Lifetime Sentences

When I worked as an editor for small, community newspapers, I encountered some quirky people. They came in all shapes and sizes and some could be a bit ornery. Others were simply annoying.

At one paper, I used to deal with an older farmer who would come in periodically with a potato which he claimed bore the likeness of various famous people. One such spud I remember apparently looked for all the world like Richard Nixon. I couldn’t see it. The farmer thought I should take a picture and put it in the paper. I think maybe I did do that once and that just encouraged him. Eventually he’d be back with another potato which looked like another celebrity except that it didn’t.

When the potato angle was obviously going nowhere, he started on other peculiar things. My memory is shaky here but I think he had a squirrel which he had trained to do something. Anyway, this publicity hound spent a lot of time barking up the wrong tree and eventually went away – or ran out of amazing potatoes and squirrels.

One woman was relentless in pestering me for publicity for her cause and she drove me crazy. I used to speak to local groups now and then about getting publicity and I would tell them to please choose non-abrasive people to be the ones to approach newspaper editors as we are just folks too. Anyway, this woman couldn’t be satisfied no matter how much coverage I gave her. It was never the right kind or there was simply not enough of it.

One day at a gathering, I began chatting with a younger woman who was head of this particular cause and I saw my opportunity to do a bit of complaining. I spewed quite a torrent of frustration about the woman who had been hounding me and the young woman listened intently as I spoke. Then I said, “Who is she, anyway?” I didn’t mean what was her name because I already knew that but I wanted to know what her position with the organization was.

“She’s my mother,” said the young woman, with a slight grin. “Yeah, she can be a handful.”

Fifty other people in the room and I was there for 10 minutes. Who did I choose to unload to? The mother of the organization’s main person.

The older woman stopped contacting me after that which made me feel even worse than if she’d called me every day. Well, almost worse.

It’s a mystery to me how my foot often ends up in my mouth, more than the law of averages, I would think. That’s probably why, as the years went by, I became more careful about broadcasting my opinions in public settings, except, of course, for in the hundreds of editorials I wrote over time as that was my job. The worst that might happen in response to my babbling would be a nasty letter to the editor. I never minded receiving and reprinting most of those letters as it always seemed like the readers’ opinions provided some useful balance at whatever paper I was working for at the time.

And many of them probably came from mothers and fathers. Maybe even their daughters.

©2011 Jim Hagarty

Fifty years ago, or so, I was hockey mad. (Now with the NHL starting up a new team or two every year in towns with more than 50 people, with the occasional lockout, and multi-million dollar salaries, I’m just mad at hockey.)

But back when I was 10 years old, I would go to a small village not far from our farm and play hockey in a unique arena the community there made each year. It was located in a big old livery stable (for younger readers, a shed where horses were parked) across from a church. The floor had been cemented and boards had been put up around the surface to resemble a real rink. There was no ice-making equipment so everyone was completely dependent on the temperature to determine whether or not there would be skating and hockey.

For some reason, I wanted to be a goalie (fewer bodychecks that way), so I got stuck in one of the nets where I would stop pucks as best I could all afternoon. These pucks were coming off the sticks of guys my age and all the way up to almost twice my age, so some of them could really let them fly. But never fear, I was well equipped.

I wore a flimsy little white helmet (one of the first) with no face mask. I had a pair of shin pads, but nothing else. No hockey pants, and no jock. In retrospect, a jock might have been a nice thing to have but I think I escaped any serious groinal injuries. A worse problem were the skates we wore back then. Made of leather, the toes were completely soft. So when a speeding puck landed on the toe of the skate, a young boy, no matter how brave (or stupid) might be inclined to feel some pain. Feel it, but never show it.

The most important thing in the world was to show those older boys how tough I was. I think I also wore an old pair of leather hockey gloves. To recap: no mask, no jock, no hockey pants, no chest protector, no neck guard, no elbow pads, soft-toed skates. Yup, nothing could go wrong there. My life was probably, literally, on the line.

But those games might have been the most fun I’ve ever had. Certainly, the biggest thrill.

The rink isn’t made any more and I think the livery stable might have been torn down a few years ago. The kids play in fancy arenas now and the young goalies are suited with armor that the best pro goalies in the world would have drooled over in my day.

But today I was talking to some teenagers about their hockey experiences – and livery stable or not – they have just as much fun as I ever did. Or more. Best game in the world, wherever and however it’s played.

©2013 Jim Hagarty

In 1985, when I bought a nice bungalow on a residential street in the small Canadian city I live in today, I soon met the family who lived in the two-storey, red brick house behind me, a home that faced the city’s main street. One day, my neighbour told me that his home used to be a farmhouse long ago. He said our city ended a half a block west of him and everything east of that was farmland. I didn’t do any research into that claim; it seemed reasonable and I took his word for it.

