Author: Jim Hagarty

Our family has two cars. We are living the American dream. Most days, it doesn’t matter to us that our cars are just a touch shabbier than the old truck The Beverly Hillbillies used to ride around in with Granny in a rocking chair in the back. Yes, we do get envious.

We can’t fit a rocking chair in either car. We are only able to keep these junkers on the road because we have a genius for a mechanic. If he was a medical doctor, there would be people walking around our town well into their 150s. He’s younger than us so we are hoping our driving days will be over just about the time he hangs up his wrenches and oil can.

Many people who own beaten down jalopies know a little about cars themselves which is how they are able to keep their wrecks on the road and the right side of the law. Collectively, my wife and I know this about cars: A sedan has four doors and the AC button, if it worked, stands for air conditioning. So, we pay the car bills and keep on truckin’, in Beverly Hillbilly fashion, minus Granny.

However, our ignorance leaves us open to friends and neighbours who like to assess from a distance what is wrong with our vehicles. In short, we believe what they say even though we have absolutely no reason to have faith in them. Our oldest car, manufactured in 1997 and released on an unsuspecting world, started making terrible sounds a couple of weeks ago. The faster the car goes, the louder the sound is. It sounds somewhat like a space shuttle ready to launch without all the smoke and TV cameras, at least so far.

So, a friend drove it. “It’s your transmission,” he declared, shaking his head. “The car is done. I wouldn’t put a new transmission in a car this old.”

Most people wouldn’t put gas in a car this old, so what was his point? “Don’t drive it out of town,” he ordered us. So we don’t.

Friday night, my wife and I were driving along in our other car, foisted on the general public after emerging from the car factory in 2005. Suddenly, there was a terrible clunking sound from the back end, like might be expected if we had somehow driven over a landmine. Our town of 35,000 souls in Southern Ontario, Canada, is not heavily mined. We ruled that out. As we did a rocket attack by insurgents. Fortunately, the local police have kept insurgents on the run in our town and they are not a big problem. Kids on skateboards? But I digress …

We called a tow truck and our car soon disappeared out of the parking lot and on its way to our friendly mechanic’s shop. It was a Friday night, he doesn’t work weekends, and we had all weekend to worry about the fate of what had been the better of our two cars.

We asked our friend of the transmission assessment noted above what might be wrong. “It could be the differential,” he said, with what appeared to be a sad look on his face. “What the hell is a differential?” my wife and I said to ourselves after our long walk home carrying 45 pounds of groceries. I suggested at one point that we should just sit down and eat the groceries and be done with it but my proposal was spurned.

So, we have spent the past two weeks in a morass of transmission and differential worries. Our mechanic called on Tuesday. “Got your car fixed up,” he said, and explained that the problem was a broken spring. No differentials were harmed in the making of this movie.

Today I drove to the mechanic’s in the old jalopy with the defunct transmission, to pay the non-differential bill on the other car. I fully expected to hand over a thousand dollars. The bill was $129. Pleased, I asked him about the other car, the doomed one with the bad transmission, and told him our friend’s diagnosis. He smiled. The mechanic took it for a short spin. “It’s a wheel bearing,” he announced on his return. “No big deal.”

So, between Granny Clampett, landmines, insurgents and the friend who is always wrong about car troubles, apparently, we have made it through another week. We have a little shrine in our home dedicated to our mechanic. We have a framed photo of him on the wall, and below him burns a candle in an old soup can. We pray to him every night before bed.

©2016 jim Hagarty

I was admiring my face in the mirror just now when I almost fainted in horror, something I rarely do when staring at my face in the mirror.

There, as bright as a neon bulb, on the very end of my nose is a pimple. A man of 71 years can’t have a pimple anywhere on his body and especially on the tip of his nose. It is a scientific impossibility.

And yet, there it is.

This development has immediately set off a few worrisome moments because when a pimple sprouts at the end of my nose, it means I have to leave to pick up my date in 15 minutes. As a young man, going out with every young woman who would say yes, this was a regular occurrence. My face would be simply gorgeous, splashed as it was with very strong after shave lotion, my Buddy Holly glasses nice and straight. One last check before I headed out to the car and there it would be: A pimple for the record books, white and ready to burst.

What would follow would be some frantic self-surgery with a tissue pressed against my bloody nose as I ran for the car.

