Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2017

When I met Edward, I was the editor of a small weekly newspaper in my hometown. I had somehow convinced the publisher of the paper that we needed to add a sports reporter to our incredibly large newsroom staff of two – a news reporter and me. Sports were everything in our town, I argued, and if we wanted to compete with the daily in our midst, we needed sports coverage. I could have probably had all of us driving in our own personal Cadillacs if I had told him it would help us compete with the daily.

I interviewed several people for the sports reporter’s job including Edward. I don’t remember anything about the other candidates but I do recall that Edward did not stand out as the obvious first choice. He was not an athlete and had never played sports. But he lived and breathed hockey. He could barely skate and had never played the game, but he was almost obsessed with it.

At one point, I asked Edward what his longterm goal might be. He replied that he would like to work at The Hockey News, a glossy magazine out of Toronto that covered all things hockey, with a focus on the National Hockey League. I liked his ambition but I didn’t want to crush his dreams by sharing with him the realistic appraisal that the road from the Stratford Gazette to The Hockey News would be a long and torturous one.

Responding to his enthusiasm, I hired Edward. And he did a great job. He was funny, personable and willing to learn everything a two-person newsroom could pass onto him.

A little over a year later, Edward arrived at work one morning with his notice. He was leaving for a job in Toronto with the online edition of The Hockey News. Ten years ago, online versions of magazines were not much more than an afterthought, without the status they have today. And to be hired to plug in stories and statistics on a website was not the Brass Ring of Journalism. Still, it was The Hockey News.

We said goodbye to Edward as he moved to the big city.

A week ago, I was in a book store, looking for gift ideas for my son, who is a hockey fanatic. I picked up a copy of The Hockey News magazine and flipped to an inside page near the front of the publication to look through the lineup of contributors, a little habit I picked up years ago.

My jaw dropped at the first name that jumped out at me:

Managing Editor: Edward Fraser.

He made it.

Two things:

1. Dreams can come true.

2. Success depends on knowing exactly what you want. As a friend says, when we take a step towards Fate, Fate takes a step towards us.

Edward’s success had nothing to do with my hiring him for a sports reporter’s job at a small newspaper. Had we never met, I believe, he would be managing editor at The Hockey News today.

When the Universe demands an outcome, nothing can stand in its way.

By Jim Hagarty
2007

When I went away to university in 1969, I felt lost in a sea of suave young men from the city, many of whom drove sports cars and for whom the flow of funds from home was so strong they never entertained the possibility that this wonderful and steady bankroll would ever cease to arrive. On the odd occasion when their benefactors were late coming through with the dollars, it was not unheard of for one of these city slickers to sell a beautiful stereo system to get together the pocket change for a weekend in the pub. They knew another stereo would not be that hard to come by.

Being one of seven kids who was raised on a farm, this was quite a shock to think that there were people in the world so wealthy and privileged that, far from meaning everything to them, money meant almost nothing. They had known nothing in their lives but never-ending plenty and they could pretty much count on this good fortune continuing throughout the rest of their time on Earth.

I met several young men and women back then about whom I would read in the papers for years later as they climbed the various ladders of corporate, governmental and even political success and the strange thing was, they knew full well at 18 years of age that all this success awaited them in their lives. So they partied like crazy while they could, to get it out of their system before they settled down.

In the midst of this crowd, I felt understandably insecure. I had never owned a stereo nor lived in a house which had one so I couldn’t have pawned it off if I’d wanted to. And I certainly couldn’t seem to look down the years and see a life of privilege awaiting me.

I didn’t begrudge these guys any of this, really, but it did make me question what I was doing in their midst and whether a university education would be wasted on me. I think now that our need for food, air, shelter and love is sometimes overshadowed by another necessity we humans seem to struggle with at times: No one wants to feel insignificant.

Surrounded by guys who spent more on their shoes than I did on my first car ($35), it was hard to get noticed. Hard, that is, till the day I gave up any notion of being one of them and began to accept the facts of my own life. And so, in my small room at my college residence, I began to regale my fellow students with stories from my past, which, while totally unremarkable if shared with anyone in my hometown, were a big hit around guys who grew up with a fireplace in their bedroom at home and a car that was made in Italy. No embellishment was ever needed and I can honestly say I never resorted to that.

