I am a 72-year-old retired journalist, busy recovering from a lifelong career as an unretired journalist. This year marks a half century of my scratching out little fables about life. My interests include genealogy, humour and music. I live in a little blue shack in Canada and spend most of my time trying to stay out of trouble. I am not that good at it. I also spent years teaching journalism. Poor state of journalism today: My fault. I have a family I don't deserve, a dog that adores me, and two cars the junk yard refuses to accept. My prized possessions include my old guitar and a razor my Dad gave me when I was 14 and which I still use when I bother to shave. Oh, and my great-great-grandfather's blackthorn stick he brought from Ireland in the 1850s. I have only one opinion but it is a good one: People take too many showers.
My Dad was fond of fruit cocktail from a can. So much so, he often worried we might run out. In our small town, there were no 24-hour grocery stores.
One day, as he often did, he asked me how our supply of fruit cocktail was doing. I said I thought we had lots but I could tell he wasn’t convinced. So I went to the cupboard to check and I pulled out each can I found and set it on the counter. When I was done, there were nine cans sitting there. We had a good laugh over that one but I don’t know whether the evidence had much effect on his worrying.
Thirty-six years later, I was informed by a member of my family today that one of our local stores is having a sale on soup. It might be a good idea to pick some up, I was told.
“Do we need more soup?” I asked. “I think we have quite a bit.”
Nothing left do in situations such as these except to launch a soup investigation. To the cupboards I went and gathered all the evidence and prepared to submit my soup report.
The Hagarty kitchen cupboards, as of Jan. 27, 2020, contain the following cans of soup:
– 21 cans of tomato; – 10 cans of cream of mushroom; – 6 cans of chicken noodle; – 2 cans of cream of chicken; – 1 can of vegetable; – 1 can of pea.
In our home are 41 cans of soup. The total number of occupants of the house is two, sometimes swelling to four. There are four large grocery stores within walking distance of our home. In a blizzard or a tsunami, we could still replenish our soup stocks if they were running low and a soup emergency developed. We do not want to be one of those families brought down by a soup emergency.
If we were managing a cruise ship, instead of a three-bedroom bungalow, I believe we would be ready to launch.
Still, the soup is on sale. Tomorrow morning, I will be found wandering the soup aisle, stocking up once again.
I took 19 pills today. I take 19 pills every day. Six of them are to keep me from getting too good looking, and another six help keep my soaring intelligence quotient in check. The other seven treat a variety of other small issues such my tendency to be over hilarious, my relentless push to be too romantic, my desire to be the most generous person on the planet and my apparently unstoppable necessity to bullshit people.
I am pretty sure you know none of the pills are for any of that, with the possible exception of the medication to prevent bullshittery. What they are designed for is for me to keep seeing through my eyeballs, to keep all my limbs attached to my body, to keep my bones from turning into sponge toffee and to deal with all the fat I insist on stuffing into my gob each day.
The reason I tell you all this is to draw a contrast between my grandfather and me. I never met the man. He left this world six months before I arrived. But he lived to be 84 years old and I know for a fact that he did not swallow 19 pills every day. In fact, in his later years, when he was feeling a bit out of sorts, he would go to the doctor and Dr. Pridham would check him out thoroughly then go to his cupboard and fetch him a bottle of pills.
“Now John, I want you to take one of these pills every day and make sure you don’t miss any days,” the doctor would say.
My grandfather did as he was told and immediately started feeling better. One pill a day was all it took. And the funny thing is, it wasn’t even a real chemical. It was candy. A placebo, I guess they call it. I don’t know if a doctor would get away with that today. Mind over matter.
So, I am 67, choking down 19 pills a day, and hoping some day to see 84 but not at all sure I will. My Grandpa popped a piece of candy into his mouth every day and was on his way to 90 when Father Time intervened.
Of course, in his lifetime, 1866-1950, John Hagarty did a lot of hard work as a farmer. Most of it outside in the fresh air, a lot it walking behind a team of horses who pulled his farm implements through the fields. The rest in his barn or shed. There was not much automation to ease the chores and the chores were hard and plenty. Cutting wood for the winter’s heating supply, for example.
