By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker
I believe my senses are failin’
Whenever I hear Sarah Palin.
She seems to use words
In ways never heard.
And after I feel like I’m ailin’.
Month: July 2016
Spot of Colour
Another fine photo from my friend and fellow blogger Al Bossence (thebayfieldbunch.com).
The Last Time
By Jim Hagarty
We have all experienced the sense of deja vu. It’s a weird trip.
But there is another phenomenon and I don’t know if it is a real thing.
Have you ever had a feeling, after speaking with someone you know, that this was the last time you will ever see that person?
It just happened to me now.
Strange feeling. Sad but also, “OK, so where do I go from here?”
Only One Around
By Jim Hagarty
There are 29 places in the world named London. I live not far from the London in Ontario, Canada, named, of course, after the big cheese in England.
There are 26 Stratfords in the world. I live in one of them, the one in Ontario, Canada. (I have to specify that because there is at least one more in Canada.) I am going to guess the original is Stratford-upon-Avon in England, again.
But move over English places. There are 72 Berlins on Earth. There was one just down the road from me, a big city in fact. But in the first World War, being identified with Germany did not look good on a resume and so the Berlin, Ontario, governors decided to change the name to Kitchener after a top Canadian military guy at the time. A hundred years later, there is a move afoot to change the name of Kitchener back to Berlin but it will not likely happen.
But I am here to tell you that there is only one Punkeydoodle’s Corners in the world. It’s a little place, with about five corners, located in the country a few miles from my place. Maybe 10 homes there. One business perhaps.
But 150 years ago, when this part of Canada was just opening up, the place was rockin’. And the story goes there was a pub. The owner was fond of singing, “Yankee Doodle came to town, riding on a pony …” The problem was, for some reason, he couldn’t pronounce “Yankee Doodle” and instead sang, “Punkey Doodle.” Soon, the little village became known as Punkeydoodle’s Corners. At least that is one theory about how the name came to be. There are others.
Years ago, a Canadian prime minister visited Punkeydoodle’s on an anniversary and made a dedication of some sort and a speech. New signs went up and I think they were promptly stolen, probably for a university residence room somewhere.
The newest signs seem to be lasting, however. Maybe because they are erected so high over the settlement.
Brown Bagger Alert
By Jim Hagarty
2006
I was making my lunch for work on Wednesday and as I spread the peanut butter and raspberry jam on the slices of whole wheat bread – I admit it, I’m a health food maniac – I got thinking about all the many years of brown bagging I have done since the 1950s.
There were first, of course, the lunches at public school, nicely done up by Mom in a tin lunch box (plastic not having arrived on the scene at that time). Sometimes, what was contained within the box made it into my stomach, but sometimes it didn’t. Opening the box, in fact, was akin, on certain days, to parading a wildebeest in front of a ravenous pride of mangy lions: only the inedible portions would be left for me after the bullies got done ripping and tearing.
Hunger in schools is a hot topic nowadays, as well it should be, but it existed back in my day too, and in my case, not because provisions were not sent along on each day’s adventure in staying alive one more day in the jungle that could be the rural, one-room schoolhouse. Other days, eating lunch in the “cloak room” – who wears a cloak, any more? – with all the other boys, lunch time turned into a sort of middle-Eastern market where fruit, vegetables, meats and juices were exchanged amidst loud shouting and waving of arms.
It seemed to be a truism that the other guy’s lunch always seemed better, and so, we learned early how to swing some pretty good deals. The dealers, however, were not always on equal footing, Grade 8’s, for example, offering swaps with the innocent chaps from grades one and two. I cannot remember specifically, but I am sure I took part in a few of these shameless swindles somewhere along the line.
Lunches then, as they still are, were rated on the goodies quotient – what quantity and quality of cookies and other sweets made it into our lunchboxes. At certain times of the year, after Halloween, Christmas and Easter, the haul could be counted on to be pretty good.
Brown bagging lost its appeal in high school, replaced instead by $1.25 or so of “lunch money” left on the counter and grabbed as we ran out the door. This was enough funds for not only a meal in the cafeteria, but a chocolate bar at the “tuck shop”. Later, however, some of the food got edged out as the cigarettes, at 45 cents a pack, made their arrival on the scene.
One member of my family, who still carried a brown bag to school, unfortunately grabbed a wrong bag in his haste one morning and ended up with a bag of cat scraps that day, food stuffs we affectionately called swill. The cats always looked back on that day with fondness as their lunch prospects took a sudden, if temporary, spike in quality.
Opportunities to make my own lunch in university, assuming they were ever there, were never taken and subs and pizza became dietary staples. I shudder to think of the money that flowed freely from my pockets in those days.
Then there were summer jobs – house painting, truck driving, factories, construction – where lunch bags reappeared. The same old anticipation of each day’s lunch in the construction shack or factory lunch room that was felt in public school returned on those jobs, as did the same old disappointment as reality set in. Envy of what the other guys had spread out before them was also a constant curse.
