Author: Jim Hagarty

Okay, it’s time I took this column to a whole new level

I have a few questions to which l would dearly like some answers because I fall asleep every night troubled by these things.

To begin with, why is everyone always bringing something to the table nowadays? And why do we care so much about what the other guy brings to the table? Why do we toss him overboard if he doesn’t bring much to the table? Where is this table, anyway? Oh, for the simple life on the farm. Mom brought it all to the table; we pulled up our chairs and ate it.

And further to that theme, why are we all taunting each other to “Bring it on!”? Are we nuts? Most of the time, I wish people would “Take it away!” and usually have no desire for them to bring it on. There are too many people bringing too many things on, as far as l’m concerned.

Why is it, today, that when someone has no intention of doing something, that person will say, “Ya, I’ll get right on that?” What they mean is, they will not be getting right on that any time soon. Actually, never. Not to sound like I grew up down the road from Abraham Lincoln and walked with him 20 miles through the bush to school every day, but when l was a kid, if I didn’t get right on that, somebody usually got right on me. Then, my reaction was to get right on that.

When will we ever stop taking everything to the next level or a whole new level? Is the level we’re on never enough? And don’t we realize that when we get to the next level, there will simply be another new level to take things to after that? I thought being on the level was a good thing. It meant you weren’t rolling downhill. Character-wise, it meant you were one honest hombre. But now, life is just a series of new levels to be taken to. I wish we were level-headed enough to simply stay on the level we’re on, once things have levelled out.

When Abe and I were young, if we said to each other, “Good luck with that,” we honestly meant we hoped the other guy succeeded at whatever challenge he was up against. Now, the person who utters this expression is not wishing you luck at all, but telling you that you haven’t a hope of accomplishing your goal, and they’re kind of glad you won’t. So why don’t they say, “Bad luck with that!?” In the same vein is, “Yeh, like that’s going to happen!” (Clue: It’s not going to happen.)

Here are a few other puzzlers. “Bang, done!” What? “Done and done!” If something is done, can it be done again? “Not a problem.” What happened to, “No problem?”

And why, oh why, is everyone trying so hard to “get ‘er done?” I remember when teams used to lose hockey games. Now, they just don’t get ’er done. Maybe they forgot to say, before the game, “We can do this.” Or the captain failed to tell them, “We’re good to go.”

But I have got to be honest with you. I miss the days when things were “great”, “terrific”, “good”, “wonderful”. Now everything’s just “sweeeet!!!” and the sound of that word is making me sour.

All I can say is, “Enough!”

“Already.”

©2004 Jim Hagarty

I know I shouldn’t brag, but if you were in my position, I am pretty sure you would too.

I don’t know if anyone other than me can claim to have the cleanest furnace ducts in North America, but I do.

For years, duct cleaning companies – there must be hundreds of them – have been calling me a couple times a month, asking if they could come to my house and clean my ducts. I started off getting into little arguments with the callers but finally gave up and moved to a new strategy.

“Hi, I’m Simon and my company can give you a fantastic deal on cleaning your ducts.”

“Sorry, Simon, but we just had them done.”

At first, I used to say we had them cleaned last week, but that seemed like too much of a coincidence and caused my salesmen to question my ability to tell the truth. So, I started using “a few weeks ago” and now have settled on one month.

The words “a month ago” trigger a lot of “clicks” on the other end of the line, no goodbyes offered, which leads me to believe that some duct cleaners can be a little rude and maybe should clean up their acts if not my ducts. Or maybe they start crying when they get off the phone with me and give their tear ducts a good workout. But I did get a polite fellow last week who seemed sincere in his hope that my ducts were properly cleaned at a good price.

So, in the past few years, I have had my ducts cleaned a month ago dozens of times.

And I am here to testify, that it is very important to keep your furnace ducts sparkling clean. In fact, I may need to have them done again soon, a month ago would be excellent, so am hoping for another phone call in the not-too-distant future.

I hope that polite guy calls back.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

This week, Canadian Lawyer magazine published a list of the best and worst judges across the country and editorial writers have been lining up to condemn the legal profession ever since. Judges, the newspapers say, are in the business of dispensing justice. They shouldn’t be involved in popularity contests to win the approval of lawyers.

But maybe we’ve been a little too quick to jump at the throats of the lawyers. Because, after all, they’re about to get as good as they’ve given. Next week’s issue of The Average Joe magazine, coincidentally, will carry an article about the best and worst lawyers in the country. Following is a sample of some the ones the magazine says are the worst.