And farmers of his generation knew a few other tricks a lot of us have forgotten. They went to bed early, took noon-time naps, ate well and hearty and protected themselves from the sun, by wearing straw hats and white shirts with the long sleeves rolled down and the collar buttoned. I am sure my grandfather never wore a pair of “short pants” in his long life.
Most importantly, when they did feel a bit punky, they ate their candy as prescribed.
Here’s the situation. A family member walked in the door this afternoon with a big coffee shop donut box and set it down on the coffee table. He then proceeded to eat quite a number of the sweet treats and left. I wandered over, opened the box, and saw that two very tasty looking baked delights remained in the box. A boston cream and a lovely looking cruller of some description. Actually, I don’t know what the second donut was as I was bedazzled by the boston cream.
Now here was my dilemma. Because only two donuts remained, one would definitely be missed if I took it. Had there been six or seven in the box, I might have gotten away with it. I was very tempted but decided against it and carefully closed the box. As an intelligent and caring human being, I could not bring myself to plunder a family member’s sweet treasure. So, I left the living room, with much regret.
A while later, apparently, another individual approached the donut box and also had a look inside. But scruples played no part whatsoever in this family member’s decision making. As quickly as he could, he ate up both donuts. I know this because at supper, the person who bought the donuts asked everyone seated around the table if we knew what had happened to the last two donuts.
No one admitted to pilfering them and as we normally all tell the truth, our stories were believable.
The only possible culprit left was the dog. We all looked at him and he looked at us, and we knew he was as guilty as Jack the Ripper.
This was by far the best day of Toby’s young life and one of the worst of mine. But I learned a good lesson out of all this. It is a dog eat donut world out there and if a guy’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough. He who hesitates is lost.
I really hate being outsmarted by a gobbilly creature that weighs 13 pounds.
Sometimes, those newspaper columns which offer tips for homeowners with problems, wrap things up just a little too neatly, as far as I’m concerned.
First of all, the cost of implementing the columnists’ solutions is never taken into account by their authors. They feel no remorse at all about sending you out to the shops to spend hundreds of dollars to get the water stains off your ceiling or the dog smell out of your carpet.
Secondly, all handyperson writers assume you are intelligent enough to be able to follow the directions they give in their columns without gassing yourself into brain damage or riveting your arm to the basement floor. This is a self-negating assumption because if the homeowner was smart in any way, he’d be living in an apartment and wouldn’t be a homeowner at all.
But worst of all, newspaper handypersons can always think of solutions for every problem, no matter how severe it may be, and all their solutions sound simple to them, complicated to you. Real, everyday, homeowners, on the other hand, know some questions have no answers when it comes to owning a home and the happy homeowner is not the one who can solve his problems the best, but the one who can ignore them the best.
Take a handy tips column I read just this week. First of all, the writer stated it has been a particularly bad summer for fleas. What he must have meant to say, I’m sure, is that it’s been a bad summer for humans, cats and dogs because it’s been absolutely great for the fleas. There’s millions of them everywhere and they’re just having a ball.
The columnist I just referred to had lots of expensive suggestions for making your house flea-free including having a vet dip your pets (just before he dips into your wallet), placing special flea-control “bombs” throughout the inside of your house and spraying a liquid flea killer everywhere outside including on fences, the walls of your house, tree trunks, low hanging branches, shrubs, outdoor furniture and anywhere else where fleas might hide including, I presume, on neighbours who happen to be walking by. And this is all to be done once a week. Though costs weren’t stated (they never are), it’s pretty clear this whole operation will set you back many, many days’ pay.
A typical handyperson answer to a homeowner’s question usually goes something like this:
“To solve the problem of the discoloration of the cement on the deck of your front porch, rent a Blurdsen B-42 concrete grinder complete with Size 79-A or 79-C buffer cloth, white only, along with a Chesston AP-25 power-polisher with either medium or heavy duty bristles, nylon only. Alternately grind and buff the porch for 10 to 12 hours, vacuum thoroughly with a Suckelsior 960 power-intake blower and apply a thin coat (.05 millimetres only) of Pioneer’s Cement Clean 920. Repeat operation twice, then let sit for three days.”
Now here comes the simple part:
“After preparation work has thoroughly set, simply wash with an ordinary dish detergent, let dry and presto! Start enjoying your good-as-new front porch.”
