I spotted this 1983 Chrysler LeBaron in a parking lot in Stratford on the weekend. In one of the photos, the owner is shown with her car which had been a gift to her mother from her father in 1983. The current owner uses it a lot in summer and often has the convertible top down. One unique feature of the car is the simulated wood panelling on the sides.
By Jim Hagarty
2017
I am not sure who is the sharpest tool in the toolbox. I know it isn’t me. The other day I complained to my family about a fitness centre located next door to my house. I noticed that the members of the centre started gathering for their morning’s workout shortly after 6 a.m., which seemed to me a ridiculous hour, coming as it does exactly one hour after 5 a.m.
“Why do they even go there?” I asked at the supper table. “They all look in great shape, none of them seem to need it.” I thought my reasoning was airtight. My daughter replied, “They look that way because they go to the fitness centre, Dad.” Well, that thought hadn’t occurred to me.
On the other hand, I am not the dumbest guy on the planet. And maybe this guy isn’t either but he’s in the running for the title. The Florida man to whom I refer leaned in to kiss a rattlesnake the other day. The eastern diamondback snake, I guess, was resistant to the man’s romantic offer of a kiss on the lips and it bit the rattlesnake whisperer on the tongue. The man had to be air lifted to hospital.
I feel some sympathy for the man as no one appears to have gotten him to slow down long enough to advise him in the matter. I was fortunate to be raised better, and I say that without bragging. I do not know how many times my father told me not to kiss a ratttesnake on the lips. I’m not aware if there is anywhere else on a rattlesnake to safely plant a harmless buss but my Dad’s warnings sort of put me off rattlesnakes, at least as objects of potential romance.
I have not lived an exciting life but I also have picked up not even one rattlesnake bite along the way. Swallowed a few flying bugs by accident, but that’s about it.
Looking Outward
As we grow from boy to man
Two avenues await:
We can face the world with love
Or align ourselves with hate.
It seems so hard in many ways
To connect ourselves with others,
But only if we turn aside
The lessons from our mothers.
For in their entire manner lies
The roadmap for our travels.
Care for others more than us,
If not, our life unravels.
By logic, putting others first
Would mean we’d come in last.
But life will show us otherwise
As our troubles mount up fast.
The world tells us to always seek
The best for number one
And ignore any good
Our better natures might have done.
But what we fail to recognize
Is meeting another’s need
Diverts us from our tendencies
For cruelty and greed.
It simply is not possible
To take and never give.
To try it is to just exist
And never really live.
My friend and fellow blogger Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com) captured this downey woodpecker enjoying a suet feed at Al’s home near Bayfield, in Ontario, Canada today.
By Jim Hagarty
2015
The real estate market in Indonesia must be getting pretty tough these days. A woman put her house up for sale and promised to marry the man who bought it. It’s more wholesome than it sounds. She had lots of offers but accepted one from a widower with two kids. She is a widow with two children as well. They clicked. Goes to show true love will find a way.
By Jim Hagarty
On Monday I saw an old blue car in a parking lot next to my house in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. I walked over and asked the car’s owner, who was still sitting inside, if I could take a few photos for my blog. He gave permission and told me a bit about his vehicle. It is a 1951 Dodge Kingsway, built in Canada in the same year I was born. The owner has considered painting it, but it has its original paint so he is reluctant to change it, even though it is a little sketchy in places. The interior is in great shape and the original AM radio is still there in the dash and still works.
By Jim Hagarty
2013
There are moments in life when you see the totally unexpected. Things you haven’t seen before. Mountain goats jumping from rock to rock on a steep hill in Ireland as though they were cats. A falcon in a tree along a lonely road near Sudbury. A bobcat streaking across the road ahead of you in the Rockies of Alberta. And the other day, as I drove along the main street of my town, I saw a very unusual car in my rear-view mirror. It pulled into another lane and as it went by me, I saw that it was a Maserati. Probably worth as much as my house. Wow!
Stratford photographer Bill Chan captured this stunning photo of a Great Blue Heron this morning at the Avon River in Stratford. For more about Bill’s work including contact information, please check out the Corner Store.
By Jim Hagarty
2014
I sing and play guitar and sometimes I get asked why I don’t perform in public more often. The short answer is that the offers have dried up since Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson died. But there is a longer answer and if you can stand to sit through it, here it is.
