Me and the Man in the Moon

“There’s two lonely people
in the wholewide world
that’s me and the
man in the moon

Just before I’m counting sheep
Through my window
He comes to peep
and with each other we’re
sympathizing”

Trust Charles Phoenix to find and share the perfect picture for today’s anniversary of the first walk on the moon. (What, you don’t know Charles Phoenix? Quick, run right over and sign up for his slide of the week on his website and have delivered to your in box a photo like this along with commentary!)

Yes indeed, it’s an image of President Nixon speaking from the White House to the moon on an old black and white TV, much like the one many people watched the moon walk on. My parents had sold ours a few years before, so I missed seeing it live; instead I listened to it on the radio, imagining it, picturing the man on the moon, and the man in the moon.

“Mr. Moon, Mr Moon
You’re out too soon
While the sun is still in the sky
Go back to your bed and
Cover up your head and wait
’til the day goes bye.”

My grandmother, my father’s mother, watched it, watched the moon landing, the moon walk. She grew up during the Depression of the 1930s, and she thought walking on the moon was possibly the most amazing and exciting event of her entire life. She saved all the clippings about the moonwalk in a shoe box for my brother, who didn’t really seem to care,  one way or the other, and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Maybe he was too young.

He was the one presented with the shoe box. He was the oldest boy grandchild.

But I was the one who always yearned for the moon. And I always will be the one with the moon on my mind, and in my soul, the one singing “Me and the Man in the Moon.”

In the video, Fred Sokolow with Junior Brown and Ian Whitcomb play and sing “Me and the Man in the Moon” (available through aixrecords.com).

When I was growing up, we had a player piano and this was one of my favorite songs to play and to sing along. I know a bunch of songs like this one from the 20s and 30s, many of them very obscure to most people alive today.

One day, no one will be around who was alive for the moonwalk either.

Here are the lyrics to ME AND THE MAN IN THE MOON: James V Monaco (melody) Edgar Leslie (lyrics) 1928:

Why did my sweetie leave me?
Why did we have to part?
You know, no other sweetie can relieve me
Of this aching heart.

Why can’t I have the sunshine?
The sunshine instead of gloom?
Why must I have these little shadows
Creeping in my room?

When the night is dark and peaceful,
Loving hearts are all in tune,
There’s two lonesome people in the whole wide world,
It’s me and the man and the moon.

When the little birds are nesting,
And I listen to them croon,
There are two lonesome people in the whole wide world,
It’s me and the man and the moon.

While I lie there counting sheep,
Through my window he comes to peep,
And with each other we’re sympathizing!

Oh, I’m looking at those happy people,
While they sit around and spoon,
There’s two lonesome people in the whole wide world,
It’s me and the man and the moon.

Oh, but if my sweetie keeps me waiting,
You know what I’m gonna do? I’ll get another sweetie, soon;
Because there’s two lonesome people in the whole wide world,
It’s me and the man and the moon.

Oh, how I miss his ukulele,
And the way he strums those tunes,
‘Cause there’s two lonesome people in the whole wide world,
It’s me and the man and the moon.

When the creepy shadows fall,
And the boogie man comes to call,
I need two lovable arms around me!

You know, and if my sweetie keeps me waiting,
You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get myself a big balloon, a big one,
And I’ll travel through the air in that big balloon and have a love affair,
With the man in the moon!

[ Me And The Man In The Moon Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]

For more poetry, take a ride on the train!