This happened before almost every date. But if it didn’t happen, that was almost more ominous because when the date was over and I arrived back home, it would be to find a lovely big golf ball living large on the end of my honker.

In any case, back to now. There it is, a new pimple. So, I will need to leave soon for my date, apparently. But I am getting forgetful and I honestly can’t remember asking anyone out on a date today. If I did, it would be the first time I would have done that in 35 years.

I think I will go ask my wife. She’ll probably know if I’m going out with anyone tonight.

©2022 Jim Hagarty

Five minutes.

That is all it took.

Sitting in the leather recliner, dog in lap, phone in hand, reading the news about the Idiot for the Ages, when the dog launches off the lap and takes off after the cat, for apparently no reason at all. Except this time there was a reason.

“Oh no,” comes the alarm. “There is a dead mole on the carpet.”

Swear words escape lips at this news and, naturally, the left lens pops out of the new eyeglasses, disappearing down the side fold of the chair. Many things have gone down that fold over the years, only some have been retrieved. Luckily, the lens hadn’t hit rock bottom but it was heading that way.

Unable to see ahead more than three inches, the hunt begins for the handy eyeglass kit with its screws and tiny screwdrivers. Blindness requires the head to be plunged into the junk drawer in search of the kit. Remarkably, it appears quickly.

The rodent, meanwhile, remains deceased on the living room carpet. The need to dispose of it outweighs the restoration of eyesight so double plastic grocery haulers are pressed into use to form a body bag for the poor creature. The cat will dine on mice all day long but he draws the line at moles. He is not to be blamed as moles do not appear to be eatable things. At least a lifeless, bloodless body is not too terrifying to deal with.

Back at the kitchen table to put a screw into the eyeglasses. The original one is long gone so a replacement from the kit is pressed into use. It is too long and too thick but with the application of elbow grease, a half hour of time and twenty well-chosen swear words, the larger screw has managed to force its way into the too-small hole and the lookers are once again able to see.

All of this activity has produced a blistering headache. A new bottle of painkillers are fetched. The manufacturer, just for fun, sealed the bottle so well it cannot be opened. As in never, ever. A sharp-bladed knife is needed to release the tiny pills.

A semblance of calm has been restored. The dog is hiding behind the couch, spooked by all the drama. The murderous cat is down behind the water heater.

And the Idiot for the Ages is still an idiot.

©2018 Jim Hagarty

I don’t mean to freak anybody out, but I am actively searching for a new place in the world to dwell. I live three miles from the hospital in which I was born and therefore, over my 72 years, I have never gotten very far in life.

Time to spread my wings!

But there are so many places where I could take up residence I am finding it almost impossible to choose.

I love Scotland and can see myself there. In a little place called Dull. It is possible I might be dull enough for there, but I worry there is a total absence of excitement in a place with that name. Same thing with Boring, Oregon and Nothing, Arizona. I’m all for peace and quiet but I sometimes crave a little noise, at least. A summer circus, a holiday parade.

Maybe, as I am just a regular guy, I would fit in with the people of Normal, Illinois.

Then there are places with a little too much oomph for me. Rough and Ready, California, for example. Same with Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Batman, Turkey, and Jot-Em-Down, Texas.

Some places I will avoid as the names just kind of turn me off, for no particular reason, I suppose. I don’t want to have to tell friends and family I am living in Poo, India, Windpassing, Austria, Anus in France, or Fartsville, Virginia not to mention Shitterton, England, Slickpoo, Idaho, or Poopsdale, Indiana.

But I have pretty much ruled out moving to Middelfart, Denmark. Town names get shortened, sometimes, and I don’t want to have to tell people that I am in Midfart.

As an Eyeore sort of guy, I maybe could see myself in Pity Me, England, Lake Disappointment, Australia, or Dum Dum, India.

And I have decided to definitely not go to Hell, Michigan although during my career as a journalist, I was often told to go to Hell.

I am also staying away from the state of Maine and its places called Bald Head, Deadmans Corner, Suckerville, and Purgatory. Same with Cranky Corner, Lousiana, though you never know, I might fit right in there.

Little Heaven in Delaware might be okay, but maybe it’s too soon for that. Maybe I would be welcomed in Humansville, Missouri.

And now that I think about it, five miles away from my current home in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, is a little crossroads called Harmony.

