Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
2012

We don’t have big parties at our place any more. This is one of the reasons why.

After a lively gathering years ago, one friend insisted on driving home in spite of the fact that he had had far too much to drink. He’s bigger than me so wrestling the keys out of his pocket was not an option. He was the last to leave the house and had more than 10 miles to drive on a main highway to his home in the country.

I was freaking out with worry that tragedy awaited him and whomever he might smash into on his drive home so after he left I hopped in my car and started following him at a slight distance, just like in the movies. I had to stay back a bit because I didn’t want him to recognize me but it was early in the morning and there were not many other vehicles on the road so it wasn’t hard to keep him in sight.

Pie-eyed as my friend was, he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of staying between the lines. The only giveaway might have been that he was driving a bit slower than the speed limit. At this time of day, this is always a tip off to police.

However, part of the way home, my friend surprised me by turning down a gravel sideroad and stopping by the side of the road to answer the call of nature. I didn’t dare turn down that road as that would have given me away completely, so I pulled over on the highway and waited. But when he turned around and got back on the highway, I realized that if he passed me, he would recognize my car and realize I was stalking him. This would not be good for our friendship.

So, I pulled back on the road quickly and started off down the highway, careful to keep far enough ahead of the guy I had been trailing to avoid his recognizing me or my car. Now, having set off to follow a drunk driver home and to be there if anything happened, I was now being pursued by that same driver and had to keep my speed up to avoid detection. At this point there were two of us breaking the law: He was drunk driving and I was speeding!

To my relief, my friend turned into his driveway when we got to his place and I was able to eventually turn around and take my time getting back safely to my home. With my starting out fixating on his vehicle, to pulling off on the shoulder and eventually speeding to avoid his detecting me along with his obvious inebriation, it was a toss up which one of us was more of a danger on the road that night.

These days I prefer to sleep through the middle of my nights rather than engage in games of highway tag and so our party house is closed until further notice.

By Jim Hagarty
1990

Some homeowners have to contend with the disturbing sounds made by barking dogs. Others put up with church bells that gong out a hymn or two every hour on the hour. And many people who live on busy streets and highways must suffer through the constant roar of cars, trucks and motorcycles as they race by.

Noise pollution, it seems, at least in our cities and towns, is here to stay.

As for me, when it comes to being bothered by unwelcome noises, I guess I’m sort of lucky and unlucky, all at the same time. At the moment, there are no yowling dogs within earshot and no churches with pealing bells. And my street is relatively free from the sounds of traffic revving up and gearing down.

But there’s a flaw in every perfect picture and so it is with my place. My house is located not far from the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford and not far from the cannon that the theatre uses to announce the start of its performances. Every day during theatre season at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., the cannon lets fly.

“KAAAABOOOOMMM!!!”

It’s not that long a sound, really, or even all that aggravating, for that matter. But it is loud.

And it’s sneaky.

For some reason, the Festival’s cannon shot always comes as a big shock to me, though I’ve heard it dozens and dozens of times since I moved to my present home in 1986. You might think, after all this time, that a person would get sort of used to such a sound. He might, for example, look at his watch at 1:59 p.m. and say, “Well, the cannon ought to be going off any minute.”

But it doesn’t work that way. Other people can count on Fido to raise the roof next door every night and on the church around the corner to start into clamouring every hour on the hour. And, of course, who’s surprised at traffic noise at any hour? The Festival cannon, however, is infrequent enough an experience that it is never expected. And therefore, never welcome. Each time I hear it, I react the same way as the first time I heard it. And the first time I heard it, I thought I’d been hit in the chest with the blast from a shotgun.

If I want to hear our lovely neighborhood cannon, all I have to do is crawl up 20 feet to the top of my ladder with paint can in hand, stretch out for a hard-to-get spot on my house as far as I can until I’ve only got one foot and one hand on the top rungs and reach out for …

“KAAAABOOOOMMM!!!”

As upset as some of these brushes with near-fatal, cannon-induced heart attacks have made me in the past, I’ve refrained from complaining. That’s just life in the city, I’ve figured, and the Festival Theatre is this city, so I’ve always shut up.

But no more.

Tuesday night, my wife and I set up the new gas barbecue we’d bought. Neither one of us had ever had anything to do with one before and were very nervous about it all.

I checked for leaks, tightened the connections and then timidly pressed the automatic igniter.

“Poof!” went the first burner.

“Poof!” went the second burner.

And just before I held a match to the side burner, which had failed to light automatically, I issued this warning.

“You better stand back, Barb. This thing could blow us into the neighbour’s yard.”

