{"id":5367,"date":"2018-12-01T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T19:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=5367"},"modified":"2018-12-01T14:21:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T19:21:00","slug":"it-was-midnight-on-the-ocean-not-a-streetcar-was-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/01\/it-was-midnight-on-the-ocean-not-a-streetcar-was-in-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"It Was Midnight on the Ocean, not a Streetcar Was in Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

My longtime readers may remember me mentioning my maternal grandfather.\u00a0 He was the one who took on the pseudonym Charlie Young and lied about his age in order to enlist for World War One.\u00a0 He was an extremely colorful character who was a cop in New York City during the first half of the twentieth century.\u00a0 Toward his own children he was the typical autocratic Italian American man.\u00a0 But toward his grandchildren he was like a big kid.\u00a0 He brought us out for hamburgers and ice cream and whatever else he could think of.\u00a0 He would tell us stories of the old days. Some of them quite remarkable.\u00a0 And whenever things got quiet, he\u2019d sing some variation of a song that we thought he had just made up.\u00a0 It would usually go something like this,<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was midnight on the ocean<\/p>\n

Not a streetcar was in sight<\/p>\n

Me and my old friend (fill in the name of a particular grandson)-boy<\/p>\n

Were eating by the candle light<\/p>\n

When along came a big whale<\/p>\n

And washed us all away<\/p>\n

Then grandma came along and saved the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now this song varied by the identity of the grandchild and the details of the trip we were on.\u00a0 But it was mostly along these lines.\u00a0 And to a little kid who was out on a fun car ride and getting fast food hamburgers and ice cream it was Beethoven\u2019s Ode to Joy.\u00a0 Well my grandfather\u2019s been gone about thirty five years and about ten years ago it occurred to me to try to find the lyrics to his little poem on the internet.\u00a0 And what do you know?\u00a0 It turns out it\u2019s an old English nonsense poem.\u00a0 And more to the point a song was made out of it by an American country singer named Harry McClintock back in the 1920s called Ain\u2019t We Crazy<\/a> (catch the words at the 1:00 mark of the song).<\/p>\n

Well, at the time the song was only available as part of an imported music collection that cost $600 so I couldn\u2019t buy it then.\u00a0 But this week I found it on an inexpensive album on Amazon and got it.\u00a0 It turns out McClintock also has a song that ended up on the \u201cO Brother Where Art Thou\u201d soundtrack (Big Rock Candy Mountain).\u00a0 I guess he\u2019s not as obscure as I thought.<\/p>\n

I sent the above link to my siblings and cousins and many of them have the same fond memories that I have of this little ritual my grandfather had.\u00a0 I think I will adopt it with my grandchildren.\u00a0 Of course, I\u2019ll have to personalize it for each of them but that\u2019s half of the fun of it anyway.\u00a0 And while I\u2019m at it I\u2019ll tell them stories about their great-great-grandfather Charlie Young who went off to war as a very young doughboy and shot it out with 1920s gangsters from the running board of a speeding car.\u00a0 They\u2019ll probably think it\u2019s as crazy as the song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My longtime readers may remember me mentioning my maternal grandfather.\u00a0 He was the one who took on the pseudonym Charlie Young and lied about his<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[552,551,1263],"tags":[1549,1472,1550],"class_list":["post-5367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-music-reviews","category-music-reviews","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-aint-we-crazy","tag-charlie-young","tag-harry-mcclintock"],"yoast_head":"\nIt Was Midnight on the Ocean, not a Streetcar Was in Sight - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/01\/it-was-midnight-on-the-ocean-not-a-streetcar-was-in-sight\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It Was Midnight on the Ocean, not a Streetcar Was in Sight - 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