Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
2007

Most times I love our two housecats or am pretty much indifferent to them. These two brothers are cute and a lot of fun.

Other times, they are so annoying, they could send a Buddhist Monk over the edge. Not being a monk, imagine the effect they have on me.

For instance. Every morning, the “boys”, as they are called, want desperately to get through the kitchen door out into the garage where their favourite kitty litter tray awaits. The one in the basement is too confining, it seems, with its attached hood, as it appears even they cannot stand the lovely scent left behind by their visits. Better to head out to the uncovered pan in the garage where a cat can sit upright and have a good think while waiting for nature to reveal its greatness. None of this is the annoying part.

This is what infuriates:

Among the truly awful things in life – you can devise your own list – is soggy breakfast cereal. I make sure every day that I have all necessary items in place at the table before I take the irreversible step of pouring the milk onto the crisp new flakes, or rice puffs or mini wheats, or whatever. Because once that liquid hits the solids, the window of opportunity for eating your cereal at its tastiest best is a very small one. We’re talking seconds, not minutes. The flakes begin to degrade the moment they are soaked and must be inserted in mouth quickly or they become milk-saturated corn mush before your very eyes.

Now, this is where the boys come in. Literally, come in.

I know cats don’t understand anything about soggy cereal but I am perfectly aware of the fact that they have very good hearing. In light of that, I don’t know whether they wait for certain sounds to impress their eardrums before making their move, but here’s how it goes.

I pull out my chair, sit down, pour the milk, lift two bites with my spoon and…

Scratch, Scratch, Scratch, Scraaaatchuhhh!

Ignore the sounds of cats scratching at the door to get back in, I am advised, but I cannot. Past experience has shown they will scratch till they somehow make their paws bleed. Really. I bolt from my chair, and rush to the door. Sensing my annoyance, they hang back when the door opens, not sure what awaits. When they finally make their move, they shoot through the opening like bullets through a gun barrel.

Back at the table, I face a mess of steadily deteriorating flakes. This does not amuse.

I have tried to outsmart them but the only sure thing I have discovered in my 56 years is that the cat always wins.

So, I pull in the chair and bang my spoon against the cereal bowl a couple of times. In short, I make all the sounds I would if I were actually eating.

Not a scratch to be heard.

I recently waited five minutes to prove to my unbelieving family that I was not imagining things.

No scratches.

I picked up the milk, poured it carefully across the flakes, and sprinkled on some sugar.

Two bites.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Scraaaatchuhhh!

Can cats possibly hear the sound of milk being poured on cornflakes from 15 feet away through a thick, wooden door?

I believe they can.

And I believe in another old saying about these strange creatures we allow to walk around our homes: The cat is always on the wrong side of the door.

Back to my opening paragraph. Sometimes I love ’em, sometimes I don’t, and sometimes I’m indifferent.

Other times, I look down to see this little defiant bundle of fur and bones walking across our floors and wonder what odd creatures humans are to willingly share their space with such beings.

Someday, I know, they’ll be gone and I’ll feel badly.

Except at breakfast time.

By Jim Hagarty
2018

I have never been a pastor, so forgive me if I do not know all the ways a pastor should behave. The only thing that comes to my mind about being a pastor is that he should probably be kind, loving and helpful. Perhaps even wise. And maybe his family should be too.

But this is where my ignorance and reality collide sometimes, I will readily admit. If you are a pastor in Toledo, Ohio, you might have a different view of the whole pastoring best practices protocol. Because in that city, a pastor and two of his family members apparently rushed into their church and ambushed a Sunday school teacher who was in the process of teaching a class. After physically attacking her, the pastor, his wife and daughter, dumped out the contents of the teacher’s purse. When the teacher tried to recover her belongings, the pastor pointed a loaded gun at her and threatened to kill her. The pastor, his wife and their 19-year-old daughter, then scooped up their haul, fled the church and are currently on the run from police.