When I agree to play somewhere other than the elaborate stage I have set up in my bedroom where the acoustics are awesome and the imaginary audience is all-adoring, the body that would need to accompany me on such a gig raises a major objection.
“You drag me out to that concert, Jim, and I will SEE YOU IN HELL.”
Rare has been the occasion when Body did not make good on its promise. And the sequence of steps by which my general and alarming decline is made manifest are predictable and awful. To begin with, though I left my teenage years behind a full 44 years ago, Body is still somehow able to work up a good pimple just in time for a show. As it did this week in the days leading up to a few songs I played at an event on Saturday. At the beginning of the week, I started to feel a pain on the side of my nose and I thought to myself, “No way. It couldn’t be.” But it could be and was. When I looked in the mirror on Saturday morning, there it was in all its glory. Blossomed and white like a beautiful puffball mushroom on the edge of a forest on a nice summer’s day. My first “whitehead” since last time I played.
When you’re 63 and still able to work up a pimple that would cause a baby to fill its Pampers if he saw it, you are probably owed some sort of rebate from God, but there it was. So you heat up a sewing pin and lance it and hope it doesn’t ooze too badly all day. (I am an expert at this, having lanced dozens of them before first dates in high school and beyond.) My cat has a pimple behind his ear. Why couldn’t I just have one there for once?
Then comes the shaving. I can shave my face a thousand times and draw nary a drop of blood but on the day of a public performance, Marie Antoinette and I have a lot in common, though I don’t manage to lose my head over it. Saturday morning, fully aware of what was almost certain to happen, I took out my “safety” razor and started scraping away. Soon, one gusher appeared and then another beside it. Two nice and lovely slices on my cheek that at least, with the blood they emitted, distracted somewhat from the pimple on my nose, about two inches away.
Finally, at the concert, shaking like a popcorn maker, and about an hour before I was to appear, guitar in hand, came another phase in this fun-filled adventure. My bowels, which, strangely, had not been heard from much all week, decided that now would be a perfect time to cripple with pain the expanse of muscle and skin enclosing them. I rushed to the, thankfully unoccupied, stall in the washroom. Emerging from there, feeling better, my bladder soon announced that from then until the end of the show, it would be filling up and in need of emptying faster than a farmer’s bathtub on Saturday night.
Minutes before showtime, my hands began to sweat. The palms of a person’s hands are not supposed to sweat, but here they were, moistening up like a mama’s eyes at her firstborn child’s piano recital.
“And now we would like to welcome to the stage, Jim Hagarty.”
Guitar in slippery hand, feet shuffling to stool on stage, vibrating butt on seat. Fingers begin to shake faster than Elvis’s hips. Audience seated, big smiles on faces. If these people were teenage girls, they’d be screaming their heads off about now. And then, saving its best for last, Body sends out Brain to finish me off. Three seconds before I open my mouth, Brain completely erases the memory from my hard drive. Song is gone. Lyrics gone. Tune gone. Trembling hands unable to form chords on guitar as the memory of all that is gone too.
And yet, somehow, a few minutes later, I hear applause.
Maybe I imagined it. My imagination rarely stops working.
During my performance on Saturday, I said between songs, I haven’t done this in 30 years but I believe that every 30 years a fella should get up and sing a song. And I do believe that.
Catch my next show when I do my encore at 93. Should be fun to see what Body has in store for me by then.
In Passing
Whenever someone
That I’ve known
Disappears from view,
I regret our
Recent conversations
Were so few.
And wish I had not
Let the bonds
Of friendship
Slip away.
I wonder if someone
Will think of me
That way some day.
And when I see
An old friend’s
Photo in the news,
The memory of our
Time together
Leaves me with the blues.
It seemed inevitable
That we would drift apart,
And still the separation
Leaves an ache
Upon the heart.
Someone wiser
Than I am
Has quite a
Different view.
She’s grateful for
The time she had
With everyone
She knew.
And she insists
In looking not
So much at what is gone,
But what they had
And how her
Precious memories
Linger on.
Maybe I’ll learn to
Be that way,
In time,
But I don’t know.
I doubt I ever will be
Very good at
Letting go.
