Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
1994

To those of you who think that newspapers are only full of bad news, I would direct your attention to the recent article which detailed the efforts by scientists to reduce the methane gas emanating from the millions of cows on the planet.

Yes, you felt despair over war, homelessness, poverty, crime and terrorism but you were only seeing half the picture. Stack up those things against the work being done to lessen the bad air coming out of various openings on cattle and I think you’ll agree the picture doesn’t look so dim.

In a research barn in Ottawa, runs the Canadian Press news report, a cow named Betsy is being feverishly experimented on with the aim of cutting down on her contributions to the greenhouse gases causing environmental damage to our planet. On her left side has been implanted a plastic porthole through which scientists are able to work on her main stomach, a body part that regularly churns out 600 litres of gas a day. By genetically altering the feed she eats, they’re hoping to make her digestive system work better. Plus it’s cool to be able to look through a window and see the inside of a cow.

The bad news is, it’s going to take at least five more years to get this system working, so the burps and flatulence from the world’s cattle herds will probably have warmed up this planet to an average skin-blistering 45-degrees Celsius by then and none of us will care how smelly the cow’s belly can be.

Of course, as usual, the scientists haven’t bothered to place a quick call to a certain rural editor in Stratford, Ontario, who spent his formative years working in large wooden enclosures where dozens of gas-producing cattle were kept and who often wondered about ways of making them less windy (the cows, that is, not the barns.) Many years before scientists started tossing around the idea that diet had something to do with it, the editor in question had already figured that out.

“It’s all that bran,” he realized one day after dumping yet another load of grain in their feeder. With no way to measure exactly, the young farmer nevertheless estimated each cattle beast was chomping down the equivalent of about 60 bran muffins a day not to mention the 25 large cans of corn niblets and, if a forkful of hay can be compared to a salad, about 10 or 12 caesars before sunrise. You eat all that, day and see how many parties you get invited to.

This problem is compounded by the fact that, after the cow has chomped down all this stuff, she then finds a nice quiet place under a tree to sit for the next six hours, regurgitating it all back up from her stomach into her mouth and chewing it all over again.

The editor says, save the $100 million in tax (or whatever the research is costing), cut back on the muffins to one a day and institute the following menu for all cows everywhere:

Breakfast: cheese pancakes.
Lunch: cheese soufflé.
Supper: macaroni and cheese.
Bedtime snack: biscuits and cheese.

And when the cow flatus dilemma is finally solved, as it surely will be, let us then turn our attention to even bigger problems, like getting birds to stop dropping their droppings and fish to hold their water in the water.

The rural editor, if asked, has ideas for remedying those environmental hazards, too.

By Jim Hagarty
2013

I have the world’s oldest dumbphone. Seriously. The first words ever spoken into it were, “Watson, come here. I need you.” Consequently, I have never been able to access voice mail on the darned thing. And lately, people have been leaving me voice messages. I would like to hear them.

Two months ago, I phoned Virgin Mobile and asked how I could do that, because the phone was not co-operating. A polite woman told me how to do it and I thanked her. Except her instructions didn’t work. So today, I decided to phone Virgin and get this fixed once and for all. So I did. Within the space of half an hour, I made five phone calls to the company and spoke to five different people. They all gave me the same instructions which I tried and which didn’t work.

It was kind of funny because each person who helped me was so confident that it would work. Finally, I reached a very helpful woman – support person number 6 – who seemed to really know the answer. She said she would reprogram my phone from her end and she led me through about five steps on the way to achieving that. She even stayed on the line while I tried the newly programmed phone but still no messages.

Let me look up the manual for your phone, she said. And the line went quiet as she did that. A couple of minutes later, I got the good old dial tone. She hung up on me. I know that she did because she asked for my cellphone number and I gave it to her. If she had been cut off accidentally, she would have called me back. I was thinking of making a joke about Virgin and getting screwed but I won’t do that (too late?). It was a Friday afternoon and she wanted to go home. I understand.

But my father always said the only way to punish a business is to not do business with them so it might be time to take a little fatherly advice.

The yard sale went well, except for the “early birds” who flew into my garage 20 minutes before the event was to begin and rifled through a whole bunch of things that weren’t for sale, asking me impatiently how much I wanted for each not-for-sale item. But they left a dollar behind for a tiny picture frame so I came close to forgiving them.

I’ve done some hard labour in my days for some very low wages but this was by far the toughest $62 I ever have earned. Between cleaning things up, putting pricetags on them, hauling everything out to the driveway and then sitting in the cold for five hours haggling with strangers who wanted our stuff and being slightly wounded by those who didn’t, it was a tough go. Still, before morning’s end, half our surplus inventory of goods was riding off down the street in somebody else’s trunk so we declared ourselves the winners.

That is, until one transaction that occurred late in the event.

For 15 years, my wife and I have had three white plastic lawnchairs that we inherited and that I had gradually come to loathe. They attracted dirt like kids in a playground and it seemed we were constantly scrubbing them down. Since then, we’ve accumulated various, more trendy green chairs that, while probably just as dirty, don’t seem to be, so we happily sit in them.

