Month: August 2016

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There once was a bear name of Fred
Who had an ugly, gigantic head.
A pie plate of a paw
And teeth like a saw.
He was mild as a lamb, it was said.

Hi Everyone:
My family and I are on vacation in a camp deep in the woods where, coincidentally, bears also camp. We have no WIFI and the bears won’t let us use theirs. Everything you’ve heard about bears being nasty is true. In any case, I am afraid I cannot update my blog until Tuesday. In the unlikely event that we make it out of here alive, I will post new stuff then. Thanks for following me.

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 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, though no longer around to verify this, 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 sound very Georgish when I do.

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
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A grasshopper name of John
Went jumpin’ across my lawn.
I told him to scat.
He didn’t like that.
And soon the big insect was gone.

By Jim Hagarty

Shorts again, Jim? Good Lord. Get a new obsession.

Sorry, my mind wanders continuously but now and then it stops and fixes on something. Could be anything.

So I bought two new pairs of shorts. They are cheap shorts and now I am paying a sad and heavy price for my impulsiveness. After all, I have been in the market for new shorts for five years. I should have taken another year or two.

No offence intended to the clothesmakers in whatever country these abominations were manufactured but they were not designed for a human being of my weight and build. Or any other human being for that matter. I think they just cut out a prototype, held it up to the light and declared, “Close enough.”

I can’t get my legs through the openings. I can’t sit down without giving myself a hernia. Getting the fly down is like trying to unlock a bank vault without the combination. When I walk, I feel body parts rubbing together that shouldn’t be rubbing together.

But they look good, so there’s that.

By Jim Hagarty
I saw this tall drink of water of a car in a car lot the other day. It is a Mercury Meteor from Ford, not sure of the date, but I am guessing early 70s. Still trying to find that.

By Jim Hagarty

Our family has two cars. We are living the American dream. Most days, it doesn’t matter to us that our cars are just a touch shabbier than the old truck The Beverly Hillbillies used to ride around in with Granny in a rocking chair in the back. Yes, we do get envious. We can’t fit a rocking chair in either car.

We are only able to keep these junkers on the road because we have a genius for a mechanic. If he was a medical doctor, there would be people walking around our town well into their 150s. He’s younger than us so we are hoping our driving days will be over just about the time he hangs up his wrenches and oil can.

Many people who own beaten down jalopies know a little about cars themselves which is how they are able to keep their wrecks on the road and the right side of the law. Collectively, my wife and I know this about cars: A sedan has four doors and the AC button, if it worked, stands for air conditioning.

So, we pay the car bills and keep on truckin’, in Beverly Hillbilly fashion, minus Granny.

However, our ignorance leaves us open to friends and neighbours who like to assess from a distance what is wrong with our vehicles. In short, we believe what they say even though we have absolutely no reason to have faith in them.

Our oldest car, manufactured in 1997 and released on an unsuspecting world, started making terrible sounds a couple of weeks ago. The faster the car goes, the louder the sound is. It sounds somewhat like a space shuttle ready to launch without all the smoke and TV cameras, at least so far.

So a friend drove it.

“It’s your transmission,” he declared, shaking his head. “The car is done. I wouldn’t put a new transmission in a car this old.” Most people wouldn’t put gas in a car this old, so what was his point?

“Don’t drive it out of town,” he ordered us. So we don’t.

Friday night, my wife and I were driving along in our other car, foisted on the general public after emerging from the car factory in 2005. Suddenly, there was a terrible clunking sound from the back end, like might be expected if we had somehow driven over a landmine. Our town of 35,000 souls in Southern Ontario, Canada, is not heavily mined. We ruled that out. As we did a rocket attack by insurgents. Fortunately, the local police have kept insurgents on the run in our town and they are not a big problem. Kids on skateboards? But I digress …

We called a tow truck and our car soon disappeared out of the parking lot and on its way to our friendly mechanic’s shop. It was a Friday night, he doesn’t work weekends, and we had all weekend to worry about the fate of what had been the better of our two cars.

We asked our friend of the transmission assessment noted above what might be wrong.

“It could be the differential,” he said, with what appeared to be a sad look on his face.

“What the hell is a differential?” my wife and I said to ourselves after our long walk home carrying 45 pounds of groceries. I suggested at one point that we should just sit down and eat the groceries and be done with it but my proposal was spurned.

So we have spent the past two weeks in a morass of transmission and differential worries.

Our mechanic called on Tuesday.

“Got your car fixed up,” he said, and explained that the problem was a broken spring. No differentials were harmed in the making of this movie.

Today I drove to the mechanic’s in the old jalopy with the defunct transmission, to pay the non-differential bill on the other car. I fully expected to hand over a thousand dollars. The bill was $129.

Pleased, I asked him about the other car, the doomed one with the bad transmission, and told him our friend’s diagnosis. He smiled.

The mechanic took it for a short spin.

“It’s a wheel bearing,” he announced on his return. “No big deal.”

So, between Granny Clampett, landmines, insurgents and the friend who is always wrong about car troubles, apparently, we have made it through another week.

We have a little shrine in our home dedicated to our mechanic. We have a framed photo of him on the wall, and below him burns a candle in old soup can.

We pray for him every night before bed.