Month: December 2017

By Jim Hagarty
1986

After the Second World War, there began a wave of emigration from Europe of people looking for a better life in Canada. But for a while, it was not really much of an improvement on the life they had left behind. Some were sorry they came. Others stuck it out, hoping for better days. In most cases, better days came and success stories abound today of people from among those emigrants who have done extremely well in this New World country.

But they did not do it on their own and I think it’s fair to say that had Canadians not opened their hearts to refugees from the war-torn European continent, a great many of whom were being forced to live under an entirely new and strange political system, their chances for success would not have been so great.

Farmers in Perth County in Ontario where I grew up did their share to help in the years from 1945 to 1950. Perhaps some of them felt this was one way of contributing to the war effort since in many cases, they had been exempted from active military duty because they were needed on the land. In any case, European men went to work as hired hands on the Perth farms that sponsored them – one-year, church-arranged contracts were drawn up between immigrant and farmer – and thereby they got their new start here.

One of the things my father always seemed to feel best about in his life was the help he and my mother were able to be to the several immigrant men they hired on at their farm in Logan Township. He always spoke of them with great fondness and respect and though he had never experienced anything in his life comparable to the horrors of war and the uncertainty of leaving a homeland, he seemed to be able to feel their pain. He often told of the day he walked out on the front porch after dinner to find his hired man sitting on the steps, face buried in his hands, sobbing for his family back home.

One man my father hired was from Poland. He picked him up at the train station in Stratford and by the time they reached Bornholm, a half hour drive away, though neither man could speak the other’s language, they were communicating by one means or another. Tony Bogdan worked hard alongside my dad on the farm and remained a lifelong friend after he left. His name was often mentioned in our house.

Another man, Elmer Samaruutel, was from Estonia and he too became more than just a short-term labourer on our farm. From time to time in the years that followed his stay with us – in 1949 he left for a job in Toronto where he still lives today – he would drop in to renew his friendship with my parents.

And every year after they moved on, we would get Christmas cards from Tony and Elmer. They did not forget their good fortune in coming to a county where most hands were outstretched in goodwill. Some hands weren’t – some bosses looked on their hired men as sources of cheap help and little else. My father once rescued an immigrant worker from such a hard-hearted farmer and took him home to work on our farm. The farmer had refused to pay the man, making up some reason he thought justified his not giving the man his wages. Dad had an argument with the ignorant farmer then told the immigrant to get his things, he was coming with him.

Through the early ’50s, my parents hired other immigrants, some from the Netherlands. They too became more than farm labourers. Most were friends, some were like family. All were grateful. For my parents, their reward was watching these men go on to own successful farms of their own, to raise their own families and to take their places in the affairs of the community. In a twist of fate, after my parents sold their farm and moved to town, one of those immigrants bought their land and returned to the farmhouse where he had lived as a teenager after coming from Holland.

I’m not sure why Dad was so interested in helping new citizens. He was not a world traveller with a traveller’s view of the world. He was not a do-gooder or meddler looking for pats on the back or rewards in heaven. Maybe he just needed the help. Or maybe he sensed it hadn’t been easy either for our family when they came here from Ireland in the midst of the Famine a hundred years earlier. In any case, a million dollars could never have brought him more pleasure than the yearly Christmas cards from two of the men who remembered.

And as it turned out, Perth County needed every immigrant it took in back then. The county really got more than it gave. They and their sons and daughters are now the lifeblood of our agriculture and our rural communities.

Funny how that works.

By Jim Hagarty
2011

A woman down the street from me has an identical twin sister who often visits. I can tell them apart, mostly because one of them wears glasses and has a different hairstyle than the other. They are the most wonderful people and friendly as can be but I have to say, they are just daring everybody to get them mixed up. Yesterday I walked by their place to discover that they both drive identical SUVs. And I mean identical. Model, year, colour, everything. Twins are often known for wearing matching clothing, but driving the same cars?

By Jim Hagarty
2012

The definition of irony.

I worked for a company for six years. Every January the boss called me into the office, told me I was doing a good job and gave me a raise. I never once asked for a raise but never turned one down either.

One day, the boss called me into the office and offered me a buyout I could not refuse. In fact, I was told I could not refuse it.

When I asked why I was being let go, this was the answer: “You are making too much money.”

By Jim Hagarty
2012

You may not know that I am an amateur inventor but I have been dreaming up contraptions all my adult life and now I have come up with something that I think will push my status up to a whole new level. For those directionally challenged people, such as myself, who have trouble finding their way from their bedrooms to their bathrooms in the middle of the night, I have come up with the practically perfect device.

It is a little electronic thingy that is worn around the wrist. It is satellite-driven and I am calling it the GPISS.

I am now taking orders.

By Jim Hagarty
2004

I’m worn out today as I was busy on the Internet last night spending $455 for three teaspoons of water from a cup Elvis Presley drank from during one of his final performances in 1977. My family thought we might have used that money for a new TV or digital camera but they do not have their priorities straight. The guy I bought the water from – a trustworthy fellow if there ever was one – was at that concert and watched the King drink from that very cup. He took the cup home and put it in his freezer, water and all, only now agreeing to part with it to help guys like me keep the wonderful memories alive.