As a real, everyday homeowner, I have three pieces of advice, all cost effective.
First: Ignore any householder’s tip that includes the word, presto.
Second: Blow up the front porch and start using the back door.
I was going through the drive-through at a fast-food restaurant at noon hour today when the young woman who served me at the window asked me very cheerily and with a large smile how I was doing. “Fine, thank you,” I replied. She then handed me my junk grub and said, “Have a good day, sweetheart!”
Sweetheart?
A young person of the opposite sex whom I have never met just called me sweetheart. I don’t mind saying this made me feel pretty darned good. But I was a little rattled, wondering why she called me by this term of endearment. Does she say that to everyone, I wondered, but then rejected that notion. She was very sincere and very clearly wanted me to know that she thought I was a sweetheart. (For awhile I wondered if what she really called me was a sweathog but then I decided that no, it was really sweetheart.)
I finally came to the only conclusion that made any sense: She was blown away by my sheer awesomeness. There I sat in my little rusting-out Chevy, with my cloth winter coat on covered in sawdust from working on the renovation project in my garage. I was also sporting about 10 days unmanaged beard growth and on my head, a barely scabbed over red spot where a falling hammer clobbered me last night. I also had not gotten around to brushing my teeth yet and had used no mouthwash which probably left me just a little nicer smelling than a water buffalo emerging from a day in the swamp. Oh yeah, and I have a drippy nose.
Still, it is obvious that enough of my magnetism shone through all this to cause a twenty-something, attractive woman in a drive-through to call me her sweetheart. (Well, she didn’t really say I was her sweetheart, but I think that’s what she meant.) So, I spent the afternoon in a golden haze, preparing to live off this little bit of encouragement for many months to come until I heard on the radio later in the afternoon that today is National Compliments Day. You don’t suppose my girl was just following the spirit of the day, do you? Nah. If there weren’t a few decades’ difference in our ages, I would right now be fighting her off with a stick.
Reminds me of the tale of the 90-year-old man who was heading off on his honeymoon with his 20-year-old bride. A friend was worried about the effects an exciting wedding night might have on the old fella and he said to him, “Aren’t you worried, you know, about sudden death?” “No,” said the old guy. “If she dies, she dies.”
I wonder if my burger and fries server knows how good she made me feel with one little word. I think she does. I think she is just a happy soul.
I am not a charmer and not quick with buttery comments; I often think later about what I should have said in a certain situation. But one day a few years ago when I was helping deliver my kids’ newspapers I started walking up a driveway behind two females who were heading to the home’s backyard for a party. I saw them look back nervously at me, wondering why I was behind them. “Just following the beautiful women,” I said, before depositing the paper in the mailbox and returning to the street.
Both women immediately smiled big, broad smiles and maybe even blushed a little. Finally, I thought, the right words were there just when I needed them and I managed to spit them out. Maybe I am wrong, but I have a feeling those two felt a lot better about themselves for awhile after that.
I don’t know what made me say it. As far as I know it wasn’t National Compliments Days.
Two of my four sisters live in London, Ontario, Canada. They are older than me and treat me like a baby brother which suits me perfectly.
Two years ago, when I turned 60, one of my London sisters showed up at our home on a Friday night with delicious pizzas for us all. The other sister sent me a card with $60 in it – a dollar for each year. She does this with a lot of family birthdays. Can’t wait till I’m 100.
When I saw the $60, I got a brainwave and rushed to the phone. I invited her to see a movie with me and told her we’d blow the whole lot on it. There wasn’t enough there to pay for both sisters and I felt a little guilty so decided to fly under the radar with my plan and not tell the other sister.
The day came and I drove to London to pick up my movie-going sister. It was something we’ve never done together and was kind of exciting, except that I still felt guilty about my other sister. I showed up early at my sister’s home but she was ready and came right out to the van. We drove to a mall that has a beautiful theatre – fireplace, bar, a table beside each seat. Wow! Easy to get rid of $60 there.