Harmony is small. But maybe, at this stage in my life, I could use a little harmony. In fact, it’s a ten-minute drive away. Maybe I don’t have to move at all.

Maybe I will start a movement to have Stratford renamed Staying Put.

The End.

©2023 Jim Hagarty

I am sure this is not true for every senior citizen, but it seems to me that when people get old, some things in the world that everyone accepts almost without question begin to baffle them. They run to keep up, but can’t quite do it.

My Dad could take apart almost any farm machine you could find including a tractor and put it back together again. And yet, he never operated a “stereo” and was bewildered by the VCR.

And cars even got beyond him before he left this world in 1984. Things were a bit simpler with cars in his earlier days. One of the ones he owned needed painting so he bought some paint, grabbed a brush and painted it.

I’m still in the stage where I’m running to keep up but I can already feel myself falling behind. And among the things that remind that the future belongs to the next generation are drones. A woman was sunbathing topless on the balcony of her apartment last week when a drone hovered above her, probably shooting pictures and video. And a police force in the United States has been given the go-ahead to outfit its drones with tasers and guns.

Meanwhile a Canadian company has taken out a patent on its sky elevator, a free-standing pneumatic (think bicycle tire) tube that will stretch at least 20 kilometres into the sky and get tourists and astronauts close to outer space.

I doubt I will ever “pilot” a drone and I know I won’t be riding any elevators into space. I might, however, be able to sunbathe topless. If you need to photograph that from the sky, make sure your camera has a wide angle lens.

Borrowing a phrase from a popular ’70s TV sci-fi series, people often say “beam me up Scotty” to indicate the world is getting too complicated for them and they’re ready to go to the next dimension. Now, they might actually be able to achieve their dream if they simply buy a ticket on the sky elevator.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

When I go out in the woods, there are a few things I want to see. Let me correct that: a few things I DEMAND to see.

There have to be trees, at the minimum. What is a freakin’ bush without trees? And I expect there to be lots of amazing birds in those trees. And they’d better be chirping their beaks off.

I also want to see snakes in the undergrowth, as well as chipmunks and squirrels. And I think my time has been wasted if I haven’t been able to take a selfie with a fox, a coyote or a wolf. Maybe even a mountain lion.

But I am guaranteed to lose my gosh darn mind if I go for a stroll in a forest and don’t encounter a bear. A grizzly bear to be precise. Just one goddam grizzly bear is all I expect. More than one if they’re handy, but there better at least be one available for viewing.

To walk through a bush and not run into bears is like going golfing after the season has ended and finding there are no pins in the holes on any of the greens.

I could write down a list of big problems in the world but you and I both know what they are. Maybe you haven’t spent much time thinking about it, but bear-free bushes belong on that list. In fact, I am going to guess that you don’t give a hoot about it but your lack of concern should not diminish my anxiety surrounding this issue.

However, there is at least one person in this world who is of like mind and I hope one day to meet that enlightened soul. This week a tourist left some feedback for Yellowstone lodge workers after encountering zero bears during a pricey visit to the U.S. park.

“Please train your bears to be where guests can see them,” read a note shared by a Reddit user on Wednesday. “This was an expensive trip to not get to see bears.”

Finally, someone has had the courage to come out and say it. And to agree with my point of view. After seeing that note, I will bet that there is nothing those Yellowstone lodge workers want more than to have that tourist encounter a few grizzlies on his or her next visit. Maybe they might suggest the tourist forward some of their clothing to the park so the workers can introduce the bears to their scent so their next visit will be more fulfilling. Or at least filling (for the bears).

I wonder if this was the same tourist who wrote to a municipality (true story) complaining that wildlife such as moose and deer were wandering across highways wherever they felt like crossing and not at the sections of the roads where signs showing wildlife crossing points had been erected.

In that case, I think it’s the stupid darned animals that are to be blamed. I think they know right from wrong but just ignore the signs on purpose.

I hope my tourist friend above, when they’re done associating with the grizzlies in Yellowstone, get to meet some good old Canadian moose. Maybe they don’t obey all the signs but goddam it, they’re friendly.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

Today is the 28th day of August. On the 28th day of July, I sent a friend a text message. A friendly message, just the kind a friend could be expected to send to a friend.

In the month that has passed since I sent that text, there has been no reply.

