Strange language indeed and perhaps a subtle clue as to why there are so many dropouts in the first place. Why on earth would any bureaucrat talk of dropouts needing to be “recaptured”, as though they were lifers at a penitentiary who walked away into the bush when they were out working in the fields? If the people who run the education system use penitentiary-like terms to describe those who leave school, might it be that some of them left because it felt like a prison to them?

Another press release talks of seeking out community “influencers” to help out on a campaign. What, might I be so rude to ask, is an influencer? Not someone who goes around getting others under the influence, I hope. I suppose it’s someone who has influence in the community. My next question, of course, is what kind of influencers are being sought? Good influencers, or bad? Aren’t we all, sometimes, a bit of both?

Did you know that people who are successful in finding employment are now referred to, in some quarters, as “hires”? A recent board of directors’ report from a local organization announced that two people were the “successful hires” for a new mentorship program. The role of the two new hires is to mentor other new hires, the report says.

I remember a root beer called Hires, but how did a person who has been hired become a hire? Does it follow that someone who is fired becomes a fire? In the future, when a company says it had three fires last month, will it be referring to people who were walked to the door or to washroom wastebaskets going up in flames?

But, in a world where gravediggers are excavation technicians (not kidding), should anything surprise? In need of someone to prepare a traditional opening in the ground in advance of a funeral, who on earth would go directly to the “e” section in the Yellow Pages and not the “g”?

©2005 Jim Hagarty

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this week I have been posting a box at the end of my stories which gives readers a chance to subscribe to my blog.

I have been thinking of promoting this way of accessing my writing for a while now, but I’m a bit tech challenged and so approached it cautiously. I’ve done some testing and am satisfied that the WordPress system I have put in place will work well.

If you share your email address with me (no one else will see it), you will receive my latest offering in your inbox every day. (I post another story at 12:05 a.m. daily.) The instant my scheduled story is posted, it is sent to you by email.

I realize this could reduce the traffic to my blog, but apparently “newsletters” are the way to go in this day and age when people are so busy. In addition, blogs are less popular than they once were and getting content by email is easier and quicker.

I ran an experiment using my wife’s email and the results were good. Along with my story, there is an opportunity for readers to manage how often you receive my stories. They will appear daily in your inbox at first but if that is too often, you can change the frequency to weekly. There is also a box which invites you to leave a comment.

As well, you can unsubscribe any time you like if you find this whole system to be a bother.

The process is entirely free, although there is an opportunity for fee-based subscriptions in which I have no interest at the present time. But if I do go in that direction, you will never be suddenly presented with an invoice if you simply subscribed. The stories will come to you free of charge – forever.

Some bloggers will sign up fee-based subscriptions for those who would like to access more than the basics, in my case, a story a day. Even if I institute something like this someday, you will never be switched over to that system. You might, however, be invited to go fee-based if that ever comes about. I would publish notices about it and it will be entirely your choice. And, I assume, you will be able to return to the free subscription at any time.

So give it some thought. And if you know of readers who you think would enjoy my stories, it would be great if you could tell them about me and my blog.

I really appreciate your interest in my scribbles which date back more than five decades. Yes, I’m old, but still not beyond my best-before date. Not every story I write and have written is a crackerjack but I do hit one out of the park now and then.

Thanks again.

Jim Hagarty

I am not much of a contest guy. I don’t buy lottery tickets or any other kind of tickets and I hate casinos. Games of chance leave me cold.

I especially can’t stand the silliness of calling into a radio show, hoping to be the special one who gets through and wins four tickets to the fall fair. And yet, I am aware that there are a lot of people who do just that. Maybe I am too lazy, but I just can’t get myself well organized enough to call the deejay and warble out my answer to the question of the hour.

So, that is my stand on radio contests and nothing will ever change my mind about that.

The other day, I met my neighbour out walking her dog, I was walking mine. We engaged in a little chit chat.

“Well, I just got back from picking up my cheque,” she said, out of the blue. “Oh no,” I immediately thought. “She’s been let go at work and went to get her final pay.” I felt sorry for her. I have been there and have felt the devastation of being tossed onto the trash heap.

“The cheque?” I asked, cautiously, not wanting to be too intrusive.

“Yes, my cheque from the radio contest I won through Radio 104,” she replied. “I was the 104th caller and got through, and then I had to give them a number to see if I hit the bullseye. My niece shouted out a number, I gave that number to the radio station and I won.”

Well, I thought, that’s pretty cool. I was glad she was still employed and was sure she could use the couple hundred dollars she probably won.

“Do you mind me asking how much you won?” I said to her, nosily.

“Not at all,” she replied. “I won $10,104.”

Then she prattled on about the contest and how hard it was to be the 104th caller and how she was going to save the money for a special trip.