Reflecting on this, the old expression, “Things your find in a woman’s purse” comes to mind. I have not gone through very many women’s purses over my lifetime, but it makes me wonder just what it is they are carrying around in those things that would be so apparently valuable.

I know I am probably missing something here. But am I wrong to wonder what is being taught in pastor schools these days? When I was growing up, things like this hardly ever happened.

I can’t wait to hear what the good reverend has to say to his flock in his next sermon from the pulpit. Maybe, “Rob thy neighbour as thyself”?

By Jim Hagarty
2018

Canadians are too polite. Thank God we are. Sorry if that offends you. (See? And I haven’t even said anything offensive. Yet.)

In Canada, we are raised to not consider the individual to be a god. We learn pretty quickly that we belong to communities and that if we want to live long and prosper, we had better make room for others. This means abiding by laws we might not like, rules that seem ridiculous. Yes, we have our heroes, but we know they are simply people above all else. I once talked to a guy who had peed in a urinal next to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who was relieving himself in the urinal beside him while being Prime Minister. They struck up a conversation while answering nature’s call.

A little thing, but I recently went to pay for my coffee at the drivethrough window. I was told the woman in the car ahead of me had already paid for it. I asked what the car behind me had ordered. Also a coffee. So I paid for that guy’s coffee. Didn’t hurt a bit and made me feel good all day.

I bought the house I still live in 32 years ago. A few months after I moved in, I got into a small fracas with a neighbour. I told an older co-worker about it the next day. He dropped what he was doing, made me look him straight in the face, and said, “If you want to be happy in your new home, don’t fight with your neighbours.” His earnestness stopped me in my tracks. I took his advice and dropped whatever little thing had been bugging me. I have lived happily in my home for 32 years.

I do not get along with everyone in this world but those I disagree with, I try to go around. I cross the street when someone unpleasant is coming my way. And I know people who don’t want to encounter me are doing the same thing. I am not everyone’s cup of tea. I know that. I sometimes think of the two road ragers in the United States a year or so ago who pulled their cars off onto the shoulder, jumped out of their vehicles, whipped out their guns and shot each other dead. Two middle-aged white men. They gave up their lives because somebody cut somebody off, or some such horror.

Canadians have all the same problems as other societies. But we do not worship our leaders, our history or even our rights. We enshrine new rights when they are inevitable and discard old ones when they are unproductive. We do not vote for our leaders directly. They are chosen by our political parties and discarded by those same parties, not by the voters.

We look out for each other. I’ve mentioned this nugget before. My neighbour rang my doorbell a while back and asked me sheepishly if he could borrow MY key to HIS house, having locked himself out. He has a key to my house. I always want to live in a town and country where I can enjoy that level of trust. And absence of fear.

You can have your Wild Wild West. I prefer my Mild Mild Best.

By Jim Hagarty
2014

The brain is a funny thing. Everybody has one (I think) but the mind that goes with it can sometimes be missing or defective.

Take David Scofield, 50, of Akron, Ohio, for example. He liked to spend time impersonating a police officer. No big deal. Who hasn’t done that? I often arrest people for fun on weekends and even issue speeding tickets (after I chase them for 10 miles to make sure they speed up.)

In any case, poor old David found a way to screw it up for the rest of us. He got caught this week when he tried to pull over a real officer. Akron police say a man driving a Ford Crown Victoria with a spotlight and made to look like a police car tried to block the path of a real Akron officer on his way to work Monday night. He had a rifle, shotgun, handguns, a bullet-proof vest, a silencer and ammunition in his car.

Police say Scofield is a firearms dealer from Lancaster. He was arrested on misdemeanor charges of impersonating a police officer, carrying concealed weapons and obstructing official business. He was in the Summit County Jail where records didn’t say if he had an attorney. However, if I could venture a guess, I think David’s next gig will be impersonating an attorney. After that, he’ll be a jailbird, no impersonation required.

His best impersonation so far is that of a total world-record-shattering idiot on steroids but something tells me he did not have to practise for that role in front of a mirror.