When I got to the parking lot, I drove around a bit to find a good place to park. The lot was practically empty. I have this quirk about parking in an empty lot. I like to find another car and park next to that one, for some reason, maybe safety in numbers. So, I saw a grey sedan whose owner was just getting out. I pulled up beside the car, looked out my window and almost fainted. Standing beside her car was my other sister. The one who wasn’t supposed to know about my stepping out with the sister who at that moment was sitting in my van.
The left-out sister was kind of shocked to see us there, and I dribbled out a pitiful explanation, ending with, “Hey, do you want to come see the movie with us?” She didn’t want to but has a great sense of humour and laughed about it all.
Now, here’s the thing. There are 400,000 people living in London. There are probably eight big shopping malls in the city, most of them with theatres. How did we happen to choose the same mall where our other sister was going that day? And we arrived early. Had I picked up my sister at the time we had agreed on, we would have been safely in the theatre with my other sister none the wiser. And there were other cars in the lot I could have parked beside. This defies all odds.
A lot of homes in Canada make use of what is known as a master bedroom. We have one of those at our place and it is well and truly put to great use by the family’s master. I crawl into the bed in that room late at night (I am a nighthawk) and I am allowed to remain snuggled up under the covers until 8 a.m. or so every day when the master enters the room to dislodge me.
My wake-up call is not gentle nor is it subtle. In fact, I get yelled at and am informed in no uncertain terms that I am to leave the comfort of the bed to make way for him. I protest, but that is a waste of breath. I have learned to accept my fate and while I am still sitting on the side of the bed getting dressed for the day, the master is already covering himself up with the blankets.
Our master is not only demanding, but a little odd in his sleeping habits. He completely covers himself up in the bed, even burying his head under the comforters.
The master of our house is 18 years old, and I will come right out and tell you that, as much as we love him, he’s as lazy as an old cat. He has no job, does nothing to help with household chores and eats constantly. He rarely shows any gratitude for all the things we do for him and, as the typical master might do, I suppose, he behaves as though he expects us to meet his every demand.
So often we are made aware that he is the boss of us and we give in, even when we are aware we are spoiling him.
The master of our house sleeps in the bed in the master bedroom all day, emerging now and then for a snack and a drink and then returning to his slumberland.
We have discussed various things we might do to get control of this situation because we sometimes feel this arrangement isn’t right. But, we seem powerless to bring about change. We let things go too far, we realize now, and it seems there is no going back. If he would just help us out once in a while, but he simply won’t.
He won’t even clean out the litterbox he makes deposits in several times a day.
I really hate to say this, though master he might be, he really is just one big fluffy freeloader.
I got an email last night with the headline, Are You Dead or Alive?
Because I was able to read it, I concluded I am alive (also, I ran into the bathroom and breathed on the mirror), but the approach had me intrigued so I read the body of the message.
Apparently, a woman named Julie in Texas has contacted a courier company in California to tell them that a delivery destined to be delivered to me in Ontario cannot be delivered because I died in a car accident. Julie is my next-of-kin, or something, and the delivery is now to go to her. Consequently, the courier company, doing its due diligence, wanted to know if I am alive or dead.
If I am alive, I am to write them immediately to tell them that and if they don’t hear from me in two days, they will assume that I am, in fact, dead. In the event they don’t hear from me, I guess, Julie will be the lucky recipient of the prize that was to be mine.
I do not intend to respond to the email but I am now worried that if the courier company does not hear from me, that can only mean I am actually dead. My problem now, is, if I do not reply, will I have a coroner knocking on my door tomorrow followed by a hearse?
This has me so upset, I almost wish I was dead. But, if only to piss off old Julie, I am tempted to declare my aliveness by responding to the email. I wish the matter of life and death was simple like it used to be before email came along. Now, in the new scheme of things, it’s really hard to know if you are coming or going.
Married, with children, this is how you are apt to spend a not untypical afternoon. Your six-year-old daughter buys a figurine of a white horse while on summer vacation and it immediately takes pride of place in her stable of precious belongings. And while invaluable, it is also breakable. Inevitably, break it does, as its right ear separates from its head. The girl could not be more inconsolable if her own ear had fallen off.
Your wife mentions that she might have thrown the ear in the kitchen garbage can and that she hopes to be able to find it before garbage day arrives.
