Jim Hagarty

Some people enjoy shopping for clothes and if I can ever bring myself to go out and buy a hat, it will be off to them.

You know the type. They stroll by a store on their way to mail a letter, see a sweater they like in the window, walk in, try it on, buy it and wear it home. Life is easy for these people.

In contrast, there are many unfortunate souls in the world who haven’t a clue what they like, what’s in, what looks good and what goes with what. For them, the experience of buying clothes is unpleasant at best, traumatic at worst.

They are a confused group, wishing they could look like the people in the catalogue pictures but never quite managing it. The latest fashion trends are always disappearing over the top of the next hill just as they come to the bottom of the one before it.

Two years after the very last person to ever wear a red and yellow striped velour pullover with a zipper in the collar and a giraffe on the breast pocket has thrown the garment away, they go out and buy one.

These people can most often be seen circling the clothing racks in the stores with stunned and saddened looks upon their faces. They know they have to purchase something, or face being mistaken for a vagrant the next time they walk down the street, but they just wish they didn’t have to be the ones to do the buying.

If someone else would bring them home a big box of clothes once a year, heave it on the floor at their feet with orders to, “Here. Wear these!”, they would. And they’d be perfectly happy to do so.

The problem with these otherwise-normal individuals cannot be fully understood without considering certain aspects of their characters.

First off, for the most part, they grew up in frugal homes where the early years of their lives were spent walking around in clothes several other people had walked around in before them.

To find out what they’d be wearing in the coming year, they only had to look at what their slightly older relatives wore the year before.

This was a good system and they wish it was still in effect. Even now, they often have to resist the urge to go up to a person wearing something they like and say, “You mind lettin’ me know when you’re through with that shirt?”

Unfortunately, to their eternal woe, this hand-me-down business led these people to believe clothing should cost very little. Free is about the right price to pay, in their minds.

Therefore, long after the aunts have stopped bringing around the cardboard boxes filled with the cousins’ socks, shoes, shirts and shorts, they just can’t get used to paying for what used to cost them nothing.

They become, in time, professional bargain hunters, proud to tell you about the amazing distance they can stretch a penny. Nothing could make them happier than to get three nice belts for five bucks or two neckties for 99 cents. While this practice may keep them in belts and ties, it rarely keeps them in style.

The second flaw in the personalities of these people is their obstinate disregard for the importance of clothing. They acknowledge clothes are a handy way to keep strangers from staring at the naked body and yes, they sure work good for keeping out the wind, rain, cold and sun, but beyond that, their value is limited.

To the observation, “That coat is really you,” they’re liable to say in all grumpiness, “No it isn’t. I’m me. That coat is that coat. But if you think it’s me, let it pay for itself and the two of us will be glad to get out of here.”

To these people, keeping dressed falls about in the same category as keeping fed. These are things you certainly have to do, all right, but they’re not the sorts of activities you want to go and make a big event out of. They generally consider a $5.95 restaurant meal an extravagance that shouldn’t be repeated too often.

The final and most important reason many neople have trouble buying new clothes is they don’t want to part with the old ones. They’re sentimental about their old shirts, sweaters, pants, and yes, even their old socks.

That old jacket, for example, was bought with some of the money from their first full-time job and while the job and the rest of the money are long gone, the coat’s still here. To throw it out would be to toss away several years of memories and they worry their new life might get stranded out there in mid-air if they get rid of all the things that connect it to their old one.

That’s why, when they do finally get all their new clothes home and hung in their closet, they usually say, “There. That oughta do me for a while,” and then they put on their old jeans, socks, T-shirt and running shoes – the very things they bought the new clothes to replace.

Animals are lucky. Nature gives them one coat when they’re born, they wear it 10 or 20 years and take it with them when they leave.

How efficient.

©1987 Jim Hagarty

I used to be a cigarette smoker.

But I finally quit…

Twenty-three years ago.

That number 23, as it turns out, is a rather significant part of this story.

I am not advising you to quit, or to start or to sort of quit or sort of start or anything. What you do with your money and your body is entirely up to you. Obviously.