Barry also told me that the farm’s dump – every farm had one – was located in what had become my backyard. So, what was a knucklehead like I am to do? I started telling people I live in a dump.

“What are you talking about?” would come the astonished reply. “You have a lovely home.”

I would then explain the farm story I related to you above, and things were put to rest.

It is 38 years since I bought the house. My neighbours sold the farmhouse and moved away years ago. But I have often wondered if maybe Barry was pulling my leg about the farm and the dump.

Last night, however, for probably the first time since I moved here, I took a close look at the latest property tax notice I receive every six months from the city. It provides a number of interesting facts but one in particular caught my eye. Unless I am reading it wrong, the notice shows that my property is designated “residential/farm.”

FARM????

FARM!!!!

How could it possibly be that after all these many decades, my little piece of heaven could still be designated as farmland?

The last day I lived on our farm outside my city was in 1979. Little did I know that six years later, I would move back onto a farm. I always told people I was raised on a farm but now I can say I still am a farm boy.

This raises some interesting possibilities. I am now thinking one of our sheds would make an ideal chicken coop. I could keep pigs in our bigger one. It has a concrete floor and would be easy to muck out. It would also be great to look out my kitchen window and watch a cow or two grazing away, maybe some geese. A horse. Most of all, I need to run right out and buy a tractor. Just a small one will do.

But, as I have often told our son and daughter, as we sit having supper around our table, the true story about how, many thousands of years ago, woolly mammoth lived in our neck of the woods and that some of them, no doubt, walked around on the ground below our feet.

Not sure about the possibility of this, but I would love to raise a couple of woolly mammoths in our backyard.

And if they happen to die, we could just bury them in our dump. But keep their horns for souvenirs, of course.

(P.S. I guess this also means I need to go out and buy some decent overalls and proper rubber boots, assuming true farmers still wear those things today.)

©2023 Jim Hagarty

If I have a failing, and I know you’re thinking that I can’t possibly have one, it is my ability to swear. I can lay out a perfectly layered litany of colourful nouns and adjectives that would make a high seas pirate blush.

This is not a skill I picked up at home. In fact, one of the worst encounters I ever had with my father occurred shortly after he heard me using the “f” word in a friend’s home when I was about 10 years old. And while I knew that little dandy pretty early in life, I can’t say I really picked up much from school either. The odd little phrase, for sure, but nothing serious.

No, my penchant for profanity was acquired while I was a part of the bridge construction industry. For some reason, people engaged in that worthy endeavour seem prone to use the occasional curse word or 50.

My real teachers were two short, recently immigrated Scottish carpenters who helped me build (I did have a bit of help) a bridge for a new expressway in a nearby big city in 1967 when I was 16. These two characters could not so much as comment on the weather without invoking a lot of the worst word combinations ever thrown together.

I was impressed. This early introduction to the most terrible items the English language has to offer was followed up with my Phd (piled higher and deeper) in swearing which I picked up at another construction job and two factories I toiled away in.

To this day, when I get frustrated, a torrent of colourful words springs immediately to my lips and sometimes that is inconvenient. With the nice weather this past week, I have been doing a lot of work outside and have let loose now and then when I’ve hit a finger with a hammer or a knee against a wheelbarrow handle. When I finish, I look around to see if any neighbours might have heard.

I don’t feel particularly bad about my nasty habit. Besides, it’s not my fault. If I could just catch up with those two little carpenters from Scotland I would let them have it in language that only they could truly appreciate.

©2011 Jim Hagarty

I gobble down 13 pills a day and have done for years. They are tasked with producing certain outcomes and I guess they do what they’re designed for because I have yet to be planted in the ground somewhere.

But lately, my body is in full rebellion. I gag when I try to take the big ones and if I don’t take them immediately after eating but try to ingest them between meals on an empty stomach, I get a bad case of acid reflux. Consequently, I have developed a phobia about taking them so I talked about it to my pharmacist today.

“Well we actually have something that will help you cope with all that,” she said, smiling. I started smiling too but stopped when she told me the remedy comes only in pill format.

I began to feel I was in the nursery rhyme about the old lady who swallowed a fly, then a bird to catch the fly, a cat to catch the bird, a dog to catch the cat, etc. That didn’t end well at all for her following her foolish decision to swallow a horse to catch a cow.

It’s like developing a headache after smashing your head with a hammer and a genius comes along with a different hammer and suggests hitting your skull with that one won’t hurt at all.

I once admitted to a friend that I am a worrier and he responded with some great advice.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked.

“It’s simple,” he replied. “Don’t worry!”

So I went home and worried about that.

©2015 Jim Hagarty

Over the seven decades I have been wandering around this planet, I have sometimes wondered if I have lived my life all wrong.

