‘Another Fine Mess You’ve Gotten Me Into’

By Jim Hagarty

Stan and Ollie’s Variety and Gas Bar in Bryanston, near London, Ontario, Canada, was not named for comic actors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as I had presumed when I drove by it one day years ago.

Instead, it was named for Stan and Ollie Girodat, the couple who owned it. I dropped in one night and asked the woman behind the counter the origin of the name and she told me. However, she had trouble remembering how to spell Girodat so she yelled out to a room at the back, “Hey Stan! How do you spell your last name?”

“With great difficulty,” he hollered back and came out to see who wanted to know. Apparently, I wasn’t the first to point out how the couple’s names match the given names of Laurel and Hardy. But he still got a chuckle whenever someone enquired about it.

And, also unlike Laurel and Hardy, the Girodats’ business was not a comedy of errors but a thriving rural store.

Author: Jim Hagarty

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.