However, I do have an experience to share, from which, if you are quitting or have quit smoking, I hope you can benefit.

A few weeks ago, my life insurance agent requested we meet to review my policy with his company. Being an efficient businessman, he had a printout of my document which he presented to me when we met. I reviewed it, carefully, and all seemed in order.

But one element of it jumped out at me.

The word “Smoker” which appeared by my name.

Indeed, at the time I took out the policy, in 1983, I was a walking chimney, a full two years away from butting out for good.

Even then, insurance companies were onto the notion that smokers die earlier than non-smokers so they attached a surcharge on my premium. A 33.3 per cent surcharge, in fact, to cover their increased risk.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said my agent when I revealed my present non-smoking status. “You could have saved a third of your premiums all these years.” He informed me that, in spite of his regrets, that ship had sailed.

That’s kind of like being told your winning lottery ticket went out with the recycling or that you left the building before your grand prize ticket for the Ford Mustang was drawn and not being there in person, they awarded it to someone else.

I walked back to my office dazed and crestfallen, feverishly doing a lot of math in my head. Twenty three years. Thirty three and one third. Divide such and such, multiply so and so.

By the time I was through, I had reached a rough figure of almost $3,000 that had needlessly left my pocket in the 276 months since I gave up tobacco in any form.

Now, all I could see before me is the super duper big-screen TV and home stereo system that that kind of money would have bought me.

And the fact that instead of looking at wonderful widescreen images, all I had to show for $3,000 was a piece of paper with “Smoker” written on it.

It was enough to make me want to jump off a bridge. The nearest one was a culvert over the Waldie Drain and I’m not sure that would have accomplished the desired result.

In any case, that might have made my life insurance policy null and void with my estate receiving not a penny. That would really make me mad.

Instead, I simply fumed as I walked and eventually the thought came to me: “I need a cigarette.”

Fortunately, all feelings of futility – just like any chances at the monster TV – and cravings passed.

But as you can see, the matter still weighs heavily on my mind.

So, if you’ve quit smoking, for heaven’s sake, call your life insurance company. If you happen to save a thousand or two as a result of my advice, feel free to forward all commissions to my office in my name.

Or drop by and see me. I’m the sad one, not smoking. And not watching a monster TV.

©2008 Jim Hagarty

By coincidence, 42,000 little red ants and I arrived at the lake to go sunbathing at the same time – me in my car with my sunglasses and shorts and they, I presume, in their little red ant bus.

We all walked down the hill to the water’s edge – each of them took 5,000 steps to every one of mine – and we arrived at our destination more or less together. They watched patiently as I spread my big beach blanket on the ground and having forgotten to bring theirs, as soon as I stretched out they all ran onto mine.

And onto me.

I love tiny red ants running all over my body and I think it’s cute the way they bite into my skin like I was a big cob of buttered sweet corn, but I have a peevish streak in me I can’t explain so I spent the next two hours launching ants into orbit by flicking them like mini-crokinole buttons.

They thought I was just playing a game so as soon as they hit the ground they headed straight for the blanket again. They liked that game better than the thumping running shoe one, however, from which they did not recover as quickly as from the flying fore-fingernail.

To prevent this activity from becoming boring by the sheer repetition of it, I sat up, stretched a blade of grass to the proper tightness between my thumbs and putting my mouth up to the makeshift whistle, blew several “phleet, phleet” sounds across the waters and banks of the lake.

Before long, some other fun-loving, ant-covered sunbather “phleeted” back through the reed between his thumbs and within minutes, there was a chorus.

My mournful “phleets” were answered by the various occupants of towels spread here and there across the lake banks and we all soon sounded like a bunch of lovesick, ring-necked blade phleeters who couldn’t quite find each other.

A hundred seagulls, however, had no trouble following the original phleeting sound, the call which had emanated from my thumbs first, and eventually, they left the lake’s surface and hovered and circled above me and the ants like vultures over a carcass in the desert.

I sat in wait for the worst sensation in life – the feeling of something wet on your head when you’re outside and it isn’t raining.