Barb stood back and I lit the match. I moved it cautiously toward the unlit burner and …

“KAAAABOOOOMMM!!!”

“Dear Festival Theatre: As a concerned citizen and taxpayer, I am writing this letter regarding your use of a cannon …”

By Jim Hagarty
2013

I haven’t had a decent pair of winter gloves in decades. Not that I haven’t had gloves that cost a pretty penny, those coming by way of gifts as I would never spend that much for gloves. But cost doesn’t seem to bear any relation to glovial perfection, apparently. Or maybe I just have ridiculously picky hands.

Whatever the case may be, on Thursday, I found a pair of woolen gloves in the garage that fit my paws perfectly. I loved them. And so, as go many a love-at-first-sight affairs, it was over almost before it began. I lost the darned things last night at the grocery store.

Oh well. We had almost two full beautiful days together and though many a glove will come and go as the years go by, I will never forget them.

But just to be clear. If I see you walking down the street with those gloves on, you are going to wish they had been boxing gloves by the time the dust settles. So if you have them, know that I do want them back and yes, I will pay a ransom.

By Jim Hagarty
2004

When I was a boy growing up on our farm in Logan Township, I put in some pretty long, hard days of work during the summer months, as did most farm kids around. In sowing, haying and harvesting times, it was not unusual for us to start at 8 a.m. and work till 9 p.m. During fall plowing I kept going many a night till a couple hours after dark.

And for all this hard work, I never received an allowance. I knew other kids who did, but in our family of seven kids, the job of administering allowances would have taken the combined skills of an economist, accountant and banker. My parents opted out of such a system and chose a much simpler one instead. In exchange for all this work, we will pay for all your food, clothing, housing, education and entertainment, they told us. And they did.

But if it was cash we needed, it was up to each of us to summon up the courage to ask my father for a “loan.” It was always the same scene: He’d sit in his chair reading his newspaper while I prepared to go out for the night – perhaps on a date – and put off asking for the money for as long as I could. I don’t know why this should have been so hard to do; he never turned down any request I made or told me I was asking for too much. But I just found it a most difficult hurdle to get over.

“Dad, I’m going out tonight. Do you think I could have some money?”

“How much do you need, son?”

Now came the really hard part. Ask for too much and I worried the teller’s window might be slammed shut. Ask for too little, and I’d immediately realize I could have probably asked for much more. So, regardless of my needs, I’d usually settle on a standard figure that hardly ever changed.

“Well,” I’d say, thoughtfully, as though I’d considered carefully every possible expense before making my request. “I guess I could use $10.”

My father would reach into his pocket and produce his wallet and most times, come up with the sought-after $10 bill. But sometimes, he didn’t have the right denomination.

“All I have is a 20,” he’d say, with barely concealed regret. “You may as well take that.”

“I’ll pay you back the difference,” I’d assure him, but the entire amount was already spent as he put it into my eager little hands.

“Don’t worry about it,” he’d say. In any case, where was I going to get the money to repay him when he was my only source?

Lest you think this was a bad system, and I often did think just that because of of how little it taught me about the real value of money and how to handle it, not to mention the humiliation of being 16 and having to ask my dad for money, there were upsides to it as well. Before I left in my parents’ car, a vehicle I paid not a nickel towards, I would back it up to the green gas pump by the garage and fill ‘er up. No charge. Then I’d check the oil and take off and I could drive till the tank was empty.

That was almost 40 years ago now, and things have certainly changed. Yes they have. I earn my own pay now (at least I think I earn it), take cash out of the bank whenever I want to and am responsible for all my financial risings and fallings.

But sometimes I can’t seem to keep my wallet filled up and last Tuesday night was one of those times. I wanted to catch the reduced-rate movie at the cinema but was tapped right out. Before I headed out the door, I said to anyone and everyone, “Omigosh, I don’t have any money.”

My eight-year-old son happened to be in his chair, reading a book. He looked up, and asked, “How much do you need, Dad?”

“Just five dollars,” I replied, not throwing in any extra for munchies and pop.

“I’ve got that much,” he said, and headed for his bedroom to retrieve it. He produced his wallet, took out a five, and handed it to me. I protested that I couldn’t possibly accept it. He insisted that I do.

“I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it,” he repIied, and I had a vague feeling of having been down this road before, though I couldn’t put my finger on it.

The movie was great.

And true to my long and sorry history, 10 days later, I haven’t paid him back yet.

