Month: January 2018

By Jim Hagarty
2012

My neighbour was out polishing his Corvette today so I told him he was doing a good job.

“Everybody’s got to have a toy, Jim,” he said. “Life is short.”

I agreed with him and said I wondered what my toy would be. My laptop? My guitar?

“Whatever happened to your sports car?” he asked. I told him we had to trade it in on a more practical car when the family came along. “I saw one just like it in Sebringville the other day,” I said. “Maybe I’ll get one again some day.”

“Don’t wait too long,” said my neighbour. “Life is short.” I kind of wished he’d quit saying that. By the way, he has two Corvettes. And he isn’t rich.

He reminds of a musician friend of mine who at one point had 12 high-quality guitars, one of them worth $5,000. He said he had no use for RRSPs and GICs and any other savings plans. He’d rather have his savings sitting there in his studio where he can see them and polish them and play them. And when the rainy day comes, he can sell a guitar or any number of them.

He’s never commented to me on how short life is but I have a feeling he’s just itching to. He better not put off telling me that because, you know, life is short and all.

By Jim Hagarty
1989

I guess it’s inevitable that once in a while, people’s surnames will relate in some amusing way to their occupations. In fact, I’ve noticed a lot of such cases lately so I’ve started keeping track. Here’s my list so far.

John Field is a farm management specialist who I hear is outstanding in his (don’t embarrass me by making me say it). Garry Lean is an organic farmer who promotes safer meat products, but that’s a thin connection, isn’t it? When John Tory first realized what his name was, he could see no future for himself except as the Conservative Party organizer he is. And Dale Willows climbed to the top of the Guelph-based environmental group Tree Watch and when asked if he’d like to be president of the organization, replied, “I wood.” And he is.

James Coyne was Bank of Canada governor years ago until he was flipped out of the job. George Pond, of Simcoe, is a naturalist and as I understand it, quite a deep man. I wish him well. Raleigh Buckmaster, of Iowa, is a deer rancher. And Joe Pushcart just sort of shoved his way into the job of junkman in Plainsville, Connecticut.

The Quebec cabinet minister who resigned over the province’s French-only sign law last year is named Richard French, or should that be Richard Francois? Barry Player is a Winnipeg guitar player, or at least he picks away at it. And Anne London is a reporter with The London Free Press. Rumor has it she’s worked at other big city newspapers under, various assumed names including Anne Hamilton, Anne Windsor and Anne Toronto. A rising Star.

Mary Beth Peacock is with the Ontario Humane Society so be kind to her and don’t ruffle her feathers and Peggy Green is the leader of a 4-H landscaping club so thumbs up to her too. Andre Bureau is a chief federal bureaucrat with the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission but good luck trying to telecommunicate with him.

For some reason, a lot of doctors have names bearing a bit of irony in light of their profession although Drs. Illman, Deadman, Aikenhead, Payne and Death never suffered for business because of their monikers, as far as I know. Either has the Trench funeral home in Listowel or the Box funeral home in Parkhill. A friend of mine regularly hires Flood Plumbing from New Hamburg and is happy with the work they do. Ann Bald does a good hairdressing business in Sebringville, I’ve heard.

Kitchener lawyers Stewart Dollar and Richard Buck both know how to make a living. Dr. W.E. Nurse, a Kitchener obstetrician, is both a doctor and a Nurse so he’s a real team player though confusion sometimes ensues whenever Dr. Nurse is paged over the public address system in the hospital.

Car shot? Call Schott Auto Service in Waterloo or in that same city, try Wheeler Motors. Another dealer.

Next Easter, get your blooming flowers at the Bloomingdale Garden Centre and for cards to mark the occasion, contact Bunny Sicard, public relations co-ordinator for Hallmark greeting cards, Easter promotions.

Whatever your request, she’ll hop right to it.

By Jim Hagarty
2007

I’ve always had a pretty good memory (as far as I can recall) but I have come to recognize that I do have the odd blind spot. Sort of like that page that the cat ate out of the novel: You can try to piece things together, but you’ll never really have the whole story ever again.

The main memory block that I now know is a part of my mental capacity involves medical people – family doctors, pharmacists, optometrists, dermatologists, blood-specimen takers, etc. When I am in the presence of any of these good people, that little part of my brain that should be set to record while the information is coming at me, almost always just turns completely off, all by itself. Like the VCR shutting down prematurely because the video you were trying to record onto while you were away has run out of tape.

When our children were small, on occasion, I would be assigned to take them to the doctor. Interrogated later as to what was the specific message given regarding the particular ailment and possible cure by the medical staff, I would almost always have to plead complete ignorance. It was as though I really hadn’t taken them to the doctor at all but instead, hiked off to the playground for some sliding and swinging. Inevitably, a call would have to be placed to various nurses to try to nail down the specifics of medicines, suggested routines, etc. If it was a drug store we’d been at, the pharmacist would receive a friendly call (not from me).

Was that one pill every eight hours, or eight pills every hour?
I don’t know why this is so, except that I am pretty sure I tense up when in the presence of anyone in medical-type frocks and fatigues. These people, it would appear, hold within their hands the power of my life and death and aren’t to be messed with.

