Author: Jim Hagarty

Sometimes I feel like I am living in a woolen mill. Or a knitting mill, if there is such a thing. Manufacturing of clothing seems to go on in my home from early morning till late night. The family motto is, “If I’m sitting, I’m knitting.”

I have never knit anything but my eyebrows, on occasion, when I witness all the feverish apparel making going on around me. It started, of course, with my wife and before she could even hold a knife and fork, my daughter.

I do contribute to the enterprise in one important way, however. When I leave the house, many of the garments that protect me from frostbite and public nudity charges rolled off the line at the factory I live in. Some days, I look like a very colourful sheep as I stroll down the street in my finery.

I make no comment on how stylishly dressed I am on any given day but I will attest to the fact that I am usually very warm. Every year I get invitations to speak at the Sheep Marketing Board conventions as well as meetings of the Wool Producers of America. I always decline the offers.

But to be honest. I feel baaaaaad about it. A bit sheepish, in fact. But if your drawers were as full of as many toques and mittens as mine are, you might also grow weary from being a model of fine citizensheep.

Not to mention the sheer envy being outfitted in yarn from head to foot can bring out in my jealous friends and acquaintances.

©2014 Jim Hagarty

I recently wrote a piece about the Soup Situation in our home. Asked to go to the store to buy more soup, I did an inventory of our supply instead and discovered our shelves were bending in the middle under the weight of the 41 cans we already had. However, with the two of us eating soup as fast as we can, the stash has fallen sharply to a dangerous level of only 30 cans in the past 16 days and with one of us suffering through a bad cold and consuming chicken noodle almost faster than the chickens and the noodles can produce it, it became necessary today for me to once again head out and stand in the soup line.

One thing to know about buying soup is every store has its approach to soup pricing and so in-depth research is required before purchases can be made. The first thing that must be done is to fill up the car with $49.52 cents worth of gas to ensure you do not run empty before the investigations are complete.

Being soup frugal, we often wait till Groceries Galore puts it on sale for 57 cents a can but these bargains are as rare as alligators in Alaska. Nevertheless, that was my first stop today. The soup was on sale for $1.19 a can which seemed almost reasonable for the emergency chicken noodle for which I was in the hunt. However, though the store covers the equivalent of about four city blocks and it would not be unreasonable to call a taxi to get from one end of it to the other, there was not even one can of chicken noodle to be found anywhere, as I guess half of my fellow citizens are currently down with a cold.

So, it was off to Fantastic Foods only to find that the price there is $1.29. That store did have lots in stock but the price was exorbitant by any standards so I left. Back in the car, I hiked off to Wealthy World where, shock of shocks, the extortionists there are trying to pawn off their supply for $1.99 a can. The people I saw there in three-piece suits and formal gowns seemed happy to pay that fee but I would die face down in a ditch with a cold before I’d even consider it.

So, with hope dwindling and thoughts of driving to the four other grocery stores on the other side of town beginning to dominate my brain waves, I suddenly remembered I was within range of one of the three Pennyrama stores in our town, so I drove there. And I came away with four fine cans of chicken noodle for $1 a can. I checked the best before date on each can to make sure I wasn’t five years younger when each container was filled and was thrilled to see that the contents will last till sometime in 2021, long after, I presume, the common cold will no longer be an issue in our house. And given our newly replenished soup supply, neither will famine.

So, we’re back in business and as of this writing, we have:

19 cans of tomato;

6 cans of cream of mushroom;

4 cans of chicken noodle;

2 cans of cream of chicken;

1 can of vegetable;

1 can of pea.

And lest you think you know of better ways to spend an hour on a cool day in the middle of February, let me set you straight. I cannot think of even one thing I would rather do, on any day in any month, than shop for soup. Like a Neanderthal tracking an ancient wildebeest, I was in my glory wrestling all those chickens and those noodles to the ground.

I’ve gotten good at it. I would gladly enter a televised Soup Challenge if any Food Network had the good sense to air one.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

It is not a rule that longtime married couples have to eventually look exactly like each other and yet, in so many cases, that is what they do. Even physical features and mannerisms seem to begin blending after a while.