Mr. Bob N. Weeve

The lawyer who said his client didn’t mean to toss his best friend over Niagara Falls, arguing the accused had been momentarily overcome by an attack of Rushing River Fever, an obscure disease which grips its victims with a terrible urge to throw other human beings into large bodies of water.

Ms. Sue De Panzoffum

The lawyer who acknowledged that, yes, her client did confess to stealing 47 television sets during a one-night wild spree of break-ins, but who went on to argue that when he was a boy, his parents abused him by denying him his own television in his bedroom. He finally snapped and was simply acting out the juvenile anger brought about by this childhood deprivation and which had been festering inside him all these years.

Ms. Bea Leevit-Iffucan

The lawyer who said that, incredible as it may seem, her client was indeed sleepwalking when he got up in the morning, went downtown and bought a gun, hijacked a bus, shot up the town, took four hostages, burned down city hall, stole a car and smashed into the mayor’s house, finally waking up in the cruiser on the way to the police station and saying, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here?”

Mr. I. Deltok

The lawyer who said that, while it was certainly a rotten shame that Junior had blasted Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Sis, Rover and his poor Aunt Bessie out of their beds in the middle of the night, to punish the unfortunate, misunderstood lad for his one, momentary mistake might rob him forever of the feelings of dignity and self-worth which he would need in his struggle to carve out a useful life for himself.

Mr. Bill E. Dinghart

The lawyer who said it was pretty evident to him that most of the people with whom young Brutus Bilgewater had had anything to do with in the past five years before he blew up the courthouse had been guilty of name discrimination. Studies show, the lawyer said, that less than one-tenth of one percent of all jobs in Canada are held by people named Brutus and an astonishing 99.9 per cent of all jobs are held by people of other names. Quotas are needed, he said, so that by the year 2000, every employer with more than 10 employees has at least one Brutus on staff.

On the bright side, the best lawyer award went to Ms. Dawn Toourth, the solicitor who told her clients to quit their scrappin’, forget about suing each other into the poorhouse and go home and grow up.

At least that’s what she told me when I wanted to sue my neighbour who I saw peeing behind his shed in broad daylight, thereby robbing me of my ability to enjoy my property and probably contaminating the groundwater in the area.

I really thought $50 million might ease the distress.

©1989 Jim Hagarty

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have flossed my teeth in my life. But the calculator on my phone does not have enough digits to count the number of times my dentists have told me to floss in my life.

Now, there appears to be proof, according to a study, that flossing does a person who has teeth in his head very little good if any at all. Meanwhile, the $2 billion floss industry has spent decades making me feel guilty about not sticking a bunch of string in my mouth and flailing away at my gums till they bleed.

I have only this remarkably intelligent comment to make:

“Yay!”

This is one small step for man, one giant leap for lazy oafs.

So I am going to draw up a list of all the other things I am supposed to do but often refuse to do, and check all these things off as future studies debunk them too.

This is my partial list so far.

1. Eight glasses of water a day. I have tried that once or twice and my tiny bladder practically exploded. I had pee coming out of my wherever.
2. Skim milk. I once blindfolded myself and did a taste test. One glass held skim milk, the other, chilled rabbit piss. I am not a stupid man, but I could not tell the difference. (As an aside, do you have any idea how long it takes your rabbit to fill a glass with its urine? Me neither. I buy mine at the farmers’ market.)
3. Walk your ass off every day. No, seriously. Walk until your ass falls off. Those of you who own a large ass will be glad for what will be a longer time with your ass than the skinny ones will have.
4. Eat chicken. Then some more chicken. The next day, chicken. On the weekends, treat yourself to chicken. A tasty bedtime snack: chicken on a cracker. If this gets boring, eat fish, but only if you can find a way to prepare it so it tastes like chicken.
5. Enjoy life more. While flossing, eating chicken, drinking rabbit piss, walking your ass off and swallowing a full barrel of water every day.

Further updates to the list as more examples of soon-to-be debunked recommended health practices occur to me.

©2016 Jim Hagarty

My dog Toby is 13 inches high. And I like to sit in a lawnchair in my garage with the door open so I can watch life as it passes by. Toby likes to do that too.

However, some of the life that passes by arrives in the form of squirrels, which Toby likes to chase. Sometimes they run right across the street with Toby right behind them. This is a recipe for disaster.

