Month: July 2017

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There once was a worm named Fred
Who got mad when I stepped on his head.
Fred started moanin’
“Hey, watch where you’re goin’.”
I’ll never forget what he said.

In my daily travels up and down the streets of my small city of Stratford, Ontario, in Canada, I sometimes see a wonderful classic car or truck go by, sometimes in the opposite direction. So I turn around at the first opportunity and give chase. Sometimes I catch up with the beauty and sometimes they get away. Yesterday, I struck it rich and when the owner of the 1937 Chevy pickup got out of his truck to get his mail, I asked him if I could photograph his vehicle. He was very co-operative and told me a few details about it. He had been searching for this very truck for a while when he found it in California where it had been in the same family since 1941. It is in mint condition and the owner explained it had an option package when new that included two windshield wipers (as opposed to only one on the driver’s side), two side mirrors and a radio. The windshield also slides open and locks to provide some natural air conditioning. I prefer classic cars that are true to the original in every way, including the paint job. If I see a truck such as this that has been “hotrodded”, with big fat tires and lowered suspension among other tricks, I don’t even give it a second look. – JH

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By Jim Hagarty
2012

I am just now drinking a bottle of lime pop. Tastes OK. I haven’t had one in many years.

I wonder how much lime is in it. The ingredients are listed according to the amount with the biggest amounts at the start, dwindling down to the smaller ones. No surprise, carbonated water forms the biggest part of this drink. Second, of course, is sugar/glucose-fructose. Third is citric acid. “Citric” might be lime, but I don’t know. Then comes “natural flavour.” I wonder what that is. Then modified corn starch. Sounds reasonable. After that, sodium benzoate. I’m guessing salt. Acacia gum? Then we leave the fairway and are into the rough: sucrose acetate isobutyrate, glycerol ester of wood rosin (there’s wood in my drink?), brominated vegetable oil, colour and guar gum. What is ester, what is brominated, what is guar?

Point is, nowhere in the ingredients is the word “lime” listed.

How can you make a lime drink without any actual lime being included?

But what would I know? Somewhere there is a lime pop tycoon tooling around his mansion, probably sucking back a drink of freshly squeezed real lime. Probably wouldn’t drink this pop on the threat of death.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

I met Tom about 30 years ago. For the rest of this column, I will refer to him as Tom (because that is his name.) I think at that first meeting, we were sitting in a coffee shop near my place, and he looked over with a big smile and said “Hi.” As it turns out, that is the one and only thing he has ever said to me that I have completely understood.

On that first evening, he talked and I listened and nodded. Every “conversation” we have had since that time, and we’ve had about a dozen of them, went the same way. Tom talked and I nodded. Because he seems to be a genius and I seem to not be a genius, it has been like a dog explaining barking to a cat. But maybe I am a good listener.

Tom knows all about two things very, very well: short wave radio and cars. I know very little about either one. For a long time, I thought a cattle littick converter was an instrument we used on the farm to turn a bull into not a bull. (That was fun.)

So he talked radio and he talked the inner workings of cars and I felt like a Martian trying to understand a St. Patrick’s Day parade. (Or maybe only a Martian could.) I am polite, so I never interrupted him. Also, nothing he has ever said to me interested me enough to want to know more about it so I asked few questions.

But here’s the funny thing.

I didn’t mind listening to Tom. It was almost like watching a nice sunset. You don’t understand it, so you just enjoy it. Maybe I didn’t absolutely love every one of these sessions, to be honest, but there was something about his unrelenting enthusiasm for his two main interests in life that was infectious.

However, I usually walked away from every conversation wondering if, in fact, I am actually a stupid human being. I am not convinced that I am not. Why can’t I get any of this stuff after all these years?

Tom and I haven’t run into each other in almost a decade. Today, I pulled into a parking lot right beside him. I had my window down, he had his down and we faced each other. Tom started talking to me as though we had spent two hours in the coffee shop last night and were just completing a subject we had started. He seemed to think in his mind that he was picking up exactly where we left off talking in our last meeting 10 years ago. And who knows? He is so brilliant, maybe he does remember exactly where we left off. As for me, I can’t remember whether or not I showered this morning.

So, for 15 minutes, Tom told me about cars and short wave radios and I understood exactly as much as I did at our first meeting 30 years ago and at every subsequent meeting. But it’s the darndest thing. When he pulled out of the parking lot, my day seemed a little brighter. I had said four words, he had said 4,000 but I would say I came out ahead. Not any smarter, just somehow a little happier.

I just hope I can remember where we left off when we next talk-listen 10 years from now or so. I am sure that he will and that I won’t. And that it won’t matter.

It won’t take me long to get up to speed because when we are together, I am travelling about two miles an hour. I guess I am kind of like a long-wave radio, if there is such a thing. You know, the kind of station you can hardly hear late at night because it’s being crowded out by all the biggest stations.

Today in my travels I came across this 1950 Dodge Special Deluxe in a Stratford park. It appears to be little changed from when it was new, both inside and out. The paint is not perfect and is showing a bit of wear but I prefer that to an old colour repainted in a colour that was not indigenous to the model year. It sported a few extra “deluxe” features, a bit of extra chrome here and there, and special lights front and back.

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