Ignoring, as best I could, the industrious ants which were busy mapping out roadways on my blanket and my back, and the lovemad seagulls which were circling in ever lower circles above me, I lay back to suntan, which had been the original purpose of my visit to the lake.

And as I lay there roasting in the late afternoon sun, I took out the book I had brought along. For an hour, I read this short paragraph over and over: “For once in his life, Carlos knew he was truly alone. He could see, at last that only he was left to slay the dragons in his path – that he could expect no help, nor even, encouragement. It was a lonely, chilling moment, but a liberating one, too.”

The average reader might have wanted to find out how Carlos made out with the dragons and I probably did too but try as I might, I couldn’t get past that paragraph. I would read it, then look up to flick a dozen ants and shoo a dozen gulls away and when I’d finally turn back to the page, I’d start over at the beginning of the same paragraph.

I did, however, get pretty good at reading it and can quote it to this day.

As the sun finally started to set, I prepared for home. I had to first evict the hordes of ants which were turning my old running shoes into ant condos and shake dozens of their relatives and friends from my blanket.

Sundbathing’s for the birds. And the ants.

Not for human beings.

©1988 Jim Hagarty

Mass has ended, Go in Peace

I don’t often have much reason anymore to drive along Highway 23 between Bornholm and Monkton but a couple times a year or more, I somehow end up at a place called Kennicott, about halfway between the two communities.

It’s hard to say whether or not anyone knows for sure where Kennicott begins and ends but a good guess would be that it starts at an old one-room school and Catholic church and ends a half a mile north at a corner on which still stands a big brick building that once served, in my memory, as a grocery store, and I believe, before that, as a country inn.

In any case, Kennicott – named after a man by the last name of Kenney – doesn’t often make it into the big news picture, but this week it did. The parishoners at an old Roman Catholic country church called St. Brigid’s learned that it is all but certain it will be closed in 2008.

This won’t come as a surprise or a shock to many people who belong to the church, but it still must be hard for them to see the declaration posted on a website, announced from a pulpit and printed in a newspaper.

I say “them” because I moved away almost 30 years ago and haven’t been inside the church more than a dozen times since then.

And while it is not my church any more, it is a big part of my history and I will miss it when it is closed – or even torn down.

St. Brigid’s, of course, is more than a building, and so the community of Catholics will live on, but the clock for them will be turned back more than 150 years. When my ancestors first came from Ireland and settled at Bornholm, there was no St. Brigid’s and they had to make the long trek with horse and buggy to a small Irish community now called Kinkora which did have a Catholic parish and church building and still does.

In fact, my family’s association with that church dates well before the Kennicott one and my great-grandparents names can still be seen on a stained glass window their descendants bought for them after their deaths in the 1870s.

Eventually, however, the northern parts of Logan Township and Perth County were settled and the desire for a church of their own took hold of the mostly Irish pioneers of the region.

In time, a priest travelled to the area to minister to their needs and a wood-framed and wood-sided St. Brigid’s was built.

In the 1890s, my great-grandfather’s sister, Ellen Uniac, who lived next door to the church, was the first to notice a fire that had broken out inside and despite efforts to save it, the building was destroyed.

Out of the ashes rose a fine new brick church with a tall steeple housing a large bell. And one of the parishioners who lent his skills and muscle to the building task was John Hagarty, my great-grandfather, an Irish immigrant whose old country church back in Ireland, which once had a thatched roof, is still standing and open for business.

It looks now as though that church in County Cork, Ireland, and another newer one built in 1831 which he would have also attended, will outlive the one he helped build in Canada.

So for generations, St. Brigid’s was home to my family, and all our marriages, births and deaths were taken care of from that building. My parents were married there, their seven children were baptized there. And when Mom and Dad died, the masses that were celebrated for them took place there.

I spent so much time in that church in the first 18 years of my life, I can still close my eyes and see every square inch of it.

Our family always sat three rows from the front on the left side of the church. Close to all the action. Woe to the occasional visitors who sat there by accident before we arrived for Mass.

Memories include my many, many (well-deserved) trips to the confessional, praying the Stations of the Cross on Friday afternoons, card parties, bingos and great meals in the basement, and playing guitar in the folk choir.