I wait as patiently as I can when the service in a shop or bank seems a bit slow and I even let people cut in in front of me without (much) complaint. I am not sure that this behaviour can be attributed to my being a nice guy, a Canadian, or a sucker. No matter, it seems I was raised this way. And it ain’t easy to get too far from your raisin’.

But if I had spent 70 years in Tennessee, I might be a different guy altogether.

I submit as my evidence, your honour, the story of a 53-year-old man in Knoxville, Tennessee, who got agitated because it was taking too long for him to get the food he ordered at a well-known pizza takeout. After being told he would have to wait a few minutes, the man left the store and returned with an AK-47 in his hands. He demanded his pizza immediately.

I hope you don’t judge me for betraying a character flaw of mine but sometimes I too have felt like doing something dramatic to get my fast food a little faster. As my hunger grows, I’ll admit, sometimes my morality shrinks.

But the world is still a good place, and so is Tennessee, a state I’ve been to and really enjoyed. Another person in the store who had already gotten her order handed the machine-gun toting man her pepperoni pizza and he fled the scene before police arrived but not before threatening several people at the restaurant, because when you’re brave, it pays to terrify people who aren’t carrying an AK-47.

One person commenting on this story said, “A pizza does not bake faster because you point a gun at it.” This is basic science and good information to always remember, I would suggest.

Now, our gun-toting ammobilly faces a $50,000 fine and many years in prison and needs $90,000 for bail, all because he did not want to wait an extra ten minutes for a $6 pizza.

I know I shouldn’t judge this poor fellow and the trap he has set for himself. It seems he wasn’t lucky, as I have been, to not be raised in a place where guns are worshipped and patience is scorned.

There have been times I wished I had more patience but not once have I ever wanted my very own machine gun.

©2021 Jim Hagarty

I hadn’t been this creeped out in a long, long time. Maybe since my days on the farm when I was upstairs in the barn at night, forking down hay for the cattle. There was a bad guy around every corner. Why they all decided to hang out in our barn I don’t know but they did.

I might not have been so worried except I knew they were carrying baseball bats, guns and maybe even a sword. A vivid imagination is a great thing unless you’re a boy alone at night in an old barn that was built in the 1800s.

Last week, over a 24-hour period, every time I put on my coat and went outside, before long, someone would tap me on the shoulder. I’d look around quickly but no one was ever there. The worst was when I was in the back yard in the dark, heading for the house. Tap, tap! Turn around. Nobody there. Was I losing my mind? This was so real, it had me really freaked out.

The next day, I put on my coat once more to go outside and got tapped again. This time I couldn’t stand it anymore. I whipped off my coat and turned it over to find that a cap had been accidentally velcroed to the hood on my coat and when I walked around, the cap swung here and there and hit me on the shoulder once in a while.

I hate that cap.

©2012 Jim Hagarty

I was just saying to my wife the other night that nowadays there is a museum for every darn thing but not a one that I have ever heard of to celebrate the male genitalia.

Why not, I wondered.

And right on cue comes the news that there is such a museum, in a small town in Iceland of all places. It is called the Phallological Museum and it displays everything from gigantic whale penises to speck-sized field mouse testicles and bull scrotums.

And recently, the museum put its first human member on display.

There is also part of a Sperm Whale penis that is as thick as a tree trunk and as tall as a man. The entire penis is not on display but if it was, it would be about five metres long, or about as big as my garage.

I probably will never make it to Iceland but it is tempting to go there just to see the 276 specimens from all of Iceland’s 46 mammals, along with a few foreign contributions. After all, it is the world’s biggest and only penis museum.

On display are the penises of whales, dolphins, walruses, redfish, goats, polar bears and rats, just to mention a few. The walls are decorated with massive dried penises, while several dried bull and reindeer organs have been transformed into whips and walking sticks.

Fifteen silver-coloured casts of different-sized human penises also stand in a glass case below a picture of Iceland’s 2008 silver medal-winning handball team, the members of which were willing models for the casts.

In fact, men from around the world are lining up to donate their penises to the museum when they are done with them.

Foreign visitors to Iceland are flocking to the museum. Uninformed about cultural norms and practices in Iceland as I am, I am intrigued to discover that local people go to the museum as well. A nice Friday night, after work activity to give the mind a rest.

There is just no easy way to get myself out of this story so I guess I will just have to get up from the computer and run away.

So many terrible puns to be written, so little time. And even less courage.

©2016 Jim Hagarty

In 1985 I bought a little red two-seater sportscar. At least I thought it was a sportscar. It had hideaway lights and six speakers in its small cabin, two in each headrest. And a five-speed transmission. The engine was in the back and there was barely enough storage room for a sandwich and a pop.