By Jim Hagarty
1992

Taped to my computer keyboard here at the office is a small, inspiring cartoon of TV’s lovable, stumbly-bum dad, Homer Simpson, holding a nice, big, round, chocolate-covered doughnut and declaring that, “Doughnuts are a man’s best friend.”

Some writers might opt for a little more lofty saying to tape to their computers – something from Shakespeare, perhaps. Or a few lines from a Robbie Burns poem.

But these days, for me, Homer Simpson and his love of doughnuts suit my mood perfectly. He’s an ordinary guy with ordinary tastes. Maybe he can’t afford a villa on the Riviera for the winter but he can afford a doughnut. The simple pleasures, after all, are still the best.

And yet, while Homer Simpson’s idea of man’s best friend and mine are similar, I am a little more expansive in my assessment of what constitutes the closest pal a human can have. To me, doughnut SHOPS are a man’s best friend.

Next to my own home which, thankfully, is the one place on earth I usually want to be most of all, doughnut shops have for years been my favourite places to hang out. It is not that I am addicted so much to coffee and doughnuts – at home, I rarely have either. It’s just that doughnut shops take care of so many needs, other than hunger and thirst, and they do it without emptying my bank account.

A favourite topic of conversation these days for people who live, work and do business in the city of Stratford is how on earth all the doughnut shops now located here will ever survive. At last count, there are nine operating and soon to be operating in the city, a veritable explosion in a place which, until just a few years ago, made do with only two. And it’s possible one or two more may locate here in the near future. As well, 24-hour coffee shops are springing up in the small towns in the area and even right out in the country.

I listen to and take part in these discussions – after all, this is one of my favourite subjects – and I’ve noticed that many people use the wrong approach to solving the question of whether or not these businesses can survive the competition. Many of them ask, “How much coffee can a city of 27,000 people drink?”, before they conclude we can’t drink all the coffee that nine coffee shops can brew. While they could well be right and only time will tell, I think the current sprouting of doughnut shops in this area doesn’t have as much to do with our need for coffee as our need for companionship and comfort.

To me, today’s doughnut shops are yesterday’s pubs. Where hotels once dotted the city and country landscapes – the town of Mitchell, for example, had as many as nine hotels at one time and now has only one – their fortunes have been in decline for years as people have turned away from drinking and driving and even from drinking itself.

But people still need places where they can gather – like they do in pubs – to shoot the breeze, wait for their car to be repaired, console a friend, take a first date after a movie, sort out their troubles, escape from their wife/husband/kids, stop for a stretch part way through a trip, wait out a recession or a snowstorm and read the Sunday paper when it’s raining outside.

Unless the people of Stratford suddenly don’t need to do these things any more, I think most of our doughnut shops will hang in there for a while. Besides, there’s more than a bit of Homer Simpson in most of us. We have to take our comfort where we can find it.

And as for the coffee shops being man’s best friend, I think sometimes they’re even better than a best friend. How many best friends would be glad to see you show up at 4 o’clock in the morning?

By Jim Hagarty
2013

I just made $100,000 so go ahead and congratulate me.

After reading that a 33-year-old singer/songwriter/idiot spent $100,000 on plastic surgery to make himself look like his idol Justin Bieber, I decided this was a goal I wanted to achieve too, especially since he was born and raised in my hometown and it’s possible lightning might strike twice. So I found a picture of Bieber, held it up to the mirror and took a look at his head and mine. He has two ears, so do I. Check. He has a nose, I have one as well. Two eyes, a mouth, check and check. Chin, cheeks, eyebrows, forehead. So far, the similarities are striking. He has more hair on his head than I do but he always wears a baseball cap and so do I.

So, as far as I am concerned, we’re pretty much a perfect match. Except maybe for that 44-year age difference thing, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re close enough.

So, my $100,000 facelift fund is staying in my interest bearing account where it is earning me a handsome .00025 per cent per annum. Turns out money can buy you happiness as I am happy I am not the singer/songwriter/copycat/idiot referred to above.