Month: November 2016

By Jim Hagarty
2000

A person’s reputation in the community often has a lot to do with how he conducts himself in public.

And sometimes, it has nothing to do with that at all.

One evening I had occasion to pay a visit to our local jail. Some people think I should have been in there a long time ago, but no matter. I finally made it. Not as an inmate, however; just as a simple visitor.

On the way there, I had to drop off my five-year-old son at the walk-in health clinic where his mother waited for medical attention with his little sister. After I’d left, a nurse who was taking a tally of the growing population of the waiting room, stopped to engage my boy in a bit of chatter.

“My Daddy’s gone to jail,” announced my lad proudly to the consternation of the nurse and the many others awaiting their turn to see a doctor. My wife briefly considered trying to explain the circumstances to the suddenly frowning adults in the crowded room and wisely decided it would be useless to begin a public-relations campaign to salvage my damaged reputation. She sensed people edging their chairs away from hers and casting glances of pity towards our children whose father was cooling his heels behind bars for who knows what crime at that very moment. Their children looked over at my children with a mixture of wonder and fear.

Anonymity might have saved the day except for the fact that our surname was broadcast loud and clear by the nurse when it came time for my family to see a doctor. We don’t live in a big place and there aren’t too many families by our name residing within the city limits. The process of elimination combined with a lucky guess or two might have given away my identity to the few who cared to know it.

So, it’s possible, in a home or two that night, a few shocked family members might have been aghast at hearing the news that Jim Hagarty was in jail. Some would be amazed, some unsurprised, a few, perhaps, might be overjoyed. Others might be satisfied that the criminal-justice system in our town is working very well indeed.

However the news went over, there’s not much I can do to retract the item now. Forevermore, in a few strangers’ hearts, I will have become a jailbird.

If being so branded keeps a few of them from coming to my door to sell me chocolate bars I don’t need or want, I’ll take it.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There once was a country so fine.
It was always a favourite of mine.
But it took a right turn.
When will they ever learn?
Now it’s bound to go into decline.

By Jim Hagarty
2016

I used to be the editor of a community newspaper in my small city in Canada. It was the second “weekly” I had been editor of. (Newspaper owners started calling their weeklies community papers to get away from the disparaging “weakly”.)

I had a fair amount of experience by the time I arrived at the last paper I would work for. Three years on a weekly, 13 years reporting and editing at a daily paper and six years teaching journalism at a local college.

The publisher at the newspaper had also been in newspapers his entire career and like me, loved the business. But whereas I came up through the news path, he came up through advertising. But he was a lover of newspapers and was knowledgeable about the editorial side of things as well. When he showed up at our office, he would stroll into the newsroom and comment on stories we had written, photo spreads we had done.

Eventually, however, he left and I was sorry to see him go. His replacement was a man who had started out delivering newspapers, a noble job if there ever was one. He worked hard at that and was eventually named circulation manager at his small weekly paper. In other words, he was the boss of all the newspaper deliverers.

The new publisher was ambitious and developed a knack for getting to know the right people and the right things to say to the right people. And one day, he was elevated to publisher of 12 small town papers including the one I worked at.

The years I worked for this man were not pleasant ones. He knew nothing about any of areas of newspapering other than circulation and he had no interest in learning. But he thought he knew. And that was worse than not knowing. He meddled where he shouldn’t have.

I worked for this publisher for several years and when I left the paper in 2008, I came away with the very strong feeling, though I couldn’t prove it, that he had never once read even one story that we published while he was in charge. He had no interest in our town and it showed. And no interest in his newspapers beyond the paycheques they provided him.

I checked the staff list printed on the editorial page of my old paper recently. My non-interested publisher is no longer there. No doubt he has moved on to greener pastures, impressing someone somewhere with his knowledge of how to deliver newspapers and still not reading them.

My old newspaper is still going, though it has moved a couple times and is now in a small space on the second floor of an old building. There isn’t much in the paper. I doubt it’s making money. But it has survived the leadership of a completely unqualified manager, so there is that.

My incompetent publisher reminds me of politicians and CEOs who have overachieved somehow and are in positions where they don’t belong. These people, male and female alike, are like the dog that finally caught the tire of the car it was chasing, then didn’t know what to do with it after the chase ended. Or why it was even chasing the car to begin with.

The thing about the dog that caught the tire on the moving car: It probably miscalculated and got its head run over.

Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to fail. Or to lose.

Or even to quit.

Let’s hope.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There once was a blogger named Jim.
Whatever became of him?
He wrote every day
Then just went away.
Did he get mad and quit on a whim?

By Jim Hagarty
2016

My daughter says that I have a quirk when it comes to jokes. She doesn’t exactly say it’s an annoying quirk, but secretly, I think she believes it is.

Her contention is that if I tell a joke and no one laughs, instead of giving up on the joke, I keep telling it over and over to everyone I meet, even though no one ever laughs.

She’s right. But here’s my problem. If I find a joke funny, I come to believe in that joke, and like any good preacher, I want to bring others into the sunshine that warms my face. My jokes are my higher power and I am a humour evangelist.

When I was in university 45 years ago, I hung around with a very funny guy. He had a bunch of one liners always at the ready and he would whip them out when he wanted to make someone laugh. And laugh they always did.

Here is my favourite quip of his.

When anyone would ask him how he was doing, he would say to them, “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.” Now, the reason I found this so funny, and others did too, was the fact that he was standing there, perfectly healthy, explaining that he was just barely alive.

So, for 45 years, I have used this joke. Over and over and over. When a stranger, often a clerk in a store, asks me how I am, I tell them, “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.” In 45 years, I have had a total of probably three people laugh at my reply. Maybe it’s my delivery or maybe I live in the wrong part of the world.

But I do know one thing.

I am going to keep using this line till the day it comes true.

The nurse will ask, “Well how are we today, Mr. Hagarty.”

And I will say, “Oh, I’m able to sit up and take a little nourishment.”

And she won’t laugh. Instead she will fluff my pillow and hand me my pea soup.

My friend and fellow blogger Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com) is visiting his aunt in Florida and posted these photos tonight of flowers in her beautiful gardens.

I have been sitting watching TV news, all the while trying to think of something to write.

My screen is as blank as my mind. It is as though the normal merry-go-round in my head has come to a halt and been shut down for the night.

Every writer in any genre – novels, songs, short stories – seems to go through the same thing now and then and underlying it is a question that is never far away. Have I written everything I will ever write? Has the well run dry?

Self-doubt is part and parcel of the craft. To give an example, I look at the hundred and fifteen words I have just now written and think, “What crap.”

Some writers are very disciplined and therefore able to produce on command. I used to be this way in the newspaper business. I would interview someone, go back to the newsroom, write up the story. But I had my notes; the stories wrote themselves.

With creative writing, the game changes. The writer is dependent on inspiration. And sometimes that is in short supply.

©2016 Jim Hagarty