In contrast, as a reporter, I can usually come away from an interview with a pretty complete set of written – and mental – notes. But in most of those cases, I am not talking to someone who next week might be massaging my heart to try to get it going again or sewing my head back together after I fall off my roof. In most newspaper circumstances, I am more in the driver’s seat.

So it was on Monday that once again, I went to the doctor and once again, drew a blank practically before I left the examination room. He detailed several instructions and I even asked him to repeat some of them. By the time I walked the 15 feet from there to the nurses’ station, most of it was gone.

“How’d your doctor’s appointment go,” came the question on my arrival home.

“Good,” I replied. “He told me what I had to do if I wanted to live a long life.”

“Well,” she said. “What do you have to do?”

“I’m not quite sure,” I said. Something about Vitamin D and Omega 3 and skim milk and vegetables.

It’s a bit worrying to not be able to remember the prescription for a long life. That seems like that would be fairly important information to have. Life’s too short as it is, in fact, not to be able to recall those steps.

I’ve resisted the lure of those modern digital recording devices for about as long as I can, I suppose. I have one – I just never get around to listening to what I’ve recorded. I always forget to.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

It seems to me toddlers are walking earlier and earlier all the time these days. I think I heard someone say recently that their kid was walking at nine months.

Our kids were both 14 months when they took their first steps. I was a late bloomer, coming in at the ripe old age of 21 months. I was also a chubby kid and one day after church my Dad carried me in the house and sort of tossed me on the kitchen floor and said, “I’m getting tired of carrying this guy around.” Realizing my free ride was coming to an end, I guess, I apparently got up and walked away.

But I know why it took me so long to get moving. No doubt I was afraid of falling down and getting hurt. I didn’t like getting hurt then and don’t like it now.

It amazes me how quickly babies go from not even being able to roll over onto their sides or tummies, to crawling, to pulling themselves upright on furniture and then walking. From walking to running and they never look back.

But I have heard it said there isn’t much benefit in pushing a kid to walk early. In fact, apparently, crawling forms an important part of their development. I must be very well developed as I did a heck of a lot of crawling in my day. And I rediscovered my talent in university when I found it came in handy for getting home from the pubs.

By Jim Hagarty
2007

The world is running out of heroes, but maybe it’s still too early to count the human race out.

In New York there lives a man whose recent accomplishment shows that there isn’t much we can’t achieve if we put our mind, and in this case, our mouth into it. This week Joey Chestnut became the world’s hot-dog eating champion, knocking off six-time title holder Takeru Kobayashi and my hat is off to him. Chestnut, competing in the annual Fourth of July competition, broke his own world record by inhaling 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes – a staggering one every 10.9 seconds – before a screaming crowd in Coney Island.

“If I needed to eat another one right now, I could,” the 23-year-old Californian said after receiving the mustard yellow belt emblematic of hot-dog eating supremacy, stated a Canadian Press story. Kobayashi, the Japanese eating machine, stayed with Chestnut frank-for-frank until the very end of the competition. He finished with 63 HDBs – hot dogs and buns – eaten in his best performance ever.

Almost as good as the event was the newspaper story describing it: “The two gustatory gladiators quickly distanced themselves from the rest of the 17 competitors, processing more beef than a slaughterhouse within the first few minutes. The two had each downed 60 hot dogs with 60 seconds to go when Chestnut, the veins on his forehead extended, put away the final franks to end Kobayashi’s reign.”

You know, we all come to our rightful place in life after a while and Joey Chestnut, obviously, has found his mission as a speedy consumer of tube steaks. There are worse fates.

And there are worse foods to be ingested in a hurry. The record for eating live cockroaches, for example, is held by Ken Edwards of Derbyshire, England. In 2001 he ate 36 hissing Madagascar roaches in one minute. Chris Hendrix holds the world record for eating crawfish. He ate 331 of them in 12 minutes. Richard LeFevre holds the world record for eating SPAM by eating six pounds in 12 minutes. Sonya Thomas ate 38 lobsters in 12 minutes. She also holds the record for hard boiled eggs, and pork and beans (8.4 pounds in 2 minutes 47 seconds) and many others. She weighs only 105 pounds. The world eating competition for cow brains is held by our hungry friend up top, Takeru Kobayashi, who swallowed 17.7 pounds in 15 minutes.

The world record for butter eating is seven quarter-pound sticks of salted butter in five minutes by Donald Lerman. The world record for eating cabbage is held by Charles Hardy. He ate six pounds, nine ounces in nine minutes. The world record for eating corn on the cob is 33.5 ears in 12 minutes, held by Cookie Jarvis. The world record for eating mayonnaise is held by Oleg Zhornitskiy. He ate four 32-ounce bowls in eight minutes.

