Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

We once had the sweetest old sow.
I smile when I think of her now.
She had many litters.
Used no babysitters.
But was helped by a friendly young cow.

There comes a time in a father’s life
When he suddenly doesn’t belong.
For so many years he is Daddy, then Dad,
Then one day, his children are gone.

No more bedtime routines or horsey back rides,
No more pushes on swings in the park.
No more TV cartoons and short story books.
No more holding their hands in the dark.

Yes, this is the fate of a daddy in love,
To let go of his children some day.
He knew from the start that the time would arrive.
But it always seemed so far away.

The only thing that a father can do
When his children are no longer there.
Is cry like his heart has been broken for good,
Till it seems almost too much to bear.

It’s the way of the world and everyone says
You’ll get used to it all someday soon.
And maybe they’re right, they seem so convinced.
But my heart strings are all out of tune.

• Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
1992

Taped to my computer keyboard here at the office is a small, inspiring cartoon of TV’s lovable, stumbly-bum dad, Homer Simpson, holding a nice, big, round, chocolate-covered doughnut and declaring that, “Doughnuts are a man’s best friend.”

Some writers might opt for a little more lofty saying to tape to their computers – something from Shakespeare, perhaps. Or a few lines from a Robbie Burns poem.

But these days, for me, Homer Simpson and his love of doughnuts suit my mood perfectly. He’s an ordinary guy with ordinary tastes. Maybe he can’t afford a villa on the Riviera for the winter but he can afford a doughnut. The simple pleasures, after all, are still the best.

And yet, while Homer Simpson’s idea of man’s best friend and mine are similar, I am a little more expansive in my assessment of what constitutes the closest pal a human can have. To me, doughnut SHOPS are a man’s best friend.

Next to my own home which, thankfully, is the one place on earth I usually want to be most of all, doughnut shops have for years been my favourite places to hang out. It is not that I am addicted so much to coffee and doughnuts – at home, I rarely have either. It’s just that doughnut shops take care of so many needs, other than hunger and thirst, and they do it without emptying my bank account.

A favourite topic of conversation these days for people who live, work and do business in my city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada, is how on earth all the doughnut shops now located here will ever survive. At last count, there are nine operating and soon to be operating in the city, a veritable explosion in a place which, until just a few years ago, made do with only two. And it’s possible one or two more may locate here in the near future. As well, coffee shops are springing up in the small towns in the area and even right out in the country.

I listen to and take part in these discussions – after all, this is one of my favourite subjects – and I’ve noticed that many people use the wrong approach to solving the question of whether or not these businesses can survive the competition. Many of them ask, “How much coffee can a city of 35,000 people drink?”, before they conclude we can’t drink all the coffee that nine coffee shops can brew. While they could well be right and only time will tell, I think the recent explosion of doughnut shops in this area doesn’t have as much to do with our need for coffee as our need for companionship and comfort.

To me, today’s doughnut shops are yesterday’s pubs. Where hotels once dotted the city and country landscapes – the town of Mitchell, for example, had as many as nine hotels at one time and now has only one – their fortunes have been in decline for years as people have turned away from drinking and driving and even from drinking itself.

But people still need places where they can gather – like they do in pubs – to shoot the breeze, wait for their car to be repaired, console a friend, take a first date after a movie, sort out their troubles, escape from their wife/husband/kids, stop for a stretch part way through a trip, wait out a recession or a snowstorm and read the Sunday paper when it’s raining outside.

Unless the people of Stratford suddenly don’t need to do these things any more, I think most of our doughnut shops, many of them open 24 hours a day, will hang in there for a while. Besides, there’s more than a bit of Homer Simpson in most of us. We have to take our comfort where we can find it.

And as for the coffee shops being man’s best friend, I think sometimes they’re even better than a best friend. How many best friends would be glad to see you show up at 4 o’clock in the morning?

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

We once had a bull named Thor.
He had a tooth that was sore.
We called up the vet.
We’re still waiting yet.
He’s had dealings with Thor before.

By Jim Hagarty
Here are a series of remarkable photos of a day in the home life of squirrels, taken last year by Canadian blogger Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com) who is a remarkable photographer, as these photos show.

By Jim Hagarty
1989

This week, Canadian Lawyer magazine published a list of the best and worst judges across the country and editorial writers have been lining up to condemn the legal profession ever since. Judges, the newspapers say, are in the business of dispensing justice. They shouldn’t be involved in popularity contests to win the approval of lawyers.

But maybe we’ve been a little too quick to jump at the throats of the lawyers. Because, after all, they’re about to get as good as they’ve given. Next week’s issue of The Average Joe magazine, coincidentally, will carry an article about the best and worst lawyers in the country. Following is a sample of some the ones the magazine says are the worst.

Mr. Bob N. Weeve
The lawyer who said his client didn’t mean to toss his best friend over Niagara Falls, arguing the accused had been momentarily overcome by an attack of Rushing River Fever, an obscure disease which grips its victims with a terrible urge to throw other human beings into large bodies of water.

Ms. Sue De Panzoffum
The lawyer who acknowledged that, yes, her client did confess to stealing 47 television sets during a one-night wild spree of break-ins, but who went on to argue that when he was a boy, his parents abused him by denying him his own television in his bedroom. He finally snapped and was simply acting out the juvenile anger brought about by this childhood deprivation and which had been festering inside him all these years.

Ms. Bea Leevit-Iffucan
The lawyer who said that, incredible as it may seem, her client was indeed sleepwalking when he got up in the morning, went downtown and bought a gun, hijacked a bus, shot up the town, took four hostages, burned down city hall, stole a car and smashed into the mayor’s house, finally waking up in the cruiser on the way to the police station and saying, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s going on here?”

Mr. I. Deltok
The lawyer who said that, while it was certainly a rotten shame that Junior had blasted Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Sis, Rover and his poor Aunt Bessie out of their beds in the middle of the night, to punish the unfortunate, misunderstood lad for his one, momentary mistake might rob him forever of the feelings of dignity and self-worth which he would need in his struggle to carve out a useful life for himself.

Mr. Bill E. Dinghart
The lawyer who said it was pretty evident to him that most of the people with whom young Brutus Bilgewater had had anything to do with in the past five years before he blew up the courthouse had been guilty of name discrimination. Studies show, the lawyer said, that less than one-tenth of one percent of all jobs in Canada are held by people named Brutus and an astonishing 99.9 per cent of all jobs are held by people of other names. Quotas are needed, he said, so that by the year 2000, every employer with more than 10 employees has at least one Brutus on staff.

On the bright side, the best lawyer award went to Ms. Dawn Toourth, the solicitor who told her clients to quit their scrappin’, forget about suing each other into the poorhouse and go home and grow up.

At least that’s what she told me when I wanted to sue my neighbour who I saw peeing behind his shed in broad daylight, thereby robbing me of my ability to enjoy my property and probably contaminating the groundwater in the area.

I really thought $50 million might ease the distress.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A dog came in our yard one day.
He wasn’t wanted but chose to stay.
He bugged our poor Mam
Who named the pooch Scram.
Yelling “Scram!” never chased him away.