It was only much later that I found out the Pontiac Fiero was built on a Pontiac Acadian chassis and was not really a Ferrari in disguise. And it wasn’t very expensive. But it went like hell and I felt like I was flying an airplane when I was behind the wheel.

The Fiero was a poor man’s Ferrari and being a poor man, it was perfect for me. It was a real head-turner when it first came out in 1984. Its body was made of plastic and at the auto shows that introduced it, young women in bikinis would remove the outer sections completely from the car and reassemble them in about 15 minutes. So, I thought, if I get one of these cars, I’ll get a young woman in a bikini. My plan worked and ironically, I had to get rid of the Fiero when that young woman and I started having children.

My fantasy is to one day own that car again and while I know I won’t get another young woman in a bikini, it might make me feel spry again to cruise around in it.

Shortly after I got the car, I went on a trip to Ireland and left the car at a car park near the airport in Toronto. A friend told me to mark down the mileage and check it when I picked it up because sometimes the guys would take nice cars for a ride when their owners were away. So I did. When I returned, I found that there were 26 more kilometres on the car than when I left.

And walking around the car to check it out, I saw something truly horrible. It had been parked close to a woven-wire fence which bordered on another parking lot. In that lot were a bunch of yellow parking blocks near the fence and they had been spray painted when I was away. The overspray covered the back of my sportscar. My red little number was now red with dozens of little yellow spots all over the back end. Not a nice way to come back from a great trip.

So, I went into the building to straighten up with the car park people and I found an unfortunate young man who bore the brunt of my very legitimate complaints. I was not a happy camper. Paul listened and listened and finally he said, “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.” He then went through a door right behind him and closed it. I waited and waited and waited. Finally, another employee walked by and I hailed him over. When I told him I was waiting for Paul, he said, “Oh Paul’s gone home for the day. He was off at 3.”

Now I resembled Yosemite Sam going off on a rant against Bugs Bunny. Finally, a middle-aged man came over and listened to me sympathetically, took the details of my address, insurance, etc., and said they would look after the paint damage.

You know the rest of the story. I never heard from him – or Paul – again. Instead I spent hours removing the little dots of yellow from the rear of my sportscar, one painful splatter at a time. I

t was a sad day when I drove away from the car dealer in a used, four-door Chevy Cavalier which we bought to replace the two-seater, as I looked back longingly at my sportscar sitting forlornly on the lot. I have good memories of that little buggy despite the odd hiccup. Mechanically, it was a bit of a nightmare but it was also a whole lot of dream come true.

©2011Jim Hagarty

I have the greatest ideas and it is a constant disappointment to me that I don’t get enough credit for them. 

Take a look at my latest one and see if you don’t agree some Hall of Fame shouldn’t be knocking on my door with a stretch limo parked in my driveway. 

I have been entertaining people with my voice, my guitar and my songs for well over 50 years. I’ve recorded some of my originals, heard them played on the radio and for a few years, cashed some very small royalty cheques. And while I’ve enjoyed most of my infrequent appearances on stages here and there, I realized early on that I was an introvert trying to do an extrovert’s job and fame and fortune would better be left to others who don’t haul around the baggage of stage fright with them. An apt comparison might be that of a man afraid of heights taking on a job as a skydiving instructor. 

But over the years, I have noticed the growing success of tribute artists who, either as a single act or members of a band, have thrilled audiences with their bang-on impersonations of their heroes. I’ve even caught a couple of these acts in concert recreating The Beatles and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and was blown away both times. In fact, I wondered if each band might have been better than the original. 

So, only someone as naturally gifted as I am, in all humility, could come up with this. I am working on developing the world’s first Jim Hagarty Tribute Act. One difference from all the rest is that the entertainer performing the tribute will be the actual human the act inspired. In other words, I will appear on stage as Jim Hagarty. 

I can’t find any flaws in my plan so far. And I can already hear the chatter among the blown-away audience members. 

“OMG he looks just like Jim Hagarty. Bald head and everything.” 

“WOW! He plays an identical guitar. Left-handed, like Hagarty.” 

“His voice is so close to Hagarty’s, it’s amazing.” 

“He forgets the same words to the same songs that Hagarty forgets.” 

“He tells the same old stories between songs exactly the way Hagarty tells them.” 

“How does he manage to get his face to break out in the same beads of sweat while playing, just like Hagarty’s does?” 

“I hate to say it, but I think this guy is better than the original.” 

I have high hopes for the Jim Hagarty Tribute Act. And if the artist’s performances earn him anything, anything at all, my bet is his money haul will be far greater than the slim paydays the original performer ever enjoyed. 

Now all I have left to do is to perfect Jim Hagarty’s signature so the Tribute Act artist will be able to sign authentic autographs after the shows. 

A very important part of the tribute business. 

©2023 Jim Hagarty