Nothing to do but to build a gate which would go across the garage door opening and keep my critter in. So, I did.

First I measured the height of the dog, then went to the board store. Brought home a bunch of lumber. Toby watched me construct his prison.

The first gate was too high and other family members complained it was too hard to step over when they entered and exited the garage. So I took it apart.

Made another one. A really nice one. I bought two lengths of lattice and stapled them onto the frame. Then I painted the whole affair blue to match the house. The height was acceptable.

I sat down in my chair to watch life go by while Toby sat on the floor beside me. My neighbour came over to inform me that the dog would easily jump over the fence.

My neighbour revels in breaking news like this to me. She would gladly tell me I had a huge whitehead on my nose that was ready to pop and that it looked like hell.

I have not murdered my neighbour yet but only because I haven’t been able to devise a painful enough way to do it.

So my neighbour with the death wish shambled back to her coven and I watched Toby as he tried to look through the lattice. I could see that the darned holes were too small and he couldn’t get a very good view of the squirrels he was never again going to chase.

So I took the gate to the backyard and ripped off the lattice. Went to the board store for some more wood and restyled the whole affair to make it easier for my dog to see all the rodents go flitting by. It seemed to be acceptable so I painted it up.

My neighbour came over to tell me the slats in the new gate were too wide and that Toby would squeeze right through. I calculated that if I squeezed my whitehead at just the right angle, the contents might hit her in the eye.

So the summer went by and man and dog sat in the garage. I watched the young women from the fitness centre next door jog by in their ponytails and spandex and Toby watched the impudent squirrels scoot across the driveway.

Life was good.

Three weeks ago, we were packing up the car for our annual vacation to a hut situated in the middle of a bear compound up north because we don’t want to die natural deaths and as he always does, poor Toby lost his mind. He was sure we were going to leave him behind.

The garage door was open and we all stepped over the gate as we hustled stuff from house to car. I wandered aimlessly with a can of bear repellant in my hand while Toby continued freaking out.

But Toby is a fast learner and he stood in all his panic, watching us step over the gate. And then, in a style reminiscent of every mountain goat that has ever scaled a hillside leaping from rock to rock, Toby backed up, put it into gear and flew over all that lovely painted lumber I had bought at the board store.

Next week, I am putting up an electric fence. Not to keep Toby in. That’s hopeless. To keep my neighbour (and the bears) out.

And once again, I thank the Creator for all the good sense and balanced thinking I was blessed with.

And for the joggers from the fitness centre next door.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

We’re getting a fried chicken restaurant in my town and to be honest, I should be happier about this than I am. In fact, I am a bit on edge about it.

Apparently, the food at this up-and-coming American restaurant is so good, people go crazy when they can’t get it. On Monday night, in Houston, for example, an armed group of people rushed the door of one of these dining establishments demanding chicken sandwiches.

Restaurant employees reported a mob of two women, three men and a baby were told at the drive-thru that the chicken sandwiches were sold out, a bit of bad news that apparently triggered the would-be customers, especially the baby who threw a total fit, over the top, in fact, even for a baby.

That is when the hungry gang took matters into their own hands and tried to get inside the restaurant. One man pulled a gun on the employees, but a restaurant worker was able to lock them out.

When you work at one of these restaurants, you need to be skilled at thwarting attacks by armed mobs. I am sure their pay scale takes into account the potential dangers of serving up dead chickens to terrorists.

Call me chicken, no, don’t call me that, when discussing this serious food-service matter. Maybe coward would be better terminology. But I don’t want to be walking past this new restaurant in my town some night and have to put up with armed would-be diners, especially baby diners.

I can just see me getting involved somehow, as I pretty much get involved in everything, and I don’t think that would turn out well for anyone. In fact, if I was really hungry, who knows what side I might be on? I might take the baby hostage and demand four chicken sandwiches as ransom. Could happen.

This would seem to be out of character given the mild-mannered person I present myself as, but hunger has often had the effect of changing a person.

This new dining place is a fast-food restaurant. Normally, that would describe how quickly a hungry customer can get his food. But in this case, my guess is “fast” would describe the speed at which you would have to run away after pulling a gun on the staff, as law enforcement will try to get there as fast as they can.

And it has been my experience that running from the scene of a crime with a baby in your arms can truly complicate the getaway.

Oh, the humanity.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

This has been an exciting week for me. The other day, I bought a lovely wall calendar for 2022.

