Lifetime Sentences

By Jim Hagarty
1987
A rural plain-spoken, no-nonsense businessman I knew never liked receptionists to ask who was calling when he telephoned another company. He figured the person he wanted to speak to might be conveniently out if he or she knew it was him on the other end of the line. So, to the question, “May I ask who’s calling?”, he used to always answer, “King Farouk.” He claimed his calls were always put through.

By Jim Hagarty
1987

I examined my blue jeans one day and realized they looked like I’d rolled down the side of a mountain in them. In other words, just the way I like them.

But I had started to recognize those “who let him in here?” looks wherever I went and realized the time had come and probably already passed for me to buy a new pair.

So I stopped for what I expected would be a quick trip to the blue jeans store.

Racks upon racks of blue jeans spread out before me as I entered the place so I went to Row A and figured I’d just flip through them until I came to the pair I wanted. I was about four hangers away from reaching them when a young man with a measuring tape around his neck stepped in between me and the jeans I intended to buy.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked politely.

“Ah, yes,” I replied. “I’d like to buy a pair of blue jeans. That pair right …” but he cut me off as I peeked around him and pointed to the ones I wanted which were clearly in sight. They were dark blue and had four pockets, a fly and belt loops. Just the ticket.

“What kind of blue jeans were you thinking about?” the young salesman asked me nicely.

“Well, I kind of thought,” I stammered, “that pair over …” but he interjected again before I could direct him to the jeans I knew I wanted.

“What colour did you have in mind?” he asked me.

“What colour of blue jeans?” I replied, in mild astonishment. “Would blue be an outrageous choice?”

“No, of course not,” the young man laughed. “It’s just that we have other colours – black, grey, brown, beige.”

“Well,” I answered. “Shouldn’t brown blue jeans be called brown jeans?”

“I suppose so,” the clothier said. “So, you’d like blue, blue jeans, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you’d just hand me that …”

“Stonewashed or acidwashed?” he enquired.

“What?” I asked, my mouth dropping open.

“Stonewashed jeans are prewashed and preshrunk and are faded a light blue. Acidwashed jeans are a speckled blue with varying shades of blue all in the same fabric.”

“I had no idea,” I mumbled. “Washing clothes in acid …”

“And if you’d like the acidwashed jeans, would you prefer the plain ones or the ones with the brown leather patch on the back pocket?” he asked.

“Patch on the pocket …?”

“Then there are these,” the young man said as he flipped through a rack of semi-faded jeans.

“They’re nice,” I told him.

“Would you like the purple tab jeans or the green tab ones?” the man asked.

“What’s the difference?” I enquired.

“About 15 dollars,” he answered.

“Maybe green tab, I guess,” I whispered.

“Straight leg or superslim?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “My legs are fairly straight …”

“There’s also boot cut,” he continued.

“For rubber boots?” I wondered.

“Have you thought about a pair of painter pants?” he asked.

“Well, actually, I was thinking of wearing them for good,” I said.

“No, you misunderstand,” he said, patiently. “These are good pants. They have a white strap sewn to one leg.”

“Well, I’ll be,” I said.

Before we were through, I’d tried on baggy jeans that made me look like Chuckles the Clown and a pair that fit tighter than my long underwear as well as several that looked worse than the old pair I’d worn into the store.

As I left the place, carrying an armload of four new pair of jeans, none of them like the pair I’d gone in to buy, the salesman asked in passing if I’d like to look at blue jean jackets. I glanced behind me at several racks of blue denim coats – some thin, some with thick white lining, some long and some short with furry collars. Some with zippers up the front and some with buttons. Some had snaps and domes. Some speckled. Some faded.

“Not today,” I yelled over my shoulder, and I hurried on out of the store.

“Do you have any denim shirts?” he called after me. “We have two colours.”

I let on I never heard and just kept on running. I found that’s the only way to stay one step ahead of the latest styles.

By Jim Hagarty
2015

When you are young and just starting off in life, it is easy to lose your way. There are so many career choices today it is mind-boggling. How does anyone ever choose successfully?

I think the trick is to not find your career but to let your career find you. Strangely enough, that works more often than not. And at the other end of the scale, when you’re retired and reflecting on things, it’s tempting to look back and wonder if you took the right path.