And when I was younger, running around on the lovely church grounds with the other boys while the adults stood around outside and visited after Sunday mass.

Years ago, I could stop in to St. Brigid’s Church any time during the week, walk up the steps, open the door and have the inside to myself for as long as I wanted to sit and think or not think. And I did do that now and then.

Somewhere along the line, in response to an increasingly complicated world, the doors of the church were no longer open all day, every day.

Two years from now, barring a miracle, they’ll be closed forever.

(Update 2015: The church did close its doors. But nine years after I wrote this, it still stands. I took a tour inside a couple of years ago. It looks every bit the same as I remember it, though it is not being used at present. It was officially “de-sanctified” and will not be a Catholic church again. Its former parishoners have moved on to churches in the surrounding communities of Listowel, Mitchell, Stratford and Dublin.

©2006 Jim Hagarty

Back in 1979, when I was a reporter at The Advocate, in the small town of Mitchell, Ontario, Canada, a feud broke out between town council and its police force.

The police chief, in particular, and some members of council, had been stirring a pot of miscommunication and misunderstanding for some time – I did a fair amount of stirring myself – and it eventually spilled over that year.

The resulting furor began attracting the attention of the news media outside of Mitchell, beginning with the daily newspaper in Stratford where I now live and then extending to larger papers further away and even TV stations in Toronto and London.

One Mitchell businessman, Tom Ryan, who owned a lunch counter on the main street at the time, was especially vocal in his support of then-Police Chief Stewart Stark and in his opposition to the approach town council was taking to its “police problems.”

Besides appearing at council meetings and writing letters on the issue to the local newspaper, Mr. Ryan also started up a petition calling on the town to set up a police commission and abandon the committee of council which had been in charge of police matters.

This was escalating the debate to a new high – or low – depending on your perspective at the time.

One day, my phone rang in The Mitchell Advocate office. A woman on the line from CBC Radio’s As It Happens program in Toronto called to say the show was trying to reach Tom Ryan but hadn’t had any luck. She wondered if I could find him and promised she’d call back in 15 minutes.

This is when you know you are living in a small town.

Dashing across the street to the lunch counter, I found Mr. Ryan flipping hamburgers at his grill. When I told him As It Happens wanted to speak with him, he put down his spatula and strode across Ontario Street to my desk at the newspaper.

When the phone rang again, all of us who worked at the paper got on the other phones in the office so we could listen in.

“In 30 seconds, Barbara Frum will come on the line,” the radio show’s advance person said to Mr. Ryan. Ms. Frum was one of the no-nonsense hosts of the show. Her son David Frum can often be seen on TV commenting on U.S. politics today.

I don’t know how Tom Ryan or the rest of us thought this big-time journalist from Toronto would handle this story, but we weren’t long in finding out.

Barbara Frum didn’t take his side. Or the side of the police.

But neither was she pro-town council.

One of the things she did do, pretty abruptly as I recall, was to question Mr. Ryan’s motives in getting up his petition. She asked him point blank if this wasn’t just a start of his campaign to become the next mayor of Mitchell.

No shrinking violet himself, Tom Ryan handled his exchange with Barbara Frum well. But he was not given an easy ride. On the other hand, he was given the chance to express his views to however many thousands of people listened to As It Happens at that time.

As it did happen, Tom Ryan never did run for mayor. A police commission was set up. The turmoil finally did die down and there is peace between the town and its police force today.

Many people are saying, this week, that what made Barbara Frum such an effective interviewer was her lack of fear of others. She never stood in awe of the high and mighty, nor was she afraid to take on the ordinary man or woman whom other journalists might be inclined to tip-toe around.

She was great.

©1992 Jim Hagarty

Ever since the day I found out that one of the main political promises of the Rhinoceros Party of Canada is to save energy by lowering the boiling point of water by two degrees, I knew my days as a political rolling stone had come to an end.

I had found a home.

It isn’t that I have any particular bone to pick with our nation’s mainstream parties because I don’t. It just seems to me they’re plain tired out from 121 years of thinking up ideas for ways to solve the many problems we Canadians have.