Six days go by, and garbage day is tomorrow. You know the horse’s ear is 45th on Mom’s list of priorities and, as usual, you, having no particular purpose anymore, feel the strange need to find this equine extremity. As with most of your thoughts these days, this one goes from idea to obsession in seconds. Oh, if scientists could only harness that brain speed.
So, on a beautiful Thanksgiving Monday afternoon, when you imagine the rest of the world is doing great, Thanksgivingly things, you steel yourself at the prospect of searching through week-old kitchen waste to find a white horse’s ear which is the size and colour of a baby’s first tooth.
The only thing you have to be thankful for this day is the fact that you know in which particular white plastic bag the missing toy animal part might be. So, you set up your picnic table in the back yard, open the bag, and dump out its entire smelly contents. You then begin, with the aid of a putty knife, to go through every imaginable item of kitchen refuse, bit by disgusting bit. Even the putty knife seems a reluctant participant in the job. This exercise renders looking for a needle in a haystack laughingly easy, especially in the light of this fact: the horse’s ear looks not unlike a small piece of cottage cheese.
This should make it easy to find except for another fact: Your wife chose that week to finally dispose of that container of cottage cheese that sat in the back of the fridge till it went bad. So, now you have no choice but to squeeze, with ungloved hands, every last little sour cheese bit to see whether it is soft (as cheese is) or hard (as the ears of figurines are).
Other joys await. There is porridge to de-coagulate in the event the ear is hidden within the glop. There are also used facial tissues to unwrap and examine. There are wet paper towels, uneaten breakfast cereal, and a couple dozen soggy bread crusts, as crusts have been deemed inedible by one of your children.
Now, to make the appeal of this archaeological autopsy complete, you must, the entire time, dodge and weave to avoid the attention of two, very bad-tempered yellowjacket wasps that are far from pleased that you are disturbing their surprise Thanksgiving dinner.
You go through everything once, then twice, in case you missed something, and then realize this is impossible. But, into this so deeply now that victory is your only way out, you go back into the house to study, more closely, the horse’s remaining ear. Back at the table with renewed enthusiasm, you squeeze each cottage cheese one more time, and amazingly, with only a small bit of refuse to go, and on the verge of giving up, you rub some hard little item between your fingers and realize your work has borne fruit. The man who made the first gold strike could not have been more overjoyed and you loudly proclaim your magnificence to all and sundry. Even the bees seem pleased.
And when a little girl comes tearing across the lawn to hug and thank you for preventing the partial dismemberment of Moonlight, you realize the strange way by which the rewards of this dadly occupation are realized. The horse now sits at the centre of the kitchen table again, both ears firmly attached, your faith in fatherhood bravery restored as well. Which is good because you’re going to need it for the next unpredictable crisis which lies just around the corner.
With any luck, meddlesome wasps will not be part of the next dilemma.
This week an electrician has been rewiring our garage as we are turning it into a bit of a rec room. Watching him do his thing has been an eye opener, like watching Gretzky take the puck behind the other team’s net, just prior to setting up another goal.
The electrician accomplished in one day what would have taken me 10 and, in fact, I couldn’t do half the things he did as they are beyond my comprehension. He had much more powerful tools than I have and tricks I’ve never seen. He stood back a few times, muttered to himself as he did his calculations, then moved in to do what he’d planned in his mind.
This experience made me so glad I didn’t tackle this job myself. And I am working alongside a lifelong carpenter who also does his job seemingly without effort. I blame the big building supplies stores for starting the do-it-yourself revolution and thereby ruining a lot of people’s nights and weekends.
My parents’ generation was not into DIY. Yes, as farmers, they built sheds and fixed tractors but they left household jobs to the pros. We used to hire a husband and wife wallpapering/painting team to improve the appearance of the interior and a carpenter to remodel some things.
Yes, there is some satisfaction in some DIY projects, but it’s best to know when to admit defeat and spend a bit of money.
A noted Canadian journalist once wrote that people should stick to what they do best. To illustrate this point, he related this story. One day his wife asked him to climb up on the dining room table and clean the chandelier. Instead, he hired a neighbour boy to do it while he sat at one end of the table and wrote a story on his typewriter. (Yes, this was a while ago.) He paid the boy $18 for his work and he sold his story to Time Magazine for $300.