I can happily live out the rest of my life taking a pass on seeing how fast I can gobble up cockroaches and cows brains, but to further the development of homo sapiens as a species, there is a record involving one particular sandwich for which I would be willing to compete. And that is the grilled cheese, a few of which I’ve put away in my life, especially in my bachelor years. There are annual contests in the U.S. with prizes nearing $30,000. The current world record belongs to Sonya Thomas (the mini-me mentioned above), who devoured 25 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes in a contest in 2005.

Stand back. I’m sure I can do better than that. Without even trying.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

It is with no small irony that I find myself crying over spilled milk several times a week. I have not developed the knack for properly cutting open milk bags to put in the jug and hence, milk dribbles all over when I first pour some.

My reaction is always the same – outsized outrage accompanied by threats of physical harm to the inventor of the plastic milk bag. Even as I lose it, I am aware of the irony that I am disobeying the time-worn injunction and crying over milk that has spilled.

My wife’s reaction to each of my meltdowns is always the same. She comes with a dishcloth to clean up the mess, lets out a long sigh, and says in a sing-songy voice, “It’s not the end of the world.”

This difference in approach to tiny nuisances probably explains why were are into our third decade of marriage. If we were both of exactly the same temperament, we probably would have burned down somebody’s house by now.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

One of my earliest memories is from my family’s encounter with Hurricane Hazel in 1954 when I was three years old. It was a horrific storm that took 1,000 lives in Haiti and the U.S., as well as 81 lives in Ontario, most of them in Toronto and area.

Of course, I didn’t know any of that. All I remember is my Mom driving in our laneway in our green ’53 Ford and coming to a stop in front of our house and my Dad rushing out of the basement to take her and her kids to shelter in the stone cellar of our two-storey farm home. Along with watching him running frantically out to get us, I remember seeing the storm door on the front door of our house plastered open against the brick wall. As well, the huge wooden barn door on the upper storey of the barn, which I had never seen open and probably never saw open again, was also slammed open against the front wall of the barn.

That is all I remember but I had my eyes opened when a college journalism student of mine in the ’90s did a feature story on the hurricane and its effects on Toronto. I had no idea how really bad this storm was and reading about it now on Wikipedia confirms its ferocity. Houses in Toronto were lifted off their foundation and carried away, one ending up a mile from its original location. And some of the dead were found hanging in the branches of trees.

We talk about climate change and no doubt it is real but this was 58 years ago. People then must have been wondering what the heck was happening, especially in Ontario where these sorts of things just didn’t occur. And with all its fury, the storm was dying out by the time it reached here.

You might have heard the mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion, referred to as Hurricane Hazel. This is where she got the name. Those who tangle with her do so at their peril.

By Jim Hagarty
1991

Ever since service stations began stuffing my mailbox full of gas coupons, I haven’t been able to keep gas in my car.

I’ve got coupons for $1 off and some for even more. I’ve gotten them for Christmas wrapping paper and plastic drinking glasses. Also wine glasses. And stamps. I’ve even cashed in “scratch and win” coupons, where, after I’ve filled up, the service station attendant has scraped away the grey covering from a little box on a card and told me how much I’ve saved.

Saving and cashing in these coupons have become my little way of battling high fuel prices.

But they’ve also resulted in my being stranded several times lately by the side of the road, not a drop of gas – expensive or cheap – in my tank.

I explain. Most coupons are only good on fill-ups of 25 litres or more and some can only be redeemed after buying at least 30 litres of gas. For most cars, this is no problem. But my little red car only holds about 30.5 litres which does not give me a wide margin of error when I’m trying to calculate when I can fill up and still redeem my coupons. So, every time I pull into a service station now, I sit nervously, coupon clutched in my hand, staring out my window as the gas pump meter clicks: 21 litres, 22, 23, 23.5 … Will I make 25 or 30 or whatever I need before the attendant stops the pump?

Complicating matters are certain gas stations where the pumps were built on a hill. If I don’t watch myself, and park the wrong way at one of these service centres – and I know where most of them are now – the front of my car will face down with the rear end up, allowing my tank to hold only 22 litres or even less before the pump says the car’s full and quits, leaving me sitting with an uncashed gas coupon.

Therefore, to take advantage of these great gas savings and to collect my rightful share of towels, glasses, wrapping paper and stamps, I have to drive around all week with my car on empty and fill up only at service stations where the bays are perfectly level.

After a while, a person gets pretty good at judging important things like this. Riding along with me, a passenger might ask me if I don’t think we’ll soon run out of gas but I know that, even though my fuel indicator is on the third line below EMPTY, I still have enough for a few more kilometres.

“Heck, I’ve driven to London and back on less than that,” I’ve been heard to laugh, bravely.

In fact, I recently left Toronto with the indicator just above E. By Kitchener, it was below E. At Shakespeare, it was WAY BELOW E. But, I made it home.

The next morning, however, in my own driveway, the car wouldn’t start. It was out of gas.

And I’ve miscalculated several times lately, twice while driving on Lorne Avenue at the south end of the city.

And anyone who can run out of gas in Stratford, where gas stations abound – there are three within two blocks of my home – should win a prize.

A really great prize.

A book of gas coupons would be nice.

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In not too many years from now, the next generations will be asking, “Grandpa, what is a gas station?”