moon-men . beach-schools . was I ever this young

My Dad had us believing the moon was made of cheese. So it was no surprise to me that Americans would make themselves a spaceship to discover the truth.

Jul 20, 2025

On the anniversary of the first moon walk fifty something years ago. I offer you a memory. First posted on my early substack in May, 2023. Edited today because no piece of writing is ever done! (Right?).

The Man in the Moon.

Where were you on that day and how old were you? (This is one of those days when we learn everyone’s age! 😆🥹😂)

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The Man in the Moon

It was July 20, 1969

I was nine, skinny, leggy, freckly, gangly, and awkward, with wayward thick, long, dark curls right down my back. My eyes were blue and my teeth crooked. My hand-me-down clothes never fit right; they were always either too big or I was growing out of them. It bothered my mum more than it bothered me. She told me I just had long arms, that's why my wrists were always sticking out. And that sounded perfectly feasible. Everyone wore hand-me-downs. Everyone was growing faster than their mums could sew.

We were a big family living in a sleepy New Zealand beach community in the North island. The beach-facing street was lined with beach houses full of kids, young families, and old people whose names we knew and whose houses we visited and whose secrets we invented.

Our school was called Westshore School. Did I tell you about our primary school? It was just up the road. Along the beach. Just above high tide. It was a beautiful little school with an enormous playground that reached to the dunes. The playground was in a large sports field and had monkey bars and a jungle gym for climbing on and three tall metal maypoles with long sturdy ropes attached that we would twirl round and round on, flinging ourselves about until we were dizzy; screaming with delight. Our skirts flying up to show our sensible white cotton knickers. Not that we gave a toss. But this story does not go to the playground.

The school was one long, low wooden building painted cream with green trim and a red corrugated iron roof. It was divided up into six classrooms and an office, with a long, wide verandah running along the front - an outside corridor, linking all the rooms. The verandah was deep and cool and faced the sea. All the classrooms had strong, tall concertina glass doors lined along the corridor like a multitude of fre j doors. The teachers would have us open up these doors on nice days. One entire side of the classroom would open to the morning sun, and the sea air. We would sit at our desks with no wall between us and the glorious sea air. I loved school.

The school was four or five blocks from home, really close. We always walked to and from school by ourselves. If no one was watching and the tide was low, we walked up the beach. But when I led the kids to school along the road above the beach, we would wave to Miss Jack (I must tell you about Miss Jack soon - she was scandalous), we would wave and chat to Mrs. Van my godmother and Mr. Rodgers by the shop. Collecting kids along the way.

Even at that age I hated being late so I made sure my brother and sisters and the neighbourhood kids left early enough so we could walk in a leisurely fashion to school. Chatting to our people. Walking on their fences and picking their flowers.

We would saunter along singing or fighting (mostly fighting to be honest) but always in a dream world of our own making. We had angels and fairies and ancestors and dead people and ghosts and saints and gods and dragons and knights all walking to school with us. We would talk to them and talk about them and our heads were as much in the fantasy world as they were in the real world.

In 1969 the outside world barely existed for us. We lived on a spit of land between the bay and a lagoon. We hardly crossed the bridge to town. We did not have a television. We never went to the movies or restaurants. My Dad was an only child and all Mum's relatives lived on another island so there were no big family gatherings. There was the old valve radio that Dad tuned very carefully every morning. (Valve radios have a very specific tone to the sound - so mellow - can you remember)? Dad who was a boat builder would listen for the fishing boats to call in with their boat names and ‘alls well’ as we ate the porridge he made, then when Mum got up I would hand her the baby and a cup of tea and she would listen to the concert program.

I would have walked to school on this day. With my brother and my little sisters, leaving the baby home with Mum. The day the moon was stepped on by a man in a funny hat.

It was winter, July is midwinter in New Zealand so I would have been wearing my navy woolen pinafore over some kind of skivvy and a well washed wooly cardigan with socks to my knees and hand me down buckle up shoes. My hair was only ever tied into a low ponytail - I detested plaits and Mum used to wack our legs with the hairbrush if we wriggled at hair time so we did not like to spend too long getting our hair done. Mum sitting behind us with a weapon meant we were very compliant. To be honest our Mum was a bit scary. My sisters were grateful when I took over hair time after baby was born.

Once we got to school in the fresh morning we went straight to the cloak room to drop off our bags and oil skin coats. We all brought our own lunch and drinks to school. And later we would eat sitting outside on the school porch no matter what the weather. But that was later.

Once I had delivered my little sisters to their classrooms I ran to mine.

My classroom were big and airy, with that huge wall of glass looking out to sea and the walls on the other side lined with our artwork. The floor-boards were shiny dark timbers. We had a small wooden desk each that was ours for the whole year. It had a hinged lid and a space to store our exercise books and pencil cases and a little hole on the edge for the pot of ink from the old days. We sat in old curved wooden chairs that always had little splinters to stick the unsuspecting kid so we smoothed our dresses under as we sat so our bare legs did not touch the seat of the chair.

We all assembled and stood by our desks that morning and gravely greeted our teacher - good morning, Mrs Jones.

This day promised to be different. The big wooden concertina doors between our two classrooms had been pulled open to make one really big classroom. One that could fit the whole school. And the principal was soon wheeling in a small black and white TV on a trolley. It was round-looking with ears like a rabbit.

Very few of us had even seen a TV let alone watched one. So we all stared in delight. I remember this rush of excitement about the television. I desperately wanted to know how they worked. We did not have a television in our home though sometimes we would sneak down the road and watch through the front windows of the Mitchell’s place opposite the surf life saving club. The Mitchells were rich and had recently brought a television so we would gather under the tree across the road from their front windows and secretly watch over their hedge and through their windows after tea.

We re-arranged the classroom per the Head Masters directions, Mrs Jones relaying his cheerful instructions. The desks were pulled to the back and sides and our class sat cross legged on the floor in the middle of the large room. Children from other classes began to file in. All gaping at the little box with the glass screen and the wiry antennas. Sitting in behind us. The teachers ringed the room. Standing.

Soon we were all sorted. A couple of classes sat cross legged on the floor. The little ones at the front. Another class sat on chairs behind them and another class sat on the desks behind them. Teachers leaned on the walls. The whole school was arranged with a view of this tiny television far off in the front of the room. Like an alien had stood up from a book preparing to speak.

The headmaster shuffled the bunny ears around and turned the trolley this way and that way and then all of a sudden there were people talking from the box and a picture of sorts, black and white and flickery. He twiddled with a dial and the voices were louder and to our delight they were American (which in itself was fascinating). The headmaster began to interpret and we were informed that those flickering images were the moon. And that men had landed there.

The room went totally silent.

Just the idea of America was pretty far-fetched in our fishing town. But the moon with men on it? Would they eat it? The cheese?

I looked around and the teachers were watching the little box with their mouths slightly open barely breathing.

The blurry black and white images coalesced into a person in a funny white suit in a black and white world bouncing down the steps of a spaceship. I caught my sisters eye. We believed in ghosts and angels and spirits and talking to each other with our minds so why not walk on the moon, I thought. Surely, what is all the fuss about? If we could have a guardian angel of our own and there were knights and princesses with hats like cones without ice-cream, then why were the grown ups getting so excited about a blurry man on the blurry moon. Of course we could walk on a moon. Or float on a moon if we wanted to. Obviously I had never believed the cheese story. But - you know.

The images we saw before the