Nothing.

Now, I am sure that many of you who are reading this have experienced a similar occurrence and I will guess, some of you might not have known how to handle it. Rest easy. I have had experience with events such as this and have learned how to handle them.

So here we go.

Step 1

The first thing that a person should do in a situation such as this, is to begin the process of jumping to conclusions. This is very helpful. So, when a few hours pass or maybe a whole day and there is no reply, these are the words that are very important to say to yourself.

“She hates me.”

Step 2

This involves examining in detail your relationship with this friend, to see if you really screwed up somehow. It would not surprise you to conclude that you probably did something wrong to earn this month-long cold shoulder. If you are kind of a blabby sort of person some days, did you say some unflattering things about your friend which have since gotten back to her? This is a worthwhile avenue to stroll down for a few days. Try to recall every word you spoke to anyone in the past 30 days. If all that figuring does not produce an answer, you are ready to move on.

Step 3

Did I borrow money from my friend and not pay it back? That theory doesn’t work for me as, at 73, no one I know will lend me any money any more as I never get around to repaying the loan.

Step 4

Cycle back to Step 1 and try once more to figure out what you might have done to make your friend hate you so much as to end all communication. You’re a sensitive type and you hate being hated. In fact, your life’s goal has been to be loved by everyone you know and all those you don’t know.

Step 5

Your phone rings.

“Hi Jim. Sorry I missed your text but I lost my phone.”

Never mind.

©2024 Jim Hagarty

I sat in my car yesterday in front of a fast food burger joint. It wasn’t busy but a couple of cars went through the drivethrough and a few people walked in and out of the place.

I thought this was odd as the place closed – permanently – a few months ago. I had been spreading that word to people I met and was more sure of that fact than I am the spelling of my own name.

My neighbour is a regular local news fiend and as he is always out and about and has a real lust for the latest information about our town, he always has lots to tell me after his regular coffee sessions with his buddies. As for me, I am always in and within and have …

Nothing.

He is like that person who sends you a Christmas card every year even though you never send one back.

But I try. I offer this bit of news and that bit of gossip (although hermits never have news of any kind or not the least bit of gossip) and unfortunately, my breaking stories are very rarely true.

“I don’t think that’s right,” my neighbour will say, his face covered in skepticism. “I’ve never heard that.” And if he hasn’t heard that in all his travels, the chance that your little bit of startling info might be true are very slim.

But this time I was definitely right and I proclaimed my information with all the confidence of Moses reading the Commandments.

“So CowNow is all closed up, eh,” I said one day this week. “It has been for months. They couldn’t get enough staff.”

“Really?” said my Regular Informant. “I never heard that.”

“Oh ya,” I said. “The business logo is gone from the main marquee and everything. It’s too bad.”

“Who did you hear that from?” asked the ever nosy neighbourhood reporter.

“Ah, I can’t remember,” I replied. “But it was someone who is almost always right.”

“Hmmm,” was all my neighbour had left to say about that.

So yesterday, there I sat in my car watching hungry citizens of my town make good use of the closed and boarded up CowNow. It was like discovering that William Shakespeare is alive and well and still writing plays.

I’ll be seeing my neighour this week at which time I will have a heapin’ helpin’ serving of humble pie.

I hate that stuff. Seems like I’m always chowing down on it.

It needs more sugar.

©2023 Jim Hagarty

My doctor wants me to quit drinking coffee. To be more precise, it isn’t the coffee that bothers him but the cream and sugar I put in the two cups I get at McDonald’s every day. He has dedicated himself to keeping me out of Avondale Cemetery for as long as possible and I am in no rush to go there myself, but we differ on our approaches to putting off the inevitable.

“Could you drink it without the cream and sugar?” he asked me during a recent visit.

“No,” was my answer after I carefully considered the prospect for 2.2 seconds.

Coffee without cream and sugar. Hmmm. May as well eat my breakfast cereal straight out of the box and forget the milk. Or bread right out of the bag, skip the margarine. Or the popsicles I ingest during heat waves. I’ll just scrape all that frozen flavoured water into the sink and lick the stick. Yum!

My doctor and I seem to agree, when we get together, that I need to do a better job of looking after my health. However, he appears mostly concerned with improving my physical well-being while I am practically obsessed with maintaining my mental health.