“I’ll sure be glad to see the last of these,” I muttered to my wife as I got them ready to sell.

Except that nobody wanted them. The yard shoppers didn’t even glance at them. However, with 10 minutes left in the sale, my next-door neighbour wandered over, looked at the chairs, and asked me what we wanted for them.

“Fifty cents each,” I replied, hopefully.

Strangely, the look on my neighbour’s face was one of someone who has just found a Stradivarius violin selling for $50 in a small shop in Italy. He could hardly believe his luck. He gave me two dollars, and when I tried to return his change, he said, “Keep it!” That’s the sort of thing Stradivarius discoverers say. It was at this moment I began to suspect that I’d let go of something I shouldn’t have, or, at the least, had sold it too cheaply.

And I was soon to also realize that, far from being out of my sight forever, the chairs would now taunt me every summer from the back sundeck of my neighbour’s home where he happily set them up three minutes after buying them.

The next day, he had a party, and I watched as people made good use of the chairs we couldn’t stand and suddenly I realized that the biggest thing I wanted in my life at that moment was to have my lawnchairs back. And I started to wonder how I could possibly arrange to make that happen. I am ashamed to report that a midnight theft occurred to me as an option.

In the two weeks since then, on my nightly walks around town, I have seen white lawnchairs, identical to ours, on every second porch I pass. These white plastic lawnchairs, it seems, are the only ones a homeowner with any sense would be caught dead in.

And when I get back from my walks, I sometimes sit on a green plastic chair, which suddenly has the appeal of an old tree stump, and look over at the nice white chairs on my neighbour’s deck. They shine in the sunlight, glow in the moonlight – true patio treasures that I let slip through my fingers.

All for the sake of a buck and a half.

And yes, those are the sad strains of a forlorn Stradivarius we are both hearing the background right now.

©2004 Jim Hagarty

So Barb hid behind a wall and stuck her leg out as I ran by. The arsenic in the stew had no effect on me so she has moved on to Plan B. I fell like a mighty oak against a wooden chair. As I lay on the floor reading myself the Last Rites, our dog Toby rushed to the scene and knew exactly what to do. He stuck his tongue down my left ear and oddly, it seemed to help. Toby’s Wax Removal Service is available for rental. Just Google it.

Barb finally set down the life insurance policy and then came over to assess the damage. I was bleeding from several wounds on my head. One of them was new having been inflicted by the chair. Barb said I might need staples to close the gash. She went to the shed and came back with the roof staple gun. I protested as I don’t want blood on my staple gun.

So Barb decided to treat it. She ran upstairs and came back with a bottle of cayenne pepper which she sprinkled liberally into the cut. I asked for another helping of her stew. She then fetched some turpentine, windshield washer fluid, WD-40 and rubbing alcohol and when I wouldn’t drink the mixture, she poured it all over my head. More stew, I screamed. Toby moved on to my right ear.

Barb sent our daughter Sarah to the shed for some duct tape. She came back with a roll of white Gorilla tape. They use that tape to make repairs on the space shuttle. Toby is my only friend. I would kiss him but he has a bad case of wax breath.

Help me!

©2015 Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
2004

Howwwwdeeee!

It’s just great that Canada has its own flourishing country music industry. And why shouldn’t we? Hearts get broken in Moose Jaw (real place) and Fredericton just as hard and as often as they do in Memphis, I reckon. (Isn’t it strange how, as soon as you start talkin’ about country music, the word “reckon” just starts rollin’ off your tongue, along with “in” where “ing” oughta be? Not to mention oughta.)

Heck, when my friends and I were teenagers in a small town in southern Ontario, our entire lives were country songs from one dateless weekend to the next. Hank Williams might have been so lonesome he could cry, but some of us would have gladly handed over all our Beatles records and jars of pimple cream to be merely half as lonesome as he was.

So there is not the least thing wrong with musicians from north of the border wailing and yelping and yodelling into microphones by way of stage, screen and studio to share their pain with the rest of the world. Where I do have a problem, however, with all this Canadian country crooning is with the manner in which it’s being done by some of the artists. Why, I want to know, does a performer raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, have to sing, talk and look like he was born on the outskirts of Skunk’s Hollow. Tennessee? If Saskatooners have an accent and a look all their own (which they do — I’ve been there), why not use that? Why does a country singer from Hamilton, Ontario, have to wear a 10-gallon hat that weighs more than a leather saddle? And mourn that ever since his baby left him, he’s been thankin’ and drankin’ way too much? Or tell a TV interviewer: “Well, ah figure mah next recurd oughta bay a bit morr purrsnul.”