What we need in this country are fresh approaches devised by fresh minds and the minds of most Rhino Party members are so fresh you’d swear they were still alive.

In the 25 years since they were formed, the Rhinos have hit the nail on the head with many of their political planks. (Actually, they hit each other on the head with the planks first, then the nail.)

A look at the Rhinos’ platform shows that it’s much more than just a stage they’re going through. (In actual fact, they rent their platform and take it back after every public meeting.)

The Rhinoceros party is up front with Canadians. Until this year, their central advice to candidates has been: “If elected, take the money and run.” Since then, they’ve discovered that, if you’re elected, you don’t have to run so now their motto is: “Take the pay and stay.”

They resent being brushed off as a fringe party and refer to themselves instead as a fridge party.

The Rhinos are practical and down to earth in their plans. They promise, for example, to create national unity bulldozing down the Rocky Mountains. And to establish full diplomatic relations between Canada and Antarctica.

Although I’ve never been a political activist, I hope some day to be part of the Rhinoceros Party’s policy formulation council. Because I have a lot of innovative ideas for this country.

For example, I think the plan to build a bridge between mainland Canada and Prince Edward Island is shortsighted. Why not carry on the bridge all the way over to Europe with a pedestrian walkway on one side and a bicycle lane on the other?

To solve our day-care woes, I propose the naming of a federal Minister of Babysitting and sending all the kids to his place. In fact, day-care problems could be permanently eliminated through a ban on physical contact between males and females.

And we should go ahead with free trade but insist the Americans send us two boxtops or a reasonable facsimile for every free gift they order from us.

I think it’s time to end aid to farmers. Why can’t they just get their food at the store like all the rest of us?

And we should send out government pamphlets to the country’s illiterate population, explaining what they can do to solve their problem.

Speaking of cutbacks, by eliminating taxes, we could cut back on the number of things that are certain in this world and as for dying, we could all avoid that simply by staying up all night.

Poverty would be ended if every Canadian was paid in lottery tickets instead of dollars.

Senate reform doesn’t need to be the big deal it’s become. Why don’t we just name every Canadian citizen a senator and at least that way, we’d all be taken care of for life?

I say, let the Rhinos take charge. Because if there’s one thing Rhinos do well it’s charge.

©1988 Jim Hagarty

Once in a while, the Universe comes through.

A fitness place has opened up next door to my house. Not five doors down – next door.

Among the members of this establishment are about 25 young, beautiful women who need fitness training like I need caramel popcorn training.

And on several days of the week and at various times of the day, these women emerge from the fitness centre wearing skintight outfits and jog up and down the sidewalk right in front of my house, about 20 feet away from me.

They all lope like pony-tailed gazelles down to the end of the street, then turn around and jog past my house again, return to the fitness place and then do this all over. Ten or 20 times at a stretch.

They don’t run as a big group, but one at a time with about 10 paces between them, like a speeded up fashion runway, if the fashions were all painted on.

I have never spent much time on our front porch. It is too hot there in the afternoon when the sun beats down.

But lately it’s been hot out there in the morning and evening too, and yet I find myself sitting out there a lot more than I ever have in the past. Pop and chocolate bar in hand, dog by my side, unread book at the ready.

I swear I didn’t train him to do this but the dog sits by the front window all day and barks like mad when the joggers start, which is our cue to go out for some fresh air.

There are a few thousand houses in my town. Almost none of them has as fitness place right next door to them.

I can’t explain it. Just another happy Mystery of the Universe.

There must be someone, somewhere out there that I need to thank for this. Cardiac arrest might be just around the corner, but what a way to go!

©2014 Jim Hagarty

“If I were you,” said the voice on the other end of the telephone line, “I wouldn’t worry about that little bit of water in your basement. Doesn’t sound like any big deal to me.”

What a relief I felt to know that the trickle on the cellar floor was only a small problem, requiring only a minimum amount of time, work and money to remedy. I was glad because I don’t like spending money and I’m not particularly crazy about work. Especially hard work.

A number of simple solutions were suggested and I tried them. The trickle turned into a stream and the stream became a pool. I asked for more advice.