And here is what I get for the $1.35 I spend a day for a senior’s coffee at Mickey Dees. I go through the drivethrough each morning and joke with the servers at the windows. They all know me now and tolerate my ridiculous attempts at humour. But we have a brief connection and I like it.

Coffee in the holder, I then go sit in my car under one of the many shade trees in the restaurant parking lot and read on my phone all about the maniac American president.

In the afternoon, I take my empty cup back for a free refill but am forced to actually enter the restaurant to get it. No refills at the drivethrough. So I have gotten to know the inside staff as well.

“You’re working a lot of hours,” I said to one young woman behind the counter yesterday.

“Yes, I am here till 11 tonight,” she answered.

“Wow. Look at all the money you’re making,” I replied.

She smiled.

“Have a nice day,” she said.

Then just today, when I went for my second cup, the owner of McDonald’s, whom I have known for years, saw me come in and get into an unusually long lineup. She came right over.

“Just a refill?” she asked, and she took my cup over to the coffee maker.

“It’s great to have friends in high places,” I said to her when she returned with my coffee.

She smiled.

When I was still employed in my career, I had encounters with people all day long – fellow workers and the general public. But retired, I spend a lot of time alone. I don’t mind that but chatting up the McDonald’s staff a couple times a day is a big help.

I could save myself almost $500 a year on my coffee runs (not to mention the gas for my car) by making my own at home. But over the last almost 30 years now, we have had every style and brand of home coffee machine and I believe in all that time I have had the sum total of about a cup and half for all that investment. And that was about one cup too many. Other family members rely on the coffee makers and love what they produce but they all have jobs and are around people all the time.

When I left the doctor’s office the last time, I went up to the reception station and said to the several women busily working there, “The doctor says he has never seen such a perfect human specimen.” They laughed and one of them said, “You must get sick of your wife telling you how perfect you are.” I confirmed her assessment.

So, God bless my doctor. He is definitely on my side and I like him. But getting me to give up my coffees will be about as successful as I have been at getting my dog to quit barking at the poodle across the street.

When Avondale calls, that is one appointment I don’t expect to miss. And on my stone I want engraved: “Finally Quit Coffee!”

My doctor will be pleased.

©2017 Jim Hagarty

Many years ago, I started writing little stories which were published in newspapers I worked for. I didn’t get much reaction to them from readers until one day a friend told me I have a great sense of humour and I should inject that into my writing. I did as he said and suddenly, I started hearing from readers.

I write a lot and some of what I write is lame, some is funny and some is very funny. I post most of it on Facebook, where I have a small following. But I might have to close up shop for the physical safety of my readers. They leave me little notes and describe what happens to them when they read my stuff. It is shocking.

For some reason, some of my women readers end up “rolling on the floor” laughing. I don’t mind if they roll on the floor, but I worry they might roll through an open door to the basement and go flying down the steps or bump into the stove and spill a pot of hot spaghetti on themselves.

Other people tell me they “laughed my ass off” at something I wrote. I don’t even want to picture that and I can’t begin to imagine how that would even be possible to laugh your ass off.

Others tell me they “laughed my head off” and this is similarly disturbing. But a compliment, in a way. How hard would a reader have to laugh to have his head fly off his shoulders?

Then there are a few people who “almost wet myself” and I am going to suggest they are holding back. Some of them actually did the deed and it might be necessary for me to post a warning to folks that they should don a set of adult diapers before they read one of my pieces.

Also disturbing are those who laugh so hard their coffee shoots out their nose. I imagine some pretty messed up computer screens and hope I am never held responsible for repairs.

But what I don’t like to hear is that “I laughed so hard, I cried.” I have never wanted anyone to start crying after they read a story of mine and I am sorry if it is happening.

The worst-case scenario, however, are the ones who say they “laughed so hard I almost died.” Now this is where I draw the line. If readers are going to start dying because of words I write, then I will have to give it up.

So far, I hear from readers who “almost died” but somewhere there might actually be someone whose coffee flew through his nose, he fell down and rolled on the floor, his ass fell off, then his head disappeared and at that point, he died.

I guess there are worse ways to go than to die laughing and maybe it will never come to that at all because laughter is supposed to be the best medicine.

I really hope that is true because then I could start charging dispensing fees.

©2020 Jim Hagarty