And does it make a heap (there I go again; it can’t be helped, on this subject) of sense (give me a break; I could have used lick) for a boy from downtown Kitchener-Waterloo (population 140,000) to be singing about all his experiences as a cowboy when the nearest he’s come to a ranch hand’s woes was when the fly busted out of his denims at the high-school dance? And what about well-adjusted, happily married men and women from towns from Edson, Alberta, to Summerside, Prince Edward Island, singing about the pain of seeing their lover in the arms of another. (How is it all these country singers are always walking in on all this lovemaking in action? Have they never heard of knocking?)

It’s a fad, Jim, you say. Didn’t you have long hair after the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, sideburns when Elvis was popular, a beard during the hippie years? Give them a break. They’re just hitchin’ rides on a trend or two.

You’re right, you’re right. I forgive them all. Darn it all, I like listening to most of them. But I just think genius lies in hearing the voices inside and giving expression to them and the voices inside a kid from Gander, Newfoundland, wouldn’t have an Alabama accent. Imagine the sounds we could make if we had the courage to be ourselves instead of pale imitations of some Texas cowpuncher or Memphis good ole boy.

On the other hand, as long as stage actors born in Moose Jaw speak with accents as British as Prince Charles and Winnipeg-born “Irish” singers sound like they spent 30 years locked up in a Dublin pub, our country singers can be forgiven the odd “howdy” and the now and then “ya’ll”.

Keep it up, keep it up. It’s awl rat with may!!!

Mawmaw!

(Brought to you by the words heck, yodelling, heap, lick, hitchin’, darn, and ya’ll.)

By Jim Hagarty
2018

I can’t exactly say why, but I like people who say, “Alrighty.” Especially young people. They don’t have to say, “Alrighty, then,” as Jim Carrey did in his Pet Detective comedies. A short “Alrighty” does me just fine.

I can’t think of any explanation for why “Alrighty” gives me a good feeling. It just does. Tonight, in a restaurant, the waitress said the magic word when my wife and I gave her our order. And there is a clerk in a variety store I go to regularly who also always says it when she is tallying up my bill. Both these people are young and I think this is connected to why I like them using what I suppose might be considered part of an old person’s lingo. An old farmer, for example.

“Alrighty, boys! That hay ain’t gonna bale itself. Let’s get going!”

So the kids are changing so much these days. We hear it all the time. Or maybe they aren’t.

And that’s alrighty with this old farmer.

By Jim Hagarty
2005

Conservative politicians worldwide have been on a war against taxes for decades. And I am so glad they have been, because their alternative, a world without taxation, would be wonderful.

What would a world with no taxes look like?

Pretty darned good, wouldn’t you think?

Once a year, when our streets need paving, able-bodied men and women would be required – as they were in the pioneer days of rural Canada – to give the municipality several days of labour to get the job done. The exercise and fresh air and break from our jobs would be good for us all.

Similarly, in winter, when the snow needs plowing, we would all have to give a couple of days of our time to clear the sidewalks, streets and overloaded rooftops. Bring it on!

Many things would change, but we’d adapt in a hurry and the increase in the freedom we would have to spend our “hard-earned” dollars exactly how we would like to would more than compensate for a few inconveniences.

For example, our fire department would have to be made up completely of volunteers, as in the old days, but even they would need firefighting equipment. And even in a small city such as the one I live in, we might insist on professional firefighters. Therefore, when our houses catch fire, we would have the freedom of paying for the firefighting service by cheque, cash, credit card or debit card. No payment and the trucks would keep on moving back to the station, but that is a small price to pay to get the state out of our bedrooms, even those bedrooms that might be on fire.

Same thing with police. Before they’d show up to catch those thugs who were stealing our cars, we’d have to read them out our credit card number over the phone. Or get used to walking. But that’s okay. None of us do enough walking these days.

Or maybe we wouldn’t even bother having police because, darn it, they need equipment and cars and secretaries and headquarters and jail cells and on and on. More hard-earned money just a-leavin’ on a jet plane.

So, we could go back to some sort of neighbourhood justice system. Saturday night vigilante groups on our streets to make sure the wild ones don’t get a little too wild. Or we could hire security guards to watch our homes and private investigators to look into the break and enters. One wise guy per street could be our judge and we could mete out punishments then and there.

I think we’ve all secretly longed to be a punishment meter outer. Great anger-release mechanism.

Health care, smelth care, says I. Whatever happened to people taking care of their own? Yes, almost every family in the old days lost at least one child to illnesses easily preventable today but how many of our hard-earned dollars should we be expected to pay so that all parents can keep their families intact? Yes, the odd pandemic wiped out millions here and there, but people in the old days had a lot more freedom than we do today. Shorter lives, maybe, tougher lives, yes, indeed, but freedom? Priceless.

And as Canada goes off to war when the U.S. president needs a boost in the polls and starts his next invasion, where will the soldiers come from, with no taxes to pay for them?

Why, conscription, of course.

Yes, all taxes are bad.

Even the millions of tax dollars, I suppose, that are paying for the Conservative party’s election campaign to get their leader into the Canadian prime minister’s chair. Or maybe not.

Maybe that tax money is money well spent.