In my case, I became a journalist, a newspaperman to be exact, or, as others have described a person in my line of work, an “ink-stained wretch.” I didn’t think my life was wasted but lately I have realized I threw away my best years.

I wish, when I was starting out, I had gone to my parents and said, “I want to become a collaboration specialist.” I am sure my Dad would have said, “That’s great, you can start by collaborating the cattle from the back 40 to the barn.” But whether there would have been joy or disappointment in the house following the announcement of my decision, I cannot say.

I know everyone is aware of what a collaboration specialist does, but I will go over it again in case you have forgotten. A collaboration specialist helps companies run better meetings. In 1969, if I had known this was a career option, I would have grabbed onto it. What a fantastic path to take. To help companies bore and annoy their poor employees even just a little bit less with every meeting they are forced to attend would have been so fantastic.

And some day, in the old folk’s home, as I sit around with the guys comparing our careers, the old novelist, TV producer, grocery store owner, law professor and microbiologist, will all look at me and wonder when I tell them that I spent my life as a collaboration specialist. I hope they are not filled with envy as that is an emotion that can shorten your life. However, company meetings can bring a certain interminability to life that can be achieved in no other way that I know of.

This column is adjourned.

Minutes will be distributed at a later date.

By Jim Hagarty
2005

I was half asleep, half awake and something suddenly began happening to my body that had never happened before. The big toe on my right foot began twisting uncontrollably and sharply to the left, then back again, then to the left again. This kept up for some time and it was an awful feeling in more ways than one.

My father suffered the ravages of Parkinson’s disease, a mysterious malady that strikes a person’s brain and muscles and eventually causes its victims difficulties in almost every area of their day-to-day lives. Some people move quickly to a stage where they are incapable of even dressing themselves and become dependent on a wheelchair. Facial muscles become rigid. Eyes can take on a tell-tale stare and sufferers are almost guaranteed to experience a depression that accompanies the sickness. They are not depressed because they are unhappy about being sick. They are depressed because of chemical imbalance in their brain.

But the most visible symptom of Parkinson’s disease is the trembling limbs: Hands, arms, legs, feet and even a person’s head develop tremors that at times are mild and at other times, during periods of increased stress, for example, very pronounced.

My father was one of the lucky ones with this disease. Though he shook and experienced all the other symptoms, he kept working as long as he could on the farm and needed a wheelchair in only the last few weeks of his life. I don’t remember him complaining much, but he occasionally did describe for his family what he was experiencing, as a way, I suppose, to help us understand.

When Dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, the doctor advised him to retire immediately and sell his farm. He didn’t do that and though this is only my uneducated opinion, I think the challenge and work of the farm kept his symptoms at bay longer than might have otherwise been the case.

So, lying in bed with my toe twisting and twisting as I faded in and out of dreamland, I immediately jumped to some disturbing conclusions. Although Parkinson’s is not supposed to be a hereditary affliction, there seem to be no “nevers” in the medical world. I’ve always sort of wondered if this might be my fate.
How long will I be able to continue typing, the lifeline of my career? Maybe I could use voice-recognition software to write my stories and do my editing.

How will I tell my family the bad news, as I remember my father telling his?

How will I cope with all the terrible symptoms of Parkinson’s?

Disturbing thoughts, indeed, in the middle of the night, no matter whether they were coming from the dreamworld or the real one. My big toe kept lurching, lurching to the left. Everyone has the odd involuntary muscle spasm but this was really different. Not only did it twist, but a slight pain shot through it too.

It was time, I thought, to face the music and have a look at it.
I raised my head from my pillow and looked down toward the end of the bed. There, having maybe the best time in his life so far, was my young cat Luigi who was gnawing away at my toe like he was chewing on a chicken bone.

Two things were learned that night.

I learned I didn’t have Parkinson’s.

And Luigi learned how to fly.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

I met a man years ago, about my age, who could write backwards as quickly as you or I can write forwards. But not just backwards, so that when he was done the word would appear correctly in front of you as if it had been written normally. When he was done writing, you had to hold the paper up to a mirror to read what he had written, so I don’t know exactly what you would call that. It was handwritten, not printed, and the writing was good – not sloppy or childlike.