“If I were you, I’d take up that patio along the back of the house,” said the voice. “It has settled and is tipped in against your wall. That’s what’s directing the water into your cellar.”

The jackhammer and crowbar cost me only $50.29 to rent for one day. I shook myself silly Friday night and Saturday but by Sunday, my concrete patio was rubble. Monday it rained. The basement flooded.

“If I were you, I’d take up the sidewalk too,” said the voice.
Another $33.71 and six more shaky hours and the sidewalk lay in pieces. It rained. Outside and inside the house.

Where I used to have a wet basement, now I had three tons of broken concrete in my back yard – and a wet basement.

“You know, if I were you, I’d get one of those big blue steel bins delivered to your place to put the broken concrete in,” said you know who. I did. Cost me $52. Plus $22.79 rental on the heavy duty wheelbarrow to carry the concrete into the bin.

For eight hours, I worked harder than the men who built the pyramids, wheeling concrete from the back yard to the front.

As my water problem was concentrated along the back wall of the house, the suggestion was made that I dig down in one particular spot and see if there was a broken weeping tile. I did that, after I bought a new, heavy shovel, for $29.95. And a pair of rubber boots – $11.63. Gloves – $2.66.

Two days later, I’d shovelled several hundred pounds of clay away and stood in a hole five feet deep. No broken tile.

“It’s not my house, but if I were you,” said my adviser, “I’d dig down all along the back wall and check all the tiles. There might be roots in them or clay.”

So I went back to my digging but I soon realized the job was too much to do by hand. I realized it when I could not longer straighten my back or get out of bed in the morning.

I called up a backhoe operator. He told me it didn’t make sense to just do along the back wall. May as well dig up around the entire house.

“Go ahead,” I said. I was so tired, if he’d said it would be best to dig a hole in the back yard and bury the house, I would have said the same thing.

So, he dug with his big machine and I shovelled and by the end of an afternoon, the walls of my house were exposed, all the way down to the foundation along with the red clay tiles.

I paid him $160.

“To tell you the truth, if I were you,” said the voice that night, “I’d replace the old tile. Take ’em right out. Put down new black plastic perforated tile. And don’t forget to put plastic over those piles of dirt because if it rains heavy, those banks will cave in.”

The plastic to cover the banks which caved in three times anyway cost me $25.25 and the tile another $51.09. After hours of back-breaking digging and pulling, I got the old tile out. Put down the new tile.

No sense putting in tile without a couple of feet of drainage stone over top of it. One load, $95.16. Hours on the end of the shovel and wheelbarrow.

After a few more, If I Were Yous, this is what I’d spent: asphalt to patch the cracks in the walls, $23.43; trowel, $4.27; wheelbarrow rental, $7.60; finally smartened up and bought a wheelbarrow, $74.89; line level, $4.16; chalkline, $2.87; rental of power sprayer to clean the walls, $53.50; charge for getting walls sprayed with tar, $130; to have rubbish removed, $20; return of the backhoe to fill in the trenches, $76; dehumidifier for the basement, $342.39; rental of folding chairs for party to forget my troubles, $12.

When I woke up this spring, the grounds around my house looked like Beirut after a lively night.

Last weekend, I rented a rototiller to work up the soil – $43.87. It got away on me and one of its tines ripped through the bottom panel in my aluminum storm door. Probably $200 to replace the door.

The ground settled and I’m going to need topsoil: $150. Grass seed to repair lawn, $20. Who knows what a new patio and sidewalk will cost?

Today, I have a dry basement. There is $1,699.51 of my money sitting in the accounts of various businesses around the city. I get Christmas and birthday cards from the equipment rental place.

I’ve developed a permanent sigh and I cry easily.

My favourite expression is, “How much would that be?”

“You know, if I were you,” Mr. Advice said to me the other day, “I’d just be glad you were able to do the work yourself. Imagine if you had had to hire it all done.”

I was tempted to tell the caller to dry up but the last time I discussed the concepts of wet and dry with him, I got soaked.