This morning, I saw an extreme case. A slim, 50s-something, man and woman walking briskly along the sidewalk on their way to a parking lot. To begin with, they were exactly the same height and build. They wore identical long red winter coats. I don’t know if they were both wearing women’s coats or both men’s, but they were the same coats. Same big BLACK fluffy mitts. Each wore BLACK pants. She wore high-top BLACK boots and while his were more low-cut, they were BLACK, of course. She wore BLACK ear muffs and his ear protection, while somewhat different, was BLACK, what else.

The only distinguishing characteristic I could see was his brown cap. They walked with precisely the same gait and at the same speed.

A visiting Martian, getting a quick glimpse of these two and leaving Earth quickly without seeing any other people would report to headquarters that all humans look exactly the same. In this couple’s case, the little alien would not be wrong.

I just hope that happily married or not, man and wife have managed to hang on to some of their individuality. Otherwise, it would seem a little freaky to wake up someday and realize you were married to yourself.

©2014 Jim Hagarty

I’m a cautious person. Some might say I am overly cautious. That’s fair. But I believe in looking before I leap and so far, that has prevented me from leaping off any cliffs. Many bad things don’t happen to me and I hope never will.

I am not like the couple in Texas the other day who wanted to smoke some weed and so ducked into a vacant house to do so. So far, so good, I guess. In my younger days I used to wander through old, abandoned houses just for fun.

But if I was to go into a vacant house in Houston to smoke some weed, the first thing I would do is call out, “Here kitty, kitty!” Just in case there was a cat inside. The couple referred to above didn’t do that and consequently ran into a tiger that was inside the house.

All is well for tiger and humans, who at first thought they were hallucinating, but this is precisely the kind of thing that would never happen to me. In fact, I can proudly proclaim than I am practically an expert in staying away from tigers. A little thing I picked up on the farm growing up when the elders told me to stay away from tigers.

And so I do.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

Now and then I go to a play and I watch all the pantomime actors on the stage. They run around in fancy costumes, pretending to say words and sometimes, act as though they are singing. I’ve gotten used to this and have learned to kind of enjoy these soundless theatrical presentations. That is, I did until someone pointed out to me that these are, in fact, not silent Charlie Chaplin-type productions.

This news caused me to question whether or not I am missing the sound from the stage because I cannot hear anymore. That is an unlikely explanation as I have two perfectly good ears on the sides of my head. But someone who is convinced that I am, in fact, deaf as a frying pan, took matters into her own hands and bought me a $40 hearing device designed for people to use at live theatre presentations and in movie theatres. Yesterday, I tried it out for the first time at a play.

Thirty seconds after I managed to get the thing set up and the earplugs shoved into place, I began to hear a very disturbing growling coming from somewhere below my chest. It sounded as though there was some kind of hideous creature hiding under my seat. I was quite alarmed by this until I remembered I hadn’t eaten all day and my stomach was rumbling. In stereo. Any self-respecting doctor would sell his stethoscope if he had to listen to even a few seconds of that.

I calmed down and it was lucky I did as a few seconds later I sneezed the loudest sneeze I ever have blasted in my life. Through my listening device, which I had turned up to full volume and the earbuds burrowed deep into my ear canals, this sounded just like one of the final fireworks crackers set off at our local Canada Day display, only twice as loud.

I no sooner recovered from that when I started to hear a constant clicking sound and realized that the device must be picking up my pacemaker. That made sense till I realized I don’t have a pacemaker, my heart insisting on continuing to beat on its own without help. I did notice an old guy sitting a row or two behind me so it might have been his. I considered asking him to turn it off but decided that is probably not polite. This reminded me of our baby monitor days when we would suddenly hear a child crying and screaming and alarmed, we’d rush into our kids’ bedrooms to find them sound asleep. Some neighbour baby was the source of the howling, it appeared, its screeches somehow broadcasting through our monitor.

Pacemaker problem ignored, there started up a very high-pitched sniffling which was coming from my nostrils as I tried to hold back the stream of nostril substance they were trying to exude.

It took me a while to adjust, but I finally learned to rip out the earbuds before violent sneezes erupted and to ignore the other errant sounds. That accomplished, I began concentrating on the sounds from the actors on stage. The play was a comedy, set in England in 1897, and surprise to me, all these young Canadian actors (including my daughter who bought me my hearing aids) were speaking with English accents.

Who knew? I heard almost every word they spoke. The play was hilarious.

But if I had to review my new $40 hearing device, I would have to say it was $20 well spent.

©2020 Jim Hagarty

Conspiracy theorists are in the news a lot these days. These people are crazier than shithouse rats, but they are not in any way new to the world.