I’m sure I asked him how he learned this but I forget his answer. What I do remember is that he was a pretty quirky soul, always laughing just a little too hysterically, it seemed to me, though his laugh was infectious. And to prove that he hadn’t practised just a few words and that’s why he could do this, he would challenge you to give him a word to write and sure enough, he would write that word mirror backwards just as well as any others.

I think this skill must have been one of those “savant” sort of things, like the “Rain Man.” It was incredible. I wonder what became of John, or nhoJ, as he would have written.

By Jim Hagarty
2008

When I was a kid – 20 years old, I think I was – I put in the hardest summer I ever worked. Harder than any summer I spent on the farm or even on bridge construction. For more than two months back in 1971 I delivered pop. Homegrown pop sold in every shop for 30 miles around. I know because I delivered it to all those shops, though not the many ones in Stratford that sold it.

Kist Beverages was started here and bottled in a building down behind the old Beacon Herald building where an eight-storey condo now sits. Every day I would leave the warehouse in my big blue truck jammed to the rafters with heavy wooden cases (no plastic back then) which carried heavy glass bottles (no plastic back then.) I had five distinct routes – each of them heading in a different direction from Stratford, one for each day of the week.

I never was the strongest pup in the litter and so I had a heck of a time hauling these boxes of pop up and down rickety old stairs in some scary basements where rats were right at home. I never could toss the pop around like those big Coke and Pepsi guys who handled their cases like they were empty cardboard boxes.

Even today, when I’m out driving with my family, I can point to country stores that just don’t exist any more – often the buildings themselves are gone – and tell them, “I used to deliver pop there,” with a voice filled partly with pride and partly with pain at the memory. I took pop to gas stations that are gone and grocery stores. Khuryville, Slabtown, Kennicott, Rostock, Cromarty, Staffa, Mitchell, Wellesley, New Hamburg, St. Marys, Monkton, Brodhagen and many more.

The thing that Kist had going for it, over its more famous competitors, was its variety and taste. It had orange, lime, cream soda, grape, and root beer. It also had a drink called Double Cola. But its big seller, my old boss Graeme Martin reminds me, was Green Label gingerale which, in this area, rivalled even Canada Dry in popularity. It was hard to keep some stores stocked with it at certain times of the year, they went through it so fast.

Kist’s pop came in quart bottles as well as the 10-ounce ones. Sometimes, covered in sweat while delivering the stuff on a hot summer’s day, I’d grab a warm quart of orange from the truck and trade it for a cold one out of a store cooler. Back outside, I’d pop the top (no twist caps then) lift it up and down the whole 26 ounces in a few big swigs.

Since then, I’ve regaled others with tales about how good that pop was, how nothing on the market now compares.

Kist disappeared years ago, bought up by this company and that but I had heard its pop was still around. The other day, I saw it in a store – in glass bottle form under a different name – and I impulsively bought nine bottles and brought them home. I set them all around the supper table and prepared everyone for the treat of their lives. I chose a lime for myself and after savouring the look of the bottle for a while, I popped the top and took a swig.

I’ve never tasted anything so awful in my life.

Either it wasn’t really Kist, my taste buds have changed dramatically or I’ve been living a lie for the last 37 years.
The only way to know for sure, I guess, would be to tilt that bottle back after a sweltering day of delivering hundreds of them.
Thankfully, I will never again get a chance to do that.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

A friend asked me for a ride to his college this morning. I said that would be no problem as I had to deliver a package to the college anyway. But I joked there would be a fee. He laughed.

He wanted me to take him to his townhouse near the college so I dropped him off and we said goodbye. I drove across town and found a restaurant for lunch. Then I headed to the college where I had never been. It’s a big place. One hundred acres, 21 parking lots, three floors, 15,000 students. More entrances than an African jungle.

I found a parking lot near a door. I walked through the door and looked to see there was only one student in a long, empty hallway. The friend I had dropped off at his place an hour before stood there grinning at me. I showed him the address of the office I needed to go to. He took me there. Fee paid in full.

If either one of us had delayed by even a minute what we had been doing, we would not have met in that hallway.

I like when things like that happen.