©1987 Jim hagarty

Getting a lot of help with my mental health this weekend from my favourite psychiatrists, Dr. Klaw Hammer, Dr. Hans Sawyer and Dr. Shuv Hull (all of them Swedish). Dr. Lief Rake made a brief appearance as did Dr. Finash Nailz (from Finland). We held several sessions outdoors. Dug deep into my issues, cut through a lot of boardem and I think we pretty much nailed it. Feeling much better tonight. A few more sessions tomorrow. All of them work for peanuts which is great because Dr. Colm Poster just eats up any leftovers.

©2014 Jim Hagarty

Basically, on the topic of sleep and how best to come by it, world opinion separates into two camps.

Some say – and this is the older theory – that peace and quiet will help bring on the state of slumber. This approach led to the development of the Do Not Disturb sign.

Other, more modern thinkers, believe noise, or at least sound, is the essential ingredient in snooze inducement. Turn on a vacuum cleaner, washing machine or lawnmower, they say, and the rhythmic decibels which emanate from them will konk out even the most previously wide-awake person.

These no-peep-no-sleep theorists believe sounds from motors have hypnotic, soothing effects on people, especially babies. What they forget is that a baby’s purpose in life is to sleep, among a few other functions. They know how to do this very well and never need any auditory encouragement.

But even if the theory does hold some validity for infants, it gets a little weak when it’s applied to adults who have a lot more sleep-preventing things going on inside their heads most of the time. One of those things is worrying about their babies sleeping in the next room.

The nod-off-to-noise notion was originated years ago by the makers of clocks and of radios who were alarmed, so to speak, at how their sales were failing off. After years of doing brisk businesses, almost everybody who wanted alarm clocks and radios had all they needed.

So, putting their heads together, the manufacturers of radios and alarm clocks came up with the radio-alarm clock, the perfect solution for falling to sleep and for waking up pleasantly in the morning.

Having trouble doing both, I wandered into a store recently, put down $29.95 and brought home technology’s flashy cure for insomnia.

“Drift off to sleep to the soothing sounds from your radio,” the owner’s manual reads, “and wake up hours later to your favourite music.” What could be simpler? Or more effective?

Beats leaving your vacuum cleaner or lawnmower running all night.

The first night I had it, I could hardly wait to go to bed. As it was, I headed there a half hour earlier than usual, just to try it out. I set the time I wanted to wake up, then hit the sleep button and on came the music. It stayed on for 59 minutes and then the radio shut off until morning when it came back on at the preset time.

Drift off to music, wake up to music. A dream, so to speak, come true.

As I lay there listening to the mellow sounds from the radio, I could feel my eyes get heavy and I thought, “Isn’t technology wonderful?” That’s the last thing I remember until 6:30 the next morning when I briefly woke up to music and as I drifted off again, I thought, “Isn’t technology wonderful?”

I woke up late and got to work late and that night it occurred to me: “You can’t have it both ways. If the music puts you to sleep, it’s not going to wake you up too.”

So, that night, I switched the wake button to “alarm” instead of “music” and at 6:30 the next morning, a faint “beep, beep, beep” slipped lightly from the radio speaker, and I barely came to.

Experimenting, I realized that, the beep was controlled by the radio’s volume switch and that if I wanted it to be loud enough to wake me in the morning, I’d have to keep the radio turned up loud when I put it on at bedtime. This I did and eventually got used to drifting off to sleep to the loud sounds of soft music.

This worked until my favourite bedtime radio station started switching over to rock music at the same late hour every night so while I’d drift asleep to the soft sounds of Catch A Falling Star by Perry Como, I’d awake a half hour later to the rockin’ hellroar of Love Stinks by J. Geils.

But the problems reached their peak when I became so attuned, so to speak, to falling asleep to music, that I no longer can sleep without it. So now, every 59 minutes, when the radio automatically shuts off, I automatically wake up, reach over and hit the sleep button again so it will carry on for another 59 minutes.

This goes on all night.

And lately, every time I hear a radio, I want to roll over and go to sleep. This is not handy when I’m driving in my car.

Now I am looking for a device which helps a person sleep without sound.

If it doesn’t plug into a wall, I’ll buy it.

©1989 Jim Hagarty