Just in time for September.

It’s sort of like getting your winter tires installed in April but these are the reasons the expression better late than never was invented.

I walked by the calendar store now and then this year and had my eye on a beautiful big calendar picturing a dog for every month. But the store wanted $24.99 plus tax for the privilege of looking at lovely photos of other people’s dogs. I thought, and my thoughts are usually bang on as I have a good brain, I can look at my own dog any time I want for free so why lay out all that money.

But last week, there it was. Marked down to $1.99 plus tax so into the store I ran before some other bargain hunter scooped it up. My find cost me $2.25. As I believe the world would be a better place if everything cost $2.25, I was very pleased with myself though I did feel a bit sorry for the store.

I should invite the owner over to have a look at my dog.

For free.

My calendar is open for the next four months.

And yes, I know I am in the company of those who eat their food after the best before dates but I grew up before best befores and somehow am still alive. We used to crack the lid on a jar, stick our noses in and take a sniff. If we didn’t faint, we ate whatever was inside. In the years since, I have dug out many a green section from my bricks of cheese.

Some readers might say the best before date on a wall calendar happens long before September 1 and even suggest the calendar should be hung on the wall on January 1. I am sure they have good reasons to think this as well as $24.99 plus tax in their pocket to spend, but I never want to get above my raisin’.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

On Friday afternoon, a firetruck in my small city left its station, siren at full blast. Cars and trucks pulled over to let it pass and pedestrians ran for their lives. The truck was headed for what has now become known as The Great Albert Street Inferno. Through the red light at a main intersection it plowed on its way to Jim Hagarty’s house.

Pushing around, with a stick, the embers of a small backyard fire he had going, straw-hatted Hagarty, as he is happily uninformed of most things, was blissfully unaware of this developing drama, until two young firefighters were standing in front of him, scolding him for having a fire. He explained he had just burned some twigs, branches, and maple leaves, but they had had reports of smoke and someone had called to complain. While they watched, the owner of the above-mentioned backyard was forced to put out his dying cinders with the water from a garden hose, all the while thinking, “I was tending fires while you guys were still filling your diapers.”

He was handed a sheet explaining the backyard fire rules (a sheet that anarchist Hagarty will use to help start his next fire), was wished a good day and was left alone. 

Allergic to being scolded, a little thing left over from boyhood, and suddenly feeling surrounded by traitorous neighbours on a street where he has lived for 33 years, Hagarty went Full Idiot, two threat levels up from his usual Idling Idiot, and was determined to find the bugger who had ratted him out, with the purpose of asking that traitor why he or she hadn’t just wandered over to his place to find out what was going on.

Hagarty’s (true, accurate) recollection of events was this: He filled a barrel with twigs, newspapers and leaves and set it ablaze, as he has done dozens of times. For a few minutes, a white, ordourless smoke drifted westward across his lawn and when the wind changed, eastward over his fence to dissipate into his birch tree at the front of his house. This segment of The Great Albert Street Inferno lasted about ten minutes.

The next day, in full investigative mode, with rusty skills left over from his days as a newspaper reporter, Hagarty began recreating the events of the day before. He interviewed neighbours,  none of whom gave any hint that they were the ones that shamefully offered Hagarty up to the Fire Gods. In fact, none of them even witnessed the Great Inferno. Not one of them had seen any smoke. It was almost as though the Inferno had never taken place at all. However, they did emerge from their houses to watch the firetruck and its occupants descend on poor, unsuspecting Hagarty. That part of the event was real.

Here is the full story that emerged from Hagarty’s intensive investigation, a story that was put together with great detail 24 hours after the Apocalypse On Albert.

At some point on Friday afternoon, a thick black smoke that gave off a strange, hideous smell, billowed up above Hagarty’s fence and made its way down to the end of the street, entering the open windows of about 15 houses along the way, even the houses with their windows closed. Neighbours, young and old, were practically losing consciousness from the smoke. Cats and dogs were falling over half dead in their tracks. Goldfish were floating bellies up to the tops of their aquariums. Roses instantly withered on their vines.

At a retail business next door to Hagarty, people were emerging from their cars to go shopping and catching a whiff of the smoke, began coughing and covering their mouths as they hurried for the door. Whenever the door opened, great billows of thick black smoke entered the store. And the poor neighbours were left with this one big question: What had happened to the good judgment of Old Jim who had never before done this sort of thing? (A check with that business showed the owners knew nothing about a fire.)