To tell them you went to a one-room schoolhouse where all the students in the eight elementary grades took their instruction in the same room from the same teacher was to be thought a major fabricator of colossal untruths. To say you had the same teacher for every subject for all eight grades. That your father and your grandmother has gone to the same school when they were kids. To recall that there was no running water in the school and that the most sought-after honour was to be chosen by the teacher just before recesses and lunch to take a big pail out to the well in the yard and pump it full of cool water, then hoist the pail onto a shelf at the back of the room from which all the students would take a drink using the same tin ladle. To describe how you had toilets and toilet seats located in the “cloakrooms” but they were simply placed over a deep hole in the ground a la outhouse was to be looked at like a kid who’d been raised in the bush by wolves.

Somehow, however, that did not seem to be an undesirable outcome.

The stories, it seems, were endless. From using various methods for sending groundhogs off to their reward to using huge, heavy clippers to lop the horns off cattle. From driving a car on the road at the age of 13 to sitting all afternoon in a cherry tree, trying to beat the birds to the fruit. I suppose I was, as I’ve heard myself described, a snob in reverse. Using my local yokel shtick to make the city guys’ lives look a little dull by comparison.

I don’t know if any of them wished they could have traded all those times they spent in their Ferraris for a few golden hours on a John Deere tractor, but there always seemed to be someone who wanted to hear another story.

By Jim Hagarty
1988

Last year around this time, my weekly column and I won a couple of awards in a newspaper competition. I got to go to a banquet, sit at the head table and amidst much applause, walk to the podium and accept two nice plaques and $100. I was suitably proud of myself and have pretty well lived off that glory for the past 365 days.

If the experience taught me nothing else, it did make me very skilled at working my newly won status as an award-winning writer into many of my conversations, even into discussions where you wouldn’t necessarily realize, at first, that it would fit.

“Well the biggest problem I see with free trade,” you might overhear me saying during a conversation on the subject, “is how clothing costs could be affected. Goodness knows, they’re high enough now. Why, I just couldn’t believe the price of the tuxedo I rented to go to the newspaper awards banquet last year …”

See what I mean? (Another example: “Pass the gravy, please. You know, this meal reminds me of the great food at last year’s newspaper awards banquet.”)

Anyway, those two chunks of wood with the brass nameplates attached kind of made me an elder statesman around the newsroom in the eyes of some of my fellow journalists who hadn’t yet won such accolades for their work. And like all other esteemed mentors from down through the ages, I gave my younger comrades the full benefit of my experience and all the encouragement I could.

“You just have to be patient and work hard,” I’d say.

“Never set out to win an award. Just do your best and if what you’ve done is worthy, it will be recognized sooner or later. True genius rarely goes unnoticed.”

Little speeches like this rolled off my tongue so easily, I amazed even myself, let alone those of my compatriots who had the good fortune to hear me.

“Yes sir,” I’d say. “It might have only taken me a few hours to write those prize columns. But it took me a lifetime to live them.”

So, when this year’s awards competition was approaching, I proved to be an eternal flame of inspiration and support for my fellow workers who weren’t sure they had what it takes to win.

“What have you got to lose?” I asked photographer Scott, who wondered if his entry was good enough. “You never know about these things. You just might win.”

“But your stuff’s so good,” he said.

“Yes, but who knows?” I replied, in all humility. “It’s certainly possible I might not win anything at all this year.”

“I doubt that,” said Scott.

Reporter Mark was similarly shy about his work, but I told him to be proud of his efforts and enter the competition. If he didn’t win an award, at least he’d build his character by having tried for one. There can be no shame in missing the brass ring. Only in never having reached for it.

So, we all sent in our entries, sat back and waited for the results.

This week, the winners were announced. Scott won two awards for a photograph of a little girl with her violin at a music festival. Mark, an award for a feature on a mission of mercy he accompanied to Haiti. They both won in a category I won last year.

I shared their joy at the announcement and then asked my boss what it was I’d won.

“Nothing,” he said.