And it was me who paid out $2,500 for a Britney Spears book report and another $800 for a Jimi Hendrix Junior High School Yearbook from 1961. My wife suggested that money might go towards a new front door and bay window but any time you can get a Britney Spears book report for such a reasonable price, you simply have to jump at the chance. A true appreciator of valuable cultural artifacts knows that.

I also was the one who had the good sense to anonymously bid $650,000 for the guitar George Harrison used for several tracks on one of the Beatles later albums (I admit I had to take out a mortgage for this one). George, it seems, gave that guitar to a friend whose brother stuck it under his bed where it stayed for 30 years. If I had a Beatles’ guitar under my bed, I think I might have remembered that, but no matter. The important thing is it’s lying under my bed now and I can pull it out and plunk away on it any time I please.

I agree this was a lot of money to spend for an old guitar – the people I live with had suggested a new car, cottage and camper van – but they will be glad some day for my foresight.

A good day’s shopping wouldn’t be complete without spending $54,000 for never-before-heard original tapes of a John Lennon interview by a reporter for the Washington Star newspaper from 1975.

And I am afraid I couldn’t help myself. I just had to have those three ringside photographs of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier from their 1971 fight, taken by Frank Sinatra, and so I spent $14,500 to get them and I did.

Sure I expect my house insurance rate to increase by a few thousand dollars now and I will live in eternal fear of my treasures being stolen, lost or accidentally destroyed – hopefully somebody won’t drink the Elvis water by mistake – but when you have vision, and a friendly banker, you just have to go for it now and then.

My funds are getting low but if anyone knows how I could get a hold of one of Madonna’s hair curlers, I’d appreciate a call.

By Jim Hagarty
2006

I never thought this would happen, I guess, but as I grow older, though l try to keep up, I’m feeling more and more like a stranger in a world that’s subtly changing before my eyes. Maybe this is a natural preparation for the day when I won’t be part of the world at all.

Nothing brings this home to me more than the modern bicycle, and even more powerfully, the modern bicyclist, about whom I have commented before.

I am at a loss to know why today’s bicycle manufacturers go to the trouble and expense of including handlebars on their vehicles as they seem about as necessary these days as you know what on a bull. Male riders, especially, like to trundle on down the sidewalks of our fair city, with their hands on their hips or, on colder days, in their pockets.

I guess I can see why they would want to do this beyond the looking cool factor but I just don’t understand how they do it. In my day (didn’t seem like my day at the time, but now it looks like it was), it seems to me it practically took a circus acrobat to ride “look ma, no hands!” on an ordinary bicycle. I haven’t done a lot of research on this, or even any, but I’m guessing it was harder to ride a bike with your hands in your pockets 50 years ago because the country roads where I lived were all gravel. Hit a stone the wrong way and you’d be doing a face plant at 20 miles an hour.

I also wonder whether or not the big, fat, wide wheels and tires on a lot of bikes today are better at keeping them upright with no guidance on their handlebars than the rounded tires on our bikes did when I was a kid.

I was 31 when I got my first new bike. I bought it at a place called the Bicycle Hospedal, appropriately named because the thing was so anorexic it looked as though it could have benefited from some intravenous feeding. It was a “racing bike” and it cost $212. (I forget dates, names, appointments, but I never forget what “major” purchases cost me).

I had to contort myself into a pretzel to ride the blasted thing as the turned-down handlebars were located somewhere just above the front axle. Pretty much the only thing I could see while riding it was the pavement, though if I cranked my neck back at an almost inhuman angle, I might be able to see the bumpers of the cars ahead of me or even, sometimes, the horizon.

The tires on my skinny, little bike weren’t much more than glorified rubber bands with a breath of air pumped in and every small bump in the road reverberated up into my spine like an electric shock treatment administered from the wrong end of the body. And, of course, sitting on the seat of this thing was like planting my tender rear on a hard, tiny door knob and riding that down the bumpy thoroughfares.

So, you can see why I just can’t understand how all these no-hands riders are doing it, because I sure couldn’t, and can’t.

Perhaps you are getting the picture that I didn’t like my new bike very well, and you’d be right. Years later, after tripping over it in the shed 600 times, I decided to cut my losses, took it to an auction barn and came home with a tidy $7 in my pocket.

This year, I replaced it with a used “touring” bike, the type of velocipede I should have been on in the first place.

All of this blather is a prelude to what I am now going to share.
The other day l saw a teenager riding his bike down the street with, of course, no part of his anatomy touching his handlebars. Nothing new.

What was new, for me, in any case, was the fact that he was playing some sort of hand-held game player – whether Game Boy, PSP or whatever, I could not tell as he rode along the sidewalk on the busiest street in town.

This bizarre display also goes to another of my pet peeves: multitasking. What’s next? Simultaneously watching TV while biking down the street, doing your homework on a laptop, emailing Mom, and photographing the people being passed, including the grumpy, old guy scratching his head at a sight he thought he’d never see?

By Jim Hagarty
2012

A man in Indiana hasn’t had the best week. Drunk but driving, he pulled over in a parking lot and passed out. Police found him the next morning, his truck still running and him still sleeping. It wasn’t hard for the officers to track him down. The unfortunate sot had parked in a police station parking lot. His walk from truck to cell was about 20 feet. Surely this guy must be related to the doofus who showed up for his trial on auto theft – in a stolen car. When he came out of the courtroom, police were waiting for him. On second thought, the auto thief makes the drunken parker look almost like a genius.