I am sure there are those who believed that it wasn’t really Jesus Christ who died on the cross and that it was all just a big plot to make Pontius Pilate and the Romans look bad. There were probably those who thought the Bubonic Plague was a hoax and didn’t really wipe out millions of Europeans in the 1300s. Anne Boleyn was never beheaded, William Shakespeare was illiterate and never wrote any plays, if there even was a William Shakespeare, and the two world wars of the 20th Century never happened.

Of course, in our day, there was no moon landing, Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, George W. Bush personally lit the fuse which caused the twin towers to explode and fall and Saddam Hussein is alive and well and running a bakeshop in Baghdad with his partner Osama bin Laden. And, naturally, the Titanic is still in one piece and doing just fine in the sea near Newfoundland and rich people helicopter onto its deck all the time and use it for weekend hideaways.

All through the ages, being the sheep that we are, we keep getting the wool pulled over our eyes. But at least in the old days, conspiracy believers tried to come up with some evidence for their claims. Never-before-seen videos of Kennedy’s killing that proved a new and shocking theory, engineers who say the planes couldn’t have possibly brought the towers down, only explosives set at the base of the buildings could do that.

But now, in 2021, there is a whole new approach to conspiracy mongering. In the past, nutjobs had to make at least a stab at coming up with some evidence to explain their insane theories. But now, no evidence at all is required. In fact, the absolute absence of any evidence is all the evidence you need to declare that “they” are hiding the truth and that “they” are so good at it, that no one can even find the evidence.

Because through all these centuries, “they” have just been getting better and better at concealing what only a few special people among us can see.

So the best conspiracy people nowadays are those who have not a shred of evidence for any of their claims. They should become lawyers.

“Your honour, I have absolutely no proof that the accused man sitting here murdered his neighbour on the night in question.”

“Guilty!” yells the judge. “Lock him up!”

Sounds about right.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

My back is bothering me a bit today. A little stab of pain here and there depending on how I twist and turn. It will be gone in a day or two.

I used to chalk up my back pains to the famous “Hagarty back” that plagued even the generation that preceded me, my Dad resorting to wearing a brace in his mid life. I also blamed my problems on all the hard work I did on farms and in factories over the years. And on bridge construction. Two days on a jackhammer will rearrange your skeleton in ways never thought to be possible.

But the real source of my problems, I see now, were the years I spent in a local rodeo. I didn’t rope calves or try to stay on bucking broncos as long as I could. Instead, I was the animal on which two lively rodeo riders spent a lot of time, trying not to be bucked off.

My name was “Horsey” and I would be mounted when I would make the mistake of getting down on all fours to fish out a remote control from under a couch. The only warning I would get in advance of another gruelling ride would be the yell, “Horseeeee!!!!” after which I would feel the weight of a rider leaping from a couch onto my back.

My job then was to race across the livingroom, neighing loudly as I galloped and now and then, rearing up on my hind hooves in an attempt to dislodge the rider.

Eventually, I would return to the couch onto which I would buck the laughing rider, using the soft landing of the cushions to prevent any broken bones. Successfully riderless, I would then hear “Horseeeee!!!!!” from the other rider waiting there just before that one hurled herself onto my saddleless and nearly broken back.

Across the room Horsey would go again, rearing up now and then, and returning to the couch to buck off the new rider.

If I recall correctly, there would often be accusations from one of the riders that the other rider had been given a more thrilling romp, so the exercise would be repeated until the rodeoers were satisfied or their favourite cartoon came on TV.

I wonder on what specific day our final rodeo was held. I am sure Horsey and his riders didn’t know that would be our last big appearance before our one cheering fan known as Mom, who, curiously, was never called on to participate as a horse in the rodeo.

To this day, she never complains about an aching back.

On the bright side, even now, I still have knees of steel. Horsey’s hooves have gone a little soft, however.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

When I was seven years old, I was in Grade 1, was good at tying my shoes, knew 200 words and already had my first pair of ugly eyeglasses, which, as I was to sadly discover, were extremely efficient bully bait. It was only later I found out our one-room country school had hired a designated bully and I am not sure how he was paid but he kept himself busy and if he earned a fee for every kid he left lying on the school grounds sobbing, my guess is he did OK.