But I didn’t hear much of that. I was already planning my next day’s activities. Which would involve a radio and my lucky phone.

Radio contests are the best.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

It takes some of us a while to reach our goals.

Take Toby Hagarty, our poodle, as an example. The mission he set for himself four years ago was to catch a squirrel, a perfectly reasonable thing for a dog to want to do, I suppose. Catching a squirrel doesn’t appeal to me, personally, but each to his own.

Toby’s daily efforts went unrewarded until last week and then, boy, were they rewarded. For some reason, we seem to dwell in the most densely populated squirrel habitat on the planet so Toby’s failures as a squirrel catcher were not for lack of opportunity. As speedy as our little mutt is, and he can really move, he is no match for one of those overgrown rats with the bushy tail.

Twice a day, when I walk Mr. Toby around the block, he practises his skills which have always fallen just a little bit short. Realizing early on that he was never going to get one, I amused myself by letting him run to the end of the leash after squirrels until I put an end to his fun.

I have never actually wanted him to catch one; I’m afraid one of those little rodents, if that’s what they are, would scratch my dog’s eyes out and another fat vet bill would soon be in the mail.

Last week, as we were coming back from our walk, Toby spied a squirrel by a big maple on the neighbour’s front lawn. He went into his squirrel-catching stance – standing stock still with one paw in the air – and planned his move. I noticed the squirrel had his head buried in a pile of leaves and was distracted and I wondered if this just might be the day.

Sure enough, Toby pounced right onto the little critter and then didn’t seem to know what to do after that. Just as with many of us, he had spent his whole life in pursuit of one thing without giving any thought to how he would handle it if he ever got it. (For reference, reflect on marriage, children, etc.)

Without a plan, he hesitated and his prey escaped and was up the tree like a bullet. I couldn’t stop laughing.

But that all stopped when Toby walked through our backyard gate ahead of me and before I knew it, was wrestling on the patio with another poor bushy-tailed nut-gatherer, only this time, the dog was calling the shots.

I didn’t know what was happening at first, it all transpired so quickly. The poor squirrel ran up a fence post but fell back down again and Toby was on him, even though I was trying to haul him off.

The little animal went back up the post, but stopped right in front of me. I could have reached out and grabbed him. He was in shock. His eyes were bulging out of his head and his stomach heaved in and out because of his rapid breathing.

He moved on up to a ledge, and stopped again, trying to recover. Soon, he disappeared over the fence, but this was not his best day.

And Toby, having experienced the thrill of catching not one, but two squirrels in the space of one minute, now walks around the neighbourhood like Muhammad Ali, itching for his next bout.

That won’t come any time soon, however. I am monitoring him closely now. One more vet bill and I’ll be living in a tree with the squirrels Toby hasn’t caught yet.

©2011 Jim Hagarty

I just might need to set up a little recording room in my house, garage or shed.

The other day, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my recorder, wearing a set of headphones and holding my guitar. I pushed the record button and instantly I could hear everything with a lot of clarity. That is the value of wearing the headphones – you can hear your voice and guitar so well and as a result, sing and play better.

So, I began strumming away and started yodelling up a storm. But I was distracted by this weird scratching and scrabbling noise in the background.

I thought, as I sang, “What the heck is that?”

I stopped recording. The noises stopped. I started up again and so did the scratching.

I looked out the window. It sounded like there was a hailstorm in the backyard. There was not. I started again, so did these annoying sounds. I stopped. They stopped.

I took off the phones and looked around, then started playing guitar again.

It was then I realized that the eight gerbils who live in four aquariums in our living room came alive when the music did. They jumped in their little ferris wheels and ran up and down and in and out of their coconuts, looking for all the world like the happy feet crowd at a teen dance.

When I stopped playing, they slowed down and stopped.

I put the headphones back on and started recording again and thought, well, maybe it’s not so bad. It just sounds like some percussion in the background.

So I sang away until our dog, lying on top of the couch and looking out the window, started barking his head off at the mailman.

“Shaddapp!!!” I yelled at him, in the middle of my song. This was clearly not working out. The recording of a sensitive song interspersed with gerbil scrabbling, dog barking and Shaddapp!!! was obviously flawed.

Oh, and the furnace came on now and then, adding yet another delightful little element.

I finally gave up, went out into the garaqe and accomplished my mission. The only ambient sounds that intruded were those made by the occasional passing car in the street.

I don’t know. I might have missed my chance. The gerbils and I did sound pretty good together.

Could we make an act out of it? James and the Jurbils? Jimmy and the Jerbys? Maybe we could figure out a way of working the poodle into the ensemble.

I’ve been told for years, after all, that my music has been going to the dogs.

©2013 Jim Hagarty