Since then, Old Jim has dialled himself back from Full Idiot to Idling Idiot again, as he sits in his lawnchair on Sunday, a sadder but wiser man. Just once, he thinks, he would like to be a happier but foolisher man.

Maybe some day.

Some bright, fireless day.

As for future fires, they will be scheduled for 4 a.m., when thick, black smoke is difficult to see against the dark night sky.

Another flawless, Hagarty plan.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

I am not sure I have the required writing skills to tell this story as delicately as it should be told, but here is my best shot at it.

Our little dog Toby is almost stone cold deaf. The 12-year-old poodle has been gradually losing his hearing over the past few months and two events in the past week confirm he is hearing very little.

Toby used to become frantic during thunderstorms. I became his saviour and he would come to me for comfort. Sometimes he ended up under the covers at night where he stayed at least till the storm had passed.

But last week, we had a bit of a thunderstorm and it never even woke him up. Two nights later, pre-Canada Day fireworks were set off in our neighbourhood and they didn’t disturb him at all. We used to dread local fireworks. He suffered badly till they ended.

So in that respect, the little guy’s life has become a bit easier. Even the ringing of the front door bell drove him crazy. Not any more.

This afternoon, he and I sat under the maple tree in the backyard. I browsed the news on my phone while he slept on the paving stones at my feet. Sound asleep. Still deaf.

Now here is the delicate part. I had eaten a hearty lunch and combined with the pop, I began to feel a familiar rumble in the part of my body were rumbles sometimes take place and I remembered my Mother’s advice: “Wherever ye be, let your wind blow free.”

I did as she had told me to do.

I am not sure if this is something anyone would want to brag about, but I looked at the little dog and watched his head shoot up at the sound of me letting my wind blow free.

Two things.

Apparently Toby is not completely deaf yet.

And it seems my body is able to produce sounds louder than a thunderstorm, fireworks and a doorbell.

There aren’t a lot of areas where I excel anymore, so, unashamed, I will accept the ribbon for this accomplishment.

Besides, Mom used to often exclaim after one of her seven children had freed their wind, “Well, that was better out than an eye.”

As proof that I have always taken my Mother’s advice in this area, I still have two eyes.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

The Chevy was parked behind the Pontiac in the driveway and as I was loading up the Chev with two barrels of yard waste destined for the dump, I noticed that I had left my work gloves on the hood of the Pontiac. I thought about grabbing them but figured I wouldn’t need them just to empty a couple of plastic barrels.

Ten minutes later, mission accomplished, I walked up to the Pontiac to retrieve my gloves. They were gone. So I began the everywhere search. In the front of the garage. In the back of the garage. In the Pontiac. In the Chev. In the backyard. Everywhere in the backyard. In the shed.

Nothing.

I repeated the search, leaving no stone unturned and finally, I went into the house and announced that somebody had stolen my gloves. This brought on a lot of oh nos and people started expressing anxiety about strangers walking onto our property to steal our stuff.

For me, below the anxiety, was a bit of anger. My gloves were gone and forevermore I would have to check out the hands of the 35,000 people in my city to see if any of them were wearing my gloves.

I know practically everyone alive at this moment has bigger problems than this right now, but in my world, this was a four out of ten. So, to help forget my troubles, I took the dog for his noon hour walk. Up the sidewalk we strolled and on our way back, I thought I saw two strange objects lying on the street up ahead. I hurried up and dragged the slowpoke dog who was still sniffing up a storm and sure enough, there were my gloves, not far from my driveway.

Whoever had stolen them must have felt guilty and just threw them on the pavement and took off. Or, perhaps, the gloves flew off the hood of the Chevy on the way to the dump. But why would a troublemaker (or prankster) take the gloves off the hood of the Pontiac and place them on the hood of the Chevy?

Wow! Strange doings.

I don’t think I will ever get to the bottom of this. Someone mentioned maybe they were on the hood of the Chevy all along but I know that this was not the case. Definitely not.

It’s getting to be a scary world out there but I am just glad to have my favourite gloves back again.

If you find any mistakes in this essay, it could be because i am typing it out with my gloves on. It will be a while before I go anywhere without them again.

And yes, I have lost a bit of my wide-eyed innocence about the people in my town. There are a few gloves-thieving deplorables walking among us, it seems.

©2019 Jim Hagarty