But I am pretty sure Bully For Hire didn’t do as well as a kid named Ryan, and strangely, neither did I. The highest-earning YouTube star in the world, Ryan is a seven-year-old elementary-school kid in the United States who does alright reviewing toys. The host of Ryan ToysReview earned about $22 million last year. The year before that, he made $11 million.

Ryan’s channel started in 2015 when he was four years old after he asked his parents why he couldn’t review toys on YouTube. Today, Ryan ToysReview has 17 million followers and has gotten a combined 26 billion views. And recently he struck a big licensing deal with Wal-Mart.

Now, I hate to be one to make excuses, but darn it all, that could have been me when I was seven, except for a few minor things. Our home didn’t even have its first TV at that time and it would be another 47 years before YouTube started up. And even if there had been an Internet for me to review toys on, as one of a family of nine, I don’t remember having all that many toys. A plastic rifle, a truck or two, maybe some cowboy action figures, a rubber ball. Reviews of those would have gotten old pretty fast.

At seven, I didn’t have much of an income, aside from the occasional deposit money I would collect for finding pop bottles in the ditches between school and our farm. So, yeah, I’m a little jealous. It would take me many years before I was able to begin earning an annual income of $22 million as a small town journalist. Many years.

Also, Ryan didn’t go to my school. If he had, he would have been too busy hiding behind trees to stay out of the path of our school’s official bully to think up toy reviews. I am guessing that Ryan has been privileged in his life. Not having your head beat on daily by a small army tank outfitted with arms and fists leaves your mind available for many profitable thoughts, I would imagine. As for my brain, it was sort of obsessed with the bully and not with economics.

However, if conditions had been right, I suppose, I could have done a video series about the Hundred Best Ways to Get Away from a Bully, except that I hardly ever got away. And didn’t know any ways.

Hiding behind trees was pretty much a useless strategy.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

Although I reside in a country where countless beavers live and gnaw away at trees, building their dams, I have never seen one in the wild. How could I go 68 years without encountering a beaver when they are apparently all around us? Especially since I was raised on a farm in Canada where there are trees and a waterway that could use a dam or two.

I could understand if I lived in Italy where, until recently, a beaver had not been seen since 1471, but in Canada? So last year an Italian spotted the first beaver in his country in 547 years in a land where they were hunted for food till they disappeared, but I should be able to trip over one every time I go outside but I never have.

I know I am looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope, but I’m afraid I am a bit of a beaver skeptic when it comes to this Italian story. So, I am to believe that a fella named Luigi or Mario or whatever, draws his arrow and lays low a beaver in 1471 and having done so, announces that that is the very last beaver in his country. How did he know there wasn’t another one hiding behind a tree, waiting for the big dumb cluck to leave so he could chop it down?

Did the authorities in 1471 send out investigators across Italy to see if anyone had seen any more beavers? Well, did they? And did they all report back that not a one had been spotted? I just have a hard time believing that there wasn’t even one wily beaver rippin’ around the forests and waterways in 1472 or even as late as 1572, for that matter.

I really think what happened is they stumbled upon the 15th century equivalent of a Jim Hagarty who had never seen an actual beaver in his entire life and when they asked him if he’d seen one, he answered, honestly, “No.” The investigators decided that was good enough for them after which they sat down under an ungnawed tree and polished off a flask of wine while an undetected beaver kept an eye on them from behind whatever kind of tree grew in Italy in 1471.

I am sure that’s how it went down and I am glad that’s settled.

©2019 Jim Hagarty

As I see it, here is the dilemma.

Is Donald Trump an ignorant, immature, cruel, egotistical, narcissistic, bully?

Or is he an evil genius?

I don’t think anyone knows for sure.

And as long as that question is unanswered with any certainty, efforts to change him or slow him down may remain ineffective.

Is he simply buffoonish or incredibly brilliant?

He is a fraud who conned his way into becoming the world’s most powerful man. Whatever his critics think of him, that took some skill.

No one has been able to stop him.

But they say a great conman is easy prey for an even greater conman. A thief is easily victimized by a better thief.

It might not take the most brilliant, heroic, honest person in the U.S. to bring him down.

An even more fraudulent shyster, however, might get the job done.

Trump 2.0, where are you?

(I wrote this piece eight years ago. Long before Trump’s second term. And at a time when I knew next to nothing about Elon Musk. Mr. 2.0 is now on board.)

©2017 Jim Hagarty