By Jim Hagarty
2011

It is a big shock to find the lights off at a business you normally go to, and a sign on the door announcing that a trustee has ordered the closure for non-payment of rent, etc. In some cases, it’s like losing a friend. Like a death, really, because you somehow never see the people who ran that business again.

This happened at a coffee shop around the corner from my house one day this spring. My first clue was no cars in the parking lot. Then the note on the door. A month went by, and every day as I drove by I looked in to see if anything was going on. Lo and behold, one happy morning some painters were sprucing up the exterior. Fantastic. Then word got around that a new restaurant was opening up. A breakfast and lunch deli.

All summer, as I walked our dog past the old coffee shop, workers were making changes, new signs were going up, the parking lot was being paved. Yippee! One night recently, I saw the lights on, and assuming the new place was open, I pulled on the door and went inside. I sometimes went there at night, when it was the old place. That was the best time. I would take my laptop, have a cookie and milk. Meet my friend Michael.

“We’re not open,” said one of the men inside. “Next weekend.”

I counted the sleeps till next weekend and the day it opened, I presented myself, laptop in hand, about 3:15 p.m. I sensed I was in trouble from the moment I walked in. The waitresses were in black, tuxedo-like outfits. And there were a number of seemingly leather-bound menus on the counter. Menus, tuxedos. Then the worst news of all.

“Sorry sir,” said a waitress. “We close every day at 3.”

Head hung down, I left. A whole summer of anticipation dashed. I live in a tourist town. This is a tourist trap now. As I am not a tourist, I am afraid my old coffee shop will remain as dead to me as it was the day the lights went off.

Curses! Foiled again!

Sometimes change and I are the most bitter of enemies.

By Jim Hagarty
2005

Listen, all taxes are bad.

So say Conservatives who wants to govern Canada (and the U.S., for that matter.)

Go for it right wingers, I say. I agree with you. Chop those taxes till they’re all gone. Chop, chop, chop.

Bad taxes.

Bad old taxes.

What would a world with no taxes look like?

Pretty darned good, wouldn’t you think?

Once a year, when our streets need paving, able-bodied men and women would be required – as they were in the pioneer days of rural Canada – to give the municipality several days of labour to get the job done. The exercise and fresh air and break from our jobs would be good for us all. Refusal to participate would land the resisters in jail.

Similarly, in winter, when the snow needs plowing, we would all have to give a couple of days of our time to clear the sidewalks, streets and overloaded rooftops. Bring it on!

Many things would change, but we’d adapt in a hurry and the increase in the freedom we would have to spend our “hard-earned” dollars exactly how we would like to would more than compensate for a few inconveniences. Because we can spend those dollars better than the government can. Right?

For example, our fire department would have to be made up completely of volunteers, as in the old days, but even they would need firefighting equipment. And in a city the size of the small one I live in, we might insist on professional firefighters. Therefore, when our houses catch fire, we would have the freedom of paying for the firefighting service by cheque, cash, credit card or debit card. No payment and the trucks would keep on moving back to the station, but that is a small price to pay to get the state out of our bedrooms, even out of those bedrooms that might be on fire.

Same thing with police. Before they’d show up to catch those thugs who were stealing our cars, we’d have to read them out our credit card number over the phone. Or get used to walking. But that’s okay. None of us do enough walking these days.

Or maybe we wouldn’t even bother having police because, darn it, they need equipment and cars and secretaries and headquarters and jail cells and on and on. More hard-earned money just a-leavin’ on a jet plane.

So, we could go back to some sort of neighbourhood justice system. Saturday night vigilante groups on our streets to make sure the wild ones don’t get a little too wild. Or we could hire security guards to watch our homes and private investigators to look into the break and enters. One wise guy per street could be our judge and we could mete out punishments then and there. I am in favour of caning and a little tar and feathers never hurt anybody.

I think we’ve all secretly longed to be a punishment meter outer.

Health care, smelth care, says I. Whatever happened to people taking care of their own? Yes, almost every family in the old days lost at least one child to illnesses easily preventable today but how many of our hard-earned dollars should we be expected to pay so that all parents can keep their families intact? Yes, the odd pandemic wiped out millions here and there, but people in the old days had a lot more freedom than we do today. Shorter lives, maybe, tougher lives, yes, indeed, but freedom?

Priceless.

And when Canada goes off to war when the United States starts its next invasion, where will the soldiers come from, with no taxes to pay for them?

Why, conscription, of course.

Yes, all taxes are bad.

Even the millions of tax dollars, I suppose, that are paying for the Conservative party’s election campaigns to get their members into office. Or maybe not. Maybe that tax money is money well spent.

Bad old taxes.

Who needs ’em?