Month: June 2016

By Jim Hagarty

A robin landed on my lawn today
And looked at me in a funny way.
This robin and I are buddies fair.
I was glad to see him there.

I first met Robin in my yard when
I was digging in my garden.
He waddled along close behind
And ate the worms that I would find.

And every spring since that first one
He returns for a visit home.
He lands beside me on the lawn
And wonders where my shovel’s gone.

So from the shed I get my digger
And Robin’s eyes could not be bigger.
As I turn over robin food
He feasts like every robin should.

So you might laugh and not agree
A bird would find a friend in me.
I have to say, it does seem odd.
I can’t explain it, go ask God.

There are countless reasons I am glad to live in Canada. This is one of them.

Years ago, the government decided to get rid of our green one dollar bills. I forget the reasons now, but the plan was to introduce a gold-coloured, one-dollar coin. The change was made, and the transition went smoothly. We already had a one-dollar coin which we all referred to as the silver dollar, but for some reason, all governmentally like, it was decided a second coin was needed.

Also needed was a name for the new coin. We had the penny, the nickel, the dime, the quarter, the fifty cent piece and the silver dollar. What would this new dollar be called? The government dragged its heels.

So Canadians took it upon themselves. One of our favourite birds up here in Canada is the loon. Most often found in forested northern areas near lakes, the loon lets up a hauntingly beautiful cry.

Hence, our new one-dollar coin became the “loonie.” The name stuck. No official name was ever conceived of.

A few years later, those crazy government people were at it again. Time to get rid of our red two-dollar bill. Another new coin would be struck, this one a mixture of gold and silver.

Almost before the first one rolled off the assembly line, Canadians got busy. A loonie was worth one dollar and now we had a new coin that was worth two dollars. Nothing to do but to call it a “toonie.” We have no bird in Canada called a “toon”. But a loonie doubled just had to be a toonie.

There are a lot of government naming specialists looking for work today.

Now there is talk of issuing another new coin to take the place of our blue five-dollar bill. I am looking forward to the name this one will get. A “foonie”, maybe. A fivey. Or a “funny” to rhyme with money.

Back to why I love Canada.

We manage, somehow, from time to time, to still keep things pretty simple.

©2016 Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty

Business people like, or should like, potential customers who ask a thousand questions about the item they are probably going to buy, especially the price.

They shouldn’t even take it wrong if the customer tries to haggle on the price and terms of payment among other things. The reason for this is, that person intends on paying for what he is about to buy, so price, quality, warranty, payment terms, etc. are all very important to him.

The wonderfully agreeable guy who just loves the item and has no questions to ask about anything, hardly even glancing at the price, is this way because he will not be paying for the purchase. He may not even know he won’t be paying for it, at least not consciously, but his cavalier attitude towards terms of the deal should be a potential red flag for the seller who might want to insist on cash or credit card.

This does not apply, of course, to the fabulously wealthy to whom price might not matter, but even for them, terms are important. They didn’t get rich and stay rich by throwing away their money.

My father told me this years ago and I thought it was pretty insightful.

By Jim Hagarty

The first snow of winter had fallen on my not-yet-frozen lawn and I could hear a pick-up truck with a snowplow blade on the front, hustling back and forth, cleaning the parking lot next door.

I went to the door and looked out. My jaw dropped to the floor when I saw the truck pushing a skiff of snow onto my lawn and in the process, peeling back the sod from my property like it was taking off a bandage.

Before I could make it out to the truck to stop this madness, he’d torn off another strip or two, leaving raw earth behind. I finally managed to wrestle the truck to a halt and lit into the driver, pointing pitifully at my once beautiful landscape, now torn and tattered. The driver didn’t apologize but he seemed pretty sheepish and radioed his boss to find out the next step in this little drama. His boss crackled onto the two-way radio.

“Hey Frank,” said the driver. “A neighbour says I tore up his lawn with the plow and he’s upset about it. What should I tell him?”

Frank, ever in search of a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, replied: “Tell him to go fuck himself!”

“Ah, Frank, the neighbour is standing right beside my window,” came back the driver.

“Oh,” said Frank, cheerily, not the least bit concerned with the suggestion he’d just made. “Tell him I’ll be right over.”

In a few minutes another pick up came screeching around the corner and across the lot to me, and out jumped the ever chipper Frank. He and I surveyed the damage and he was so sorry about everything.

