Lifetime Sentences

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.

By Jim Hagarty
2008

There is a man in my neighbourhood who tempts fate way too often and I am very worried about him.

I fret because this middle-aged fellow rides his well-used bicycle through the busiest intersection in my city as if he was, at that moment, piloting the only vehicle on the road in the entire municipality. Mammoth trucks tickle his earlobes as they all but squish him like a bug in their rush to get by him and he pays them absolutely no attention. It hasn’t been a good week unless there’s been at least two pile-ups at this corner but the bicylist I’m concerned about rides around the carnage unmoved, seemingly in total disregard for the concepts of caution and safety.
He simply and utterly pays no heed to the chaos and potential mayhem in his environment as lights change and stressed-out drivers hurl their two-ton tanks into the death-defying battle that is the modern-day street corner.

Is it uncommon courage that causes such remarkable calmness in the bike rider I fear for? Is it blithe ignorance of the brutal realities of present-day city life? Is it stubborn defiance of the insane forces that rule all our lives in these troubled times?
No, in fact, it doesn’t appear to be any of these things.

The truth of it is, my daredevil cyclist friend is busy on the phone.

Several times I have seen him now, as I wait on foot for the lights to change. He pedals and talks, talks and pedals, cellphone pressed to one ear, and somehow survives to do it again another day.

Now, being a man forever on a search for the answers to things, this spectacle leaves me with enough questions to keep my inquiring mind in gear for many an hour.

For starters, to whom is my phone-addicted pal talking as he cycles through Accident Alley? Is he calling his life-insurance company with instructions to up his total benefit amount, as he expects to be cashing in on it soon? Is he phoning ahead to the funeral home to arrange a booking? Talking to a tombstone engraver, perhaps?

Or is he discussing with someone the boneheaded penalties the referee dished out in last night’s hockey game?

I would really like to know this.

Who and what could be so important to cause a man who is guiding fifty pounds of paper-thin steel and rubber through modern motoring’s Gates of Hell to reach down into his pocket, pull out a little black gizmo, and start yakking away as if he was reclining at home in his bathtub?

And this brings up one other major incongruity. What is a man who is so busy that he has to take telephone calls while he’s in transit, doing riding a touring bicycle? Except for those crazy, scrawny guys in France with the tight bums who race their itsy-bitsy bikes through the streets like hamsters on ferris wheels, don’t most of us associate bicyle-riding with leisure?

If this guy’s so darned pushed for time that he has to multi-task his way through the bombed-out battlefield that is the corner near my home, why isn’t he at least astride a souped-up racing bike?
But, no, there he goes again, calmy pedalling and prattling as if he was riding down a deserted one-lane road in a lonely outback in Australia.

The guy I lose sleep over is not talking to his stockbroker, I’m pretty sure of that. He’s not arranging another blockbuster deal with a Hollywood magnate. He isn’t doing a Live at Five feed for Channel 97 news.

And another thing. Does he simply take all these calls or does he place some of them? Knowing the answer to this one might help me decide if my time-saving buddy is only half-crazy or right off his stick.

This is all driving me around the bend.

So, what I hope to do is this. I’m going to somehow find out that man’s number and then I’m going to give him a call. Something tells me, no matter the time or the place or what he might be doing at that moment, he’ll be more than glad to talk to me.
That’s just the kind of guy, I figure, that this guy is.

You know.

A busy guy.

By Jim Hagarty
2007

They tell you to stay young at heart. Think young. Don’t let yourself get old by believing you’re old. Don’t ever quit having fun. Always be in touch with that kid inside.

Blahbuhdeeblah.

But other messages come at you that cancel out the ones just mentioned. I take my boy golfing. What a great father-son activity. Lots of time together and there’s just something about walking that gets people to talking.

One day, I dreamed up a great surprise for him. When we walked in the clubhouse, I asked to rent a golf cart. No problem, sir. Take that one out there. So we did. Up and down the hills and valleys we rode in style and l must admit, when we got out of sight of the main building, I let him drive. He was in heaven. A wonderful day.

So good was this event, in fact, that my son decided to repeat the experience with his mother. Out to the same golf course they drove, and up to the counter they marched. Now, to the joy of golfing, was added the thrill of riding on the electric cart (and maybe getting to drive it again.)

“Sorry, but those carts are reserved for seniors,” my wife was told by the attendant on duty.

But, but I had had no problem getting one. How could that be? Had they changed their policy in the few days since last I was there? However I might try, I couldn’t avoid the truth.

But this is ridiculous. It was only yesterday that my best friend and I were not allowed to golf without an adult on Sundays because we would supposedly slow down the “serious” golfers. How could it now be that I am one of those guys that are responsible for getting the teens kicked off the courses?

I put the experience behind me and moved on.

I suppose it is nice that I can rent golf carts where others can’t.

Last Friday, on vacation, I was driving along up north trying to find a good radio station to listen to. Every single one was broadcasting ear-blasting hard rock. I’m not an old fogey – I really don’t mind hard rock and actually love a lot of it. But this day, I wanted something else.

Finally, I found it. A fantastic station. Great song after wonderful song. Every tune just as good as the one before it.

“I wish we had a station like this at home,” I thought to myself. I’d never listen to anything else if we did.

My drive into town was super enjoyable. Until this station break announcement by the DJ: “It’s 11:30 am. and you’re listening to Songs for Seniors.” I flipped through the stations and found myself a heavy metal station. And turned my baseball cap backwards for good measure.

Next week I’m getting several piercings and a big tattoo.