Since Monday, Scott and Mark have been going on about their good luck as if they were the first persons to ever win awards. They got their pictures in the paper and have been taking swipes at me at every opportunity.

“Sorry you didn’t win,” they both said.

“Just what do you mean by that?” I asked.

Personally, I think people put too much stock in awards. They’re nice to have won, perhaps, but yesterday’s homerun doesn’t win today’s ball game. And the smiles on the faces of a writer’s readers are a more meaningful reward than any wooden shield he could hang up on a wall.

Besides, I’m still sure there’s been some sort of a mistake.

A terrible mistake.

I remember Christmas on the farm
The laughter and the fun.
In the old brick house my grandpa built
All done up bright and warm.
And the love that beat in all our hearts
And broadened all our smiles.
If I could I would go back again
And visit for a while.

But Christmas now in our fine home
Is just as good as then
And I’ll remember Christmas now
As well as way back when.

Our Mom made the best food anywhere
And Dad did all the chores.
And if God could answer this one prayer
I’d be with them once more.
The card games that went on and on
The stories without end,
The presents underneath the tree
And skating with my friends.

But Christmas now in our fine home
Is just as good as then
And I’ll remember Christmas now
As well as way back when.

• Jim Hagarty 2015

I can’t get into my community mailbox in the winter. It is always frozen. I have no idea why. My box is No. 12. JH

By Jim Hagarty
2017

I am not happy. I cannot afford to be. I am doomed to misery because I am unable to come up with $15.99 plus tax to buy the magazine I saw today on a rack at Wal-Mart. On the cover, in blazing big letters, was this announcement: The Secret to Being Happy. I always knew there was a secret and furthermore, I knew that everyone in my life was conspiring to keep me from finding out what the secret was. I don’t know why they would do that but they obviously did for some terrible reason. That really bugs the hell out of me. For a mere $15.99 plus tax, I could finally discover this secret. But I have in my wallet, only $5. Maybe if I gave a Wal-Mart clerk my $5, she would let me look inside the magazine for a few minutes and at least score a smidgen of happiness. In smaller print on the magazine cover is the declaration that new scientific findings are leading the way to happiness. I have no idea what those findings are and I guess I never will. They say money can’t buy happiness but apparently, $15.99 plus tax will do the trick. Oh well. Guess I’ll just stay miserable. Doesn’t seem as though I have much choice.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

A Christmas Story is my all time favourite Christmas movie.

The actor who plays the lead character Ralphie in A Christmas Story also appears in Will Ferrell’s Christmas classic Elf. He was one of Bob Newhart’s elves at the North Pole. You might be able to find a short video or photo on the Internet which points out which one he is. And he appears as an airport ticket clerk in another Christmas movie, Four Christmases.

Funny that Peter Billingsley would be in three Christmas classics. He’s also been in a number of other movies but mostly he works as a producer/director.

Two years ago my son Chris and I visited the house in Cleveland where the exteriors of A Christmas Story were shot. (Most of the rest of the movie, including the interiors, were filmed in Canada). The movie narrator never reveals in what city Ralphie Parker and his family lived but there is a hint given when he refers to their street as Cleveland Street. That is not the actual name of the real street.

The mailbox where Ralphie got his secret decoder from is still there although the door to it is gone. There is a shed in the backyard but I don’t think it is the one that all the bad guys were crawling on that Ralphie was shooting heroically with his pellet gun, although it is in the same location of the yard.

A house directly across the street has been converted to A Christmas Story museum and Ralphie’s little brother Randy was scheduled to be there the next day but we had to move on. As we were driving away, one of the houses on the street had a full-sized leg lamp in the window. Very cool.

The school scenes were shot at an old school in Welland, Ontario, which has now been turned into a family violence shelter. I don’t know where the house interior scenes were shot – maybe Toronto – but someone has bought the house in Cleveland and completely rebuilt the insides to match the movie set interiors of the house. There is a full-size leg lamp in the front window, as there was in the movie.

As you can tell, my son and I are big fans. We watch it together every Christmas eve while my wife and daughter usually watch something else. They like the movie but don’t share the same extreme passion.