“Hey, tell you what,” he said. “I will be back in the spring to fix this up good as new.” More than 25 springs have come and gone since that day and every year I wait for Frank but he never shows.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to go fuck myself. He did it for me.

Thanks Frank, you’re a sweetheart.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was an iguana named Bert
Who chewed on his tail till it hurt.
So they took out his teeth
Which gave him relief
But his tail now is chock full of dirt.

By Jim Hagarty

I find this so hard to say:
There will not be a poem today.
I had planned to tap out a new one
But my poemiano is way out of tune.

I thought I would write about birds
But I just couldn’t find the right words.
I might make a comment on life.
So many ideas, they are rife.

But I can’t get my brain to stand still.
Some days it won’t, some it will.
It’s like a runaway train in my head
And the bridge is washed out straight ahead.

So I guess you will have to make do
With the poems I wrote last week for you.
But if a wee bit of luck comes my way.
I’ll write a new poem on Tuesday.

Dear Fellow Lifetimers

By Jim Hagarty

I have spent hours retrieving all the things I have written on Facebook over the past seven years. The conclusion I have come to is that I have been quite the blabbermouth since I retired. I published a book a few years ago called Poor Daddy. It contains just over 45,000 words. So year by year, I have been entering my Facebook stories into Word documents and tracking the word counts. As it turns out, I have written a book a year for the past half dozen years.

But one thing I noticed is that with Facebook, I could dash off one sentence and post it. Some little thought that seemed appropriate to share. I would like to share some of those one-liners and new ones as they occur to me but I don’t want to dedicate a whole blog post for one sentence.

So I have created another page called Lite Sentences. I will throw my one-liners in there from time to time. Some days there might be two or three additions, some days none. But it will serve the same purpose, I hope, as the junk drawer in our home. A catch all for anything and everything.

Happy Reading!

By Jim Hagarty

Twenty-five years ago my wife presented me with an electronic stud finder to help me hang heavy stuff on our walls.

Twenty-five years later, our walls are full of more holes than a beehive, holes that lead into empty space, not studs. This is because the stud finder is a useless piece of crap.

I could take a stick and go out in the back yard and discover an underground spring of water faster than I could find a stud with this ridiculous thing. And yet, I bring the darned device out every once in a while, pop a new battery in it and proceed to try to get it to find a stud behind some drywall. But it is apparent that it couldn’t find one if our walls were made of glass and the studs were covered in labels stating “Stud Here.”

So, back in the bottom of the toolbox it goes and I start drilling holes into empty drywall like an ice fisherman, looking for a good spot. If I ever hit a stud, it has been completely by accident.

This week, I had to attach something to a wall and this time, no mistakes could be permitted. So, I drilled four huge holes you could stick your little finger into, into the wall in question, and came nowhere near any studs. I should be given a prize for being that successful at avoiding all studs.

Desperate, I got the stud finder and gave it one more shot. Turning it on, I soon saw that it was as useless as ever. The green light should obviously indicate a stud, a red light, no stud. Nope, nope, nope. And nope.

I was just about to throw that freakin’ thing through the window when I noticed some writing on the back. The words there were instructions on how to use it. And this is how low I had sunk – I read them for the first time.

The green light only indicates the device is on. The red light comes on when one side of the stud is found and goes off when it leaves the other side. As simple as sneezing in a pepper factory.

Applying these directions, I discovered that the thing works perfectly. Imagine that! And all these years, those stupid directions were hiding in plain sight unlike all those darned studs it has never found.

By Jim Hagarty

I had forgotten about this completely until recently when I ran into a man I worked with from 1980 to 1995 and he told me this story.

When one of his daughters was a teenager, she got bored with her guitar and decided to sell it to make some money. Her Dad knew she would regret it but didn’t want to interfere with her need to begin making decisions of her own.

So, he asked me if I would come to his house and buy her guitar. He gave me the money to make the purchase. I went there, bought the girl’s guitar from her and left.

Later, I returned it to the Dad.

Years went by, his daughter left home and sometimes he heard her reminisce about her old guitar. One year he wrapped it up and put it under the tree for Christmas. She was overjoyed to see it again.

Dads aren’t always the best listeners and can be stingy with the hugs and kisses and I love you’s, but we can be creative in finding our own ways to show how much we care.

Among all those ways, the nice thing my former co-worker did stands out.