For the last almost 30 years, economic necessity has kept me pretty well chained to the brown bag, which has probably not been such a bad thing. Had my pockets been bulging with extra cash all this time and I could have dined in restaurants three times a day, especially those of the fast-food variety, I might well not be here to write about this.
An hour from the time of this writing, I’ll open my current lunch box, a big, solid red and white affair that looks like one of those special containers medics carry organs in on their way to a transplant, and I’ll spread out on my desk my sandwich, a banana, a glass of milk, a yogurt fruit bottom but most importantly, four caramel candies and a few chocolate chips. And, out of habit, I’ll check out what my co-workers brought and wish I’d had that instead.
All, that is, except for the caramels which l will jealously guard for myself, as any other self-respecting goodies hoarder would do.
Face to Face
From the camera of my son, Chris. JH
The Downsizing
By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker
A hardworking soul name of Kenny
Asked for a raise of one penny.
He was walked to the door.
“Don’t come back no more!”
And severance? He didn’t get any.
Unloved and Unlived In
By Jim Hagarty
In my travels tonight I saw this abandoned farmhouse and it took me back to a younger and braver me who would park my car and take a tour through an old place like this. I don’t know what fascinates me about forlorn old homes that are no longer lived in, but I have always had an interest in them. When I was a boy, my childhood chum and I worked up enough nerve one time to take a trip through an old house during the day time. We climbed the stairs and found a lot of papers in an upstairs room. The owner had been a teacher so he left behind a lot of his schoolwork when he moved on.
Maybe that’s where my interest started. We were sort like the Hardy Boys.
In my younger days, I drove across Canada a couple of times and visited various ghost towns in the western provinces. It was an eerie experience. The largest of the communities was in Alberta. It had streets, a downtown, a community centre, a church. Even a war memorial honouring men from the town who had fought and died in the world wars. The gas pump in an old station read 40 cents a gallon. But there was only one house inhabited on the edge of the village. The grass was green and cut. The house was kept up. I was told later it was probably a squatter from the city who had simply moved into the empty house one day. Live there long enough and it’s yours.
I remember seeing an abandoned farmhouse down a gravel back road in Saskatchewan. I parked, went inside and gave myself a tour.
I have lost all my nerve for that sort of thing now.
During the Great Depression, a farm family loaded their car with whatever it would hold and moved from their farmhouse in Saskatchewan to British Columbia where they started over. Forty years later, in the 1970s, on a trip east, they decided to drop in to their old place to see if it was still standing. It was there, so they went inside. It was obvious to them that no one had been inside their home in the four decades since they left it. It was like walking into a museum of their past. Photos on the walls, furniture as they had left it, curtains on the windows. They were enthralled.
It seems as though it would be impossible that no one had ever gone into their house but the territories are large in western Canada and the farmhouses can be far apart.
I can see it happening that no Jim Hagartys happened along to have a peek.
Whatever This Is
By Jim Hagarty
Seen on my noon hour walk around town today, this hot rod. Not sure what the body is from, but it doesn’t matter much now. The roof is attached with some mighty large rivets. It has a Beverly Hillbillies charm, even though its wheels and tires suggest it has been made for racing only.
Little Country Church
By Jim Hagarty
Years ago I was driving down a gravel road in my area of south-central Canada when I came by this little stone church. I have been fascinated with it ever since and drop by to pay a quiet visit at least once a summer.
Several aspects of the building interest me but here is the big one.
The church was built in 1863. That is no big deal. Lots of buildings that were built that year or even a century or two before that are still standing in North America. What I find intriguing about this particular building is that it was closed in 1872. It functioned as a church for only nine years. And despite the fact it has been closed for the past 153 years, it is still standing and relatively undisturbed.
The American Civil War was into its third year when this church was built. Abraham Lincoln was still alive. A lot of water under the bridge since then and yet, the church still stands. The fact that it is made of stone accounts for that. Had it been built with logs, it would be gone by now.
The church, known as St. Anthony’s, was a Roman Catholic mission church built by and for the Germans in the area near a little place called Tavistock. But as there was not a large enough German population in the area to sustain it, it closed. When it was in use, it was opened for a mass only once a month.
At some point during its post-church history, a school teacher and his chickens used to live inside the building.
Another reason I like the church is the reason it is still standing. By the 1920s, after it had been closed for almost 60 years, the church had fallen on hard times. It was deteriorating and in danger of returning to the earth. But the surrounding community of mostly Protestant church members, didn’t want to see it disappear. So a true community group of Catholics and Protestants formed a committee and once a year, a day-long bee would be held at the building. They resurrected it and looked after the church structurally as well as the church grounds.
Today, a hundred years later, the community still keeps the church going. And now it is opened once or twice a summer for a service and sometimes a wedding.
There are even recent burials on the church grounds. Because the church was open for such a short time, there are only a few original tombstones, most of them inscribed in the German language.
One thing I have never done is seen inside St. Anthony’s. I hope to do that someday.
If you are in the Stratford area of southern Ontario some day and would like to see the church, head south on the highway from the village of Shakespeare and turn left at the first sideroad. Drive about two miles. The church will be on your left.