By Jim Hagarty
1987

The type of stress I hate the most is the kind that sneaks up on you when you’re feeling good. I can handle the variety that hangs around all day and mixes in with all your other worries so that you hardly notice it. After a while, the fear of cancer, car accidents, bankruptcy, unemployment, crime, nuclear annihilation and the possibility that Oral Roberts may be right become almost like old friends and you can actually learn to nod off to sleep now and then with all this happening in your head. But stress that swoops down out of nowhere and attacks like a bird yanking fish out of the water really bugs me.

Take Saturday, for instance. It was a fairly nice day and all was well with the world. The neighbour kids were over at my place asking me, “Whatcha doin’?” “Why?” and “Can I do dat?” Grumbles my cat was running around putting her head into every opening where a cat’s head shouldn’t be. And all around me the neighbourhood was abuzz with cars being washed, bikes being ridden and lawns being cut.

I’d had a shower and my first coffee of the day and I don’t mind saying I was feeling unusually content. Things were under control. Bills mostly paid. House fairly clean. New fast-food restaurant opened up the day before right behind my place. What more could a man ask for?

In retrospect, I know now that this is where I should have hit the pause button. But the trouble with feeling good is it makes you want to do things. Things you weren’t necessarily designed to do. Like planting flowers. Or ironing your shirts. Or changing a bulb in a car with hideaway headlights.

I’ve been buying and changing headlights in cars for the past 20 years. Takes 10 minutes, tops, and then only if you stop for a five-minute break. But I hadn’t yet replaced either one of the pop-up types in my latest vehicle. I never will again.

The last I saw of my serenity, it was sneaking off down the driveway along with my patience and common sense about the same time I knelt before the front of the car, screwdriver and new headlight in hand. The first step in machinery repair is turn every screw you see. Eventually, something has to come apart. It’s always worked in the past but this time it didn’t.

I finally fumbled in the glove box for the owner’s manual and on pages 24 to 26 there were a series of illustrations and 19 detailed steps to follow when changing a headlight. Get a load of this: “Separate the I-cavity black connector at the blue wire … remove the Torx screws from the upper corners of the black plastic outer bezel … pull the retaining spring away from the bottom corner of the headlight assembly … reinstall the bezel … torque to 8 N.m (6 ft. lbs.) ….”

But I really lost it at Step 12 when I read this statement concerning the first two screws I’d twisted away at before I got out the manual. It said: “DO NOT remove or adjust these screws.” Now, if this instruction was so important that they’d capitalized the do not, don’t you think they’d have put a little warning label right above the screws themselves? And don’t you think it would have been Step 1 and not Step 12? Well, DON’T YOU?

I’ve decided not to take you through a curse-by-curse description of what ensued from there. I really don’t want to relive it. But an hour after I started this little job, every one of my tools and half the neighbour’s were strewn across the driveway. Every blood cell in my body had been summoned to begin emergency repair of my bruised, skinless knuckles and my neighbours learned that I know words I haven’t even got around to using in this column yet.

Edited for print, this is, in part, what I had to say at one point: “I can’t believe it. They can’t be serious. How could anyone design something this stupid? I have never seen anything so dumb in my whole life. Grumbles, you little rodent, get out of that box! I will never, ever fix anything on this car again. Ever. What a ridiculous setup. Why couldn’t they think of something simpler? Why? That’s all I want to know. Grumbles, get out of that bag, you little pest. Go on. Get out of there. I said, GET OUT OF THERE! Boy this makes me mad. Why can’t things ever just run smoothly? How could such a small car be such a big pain in the neck?”

Anyway, you get the idea. In time, the headlight got installed, the tools were put away and Grumbles took refuge in the rafters in my garage. Good move on her part. A few hours later, I calmed down.

But, when I drove down the highway Saturday night, my right headlight gave me a real good view of the tops of the trees along the side of the road but the pavement right ahead of the car lay in darkness.

I think there should be meetings where we do-it-yourselfers could share our woes and find the strength to give up our compulsion to fix things. Then, before we fell into the tinkering trap, we could call a buddy and get talked down.

Until then, we’ll have to continue to suffer alone, misunderstood by the mass of society who find changing a light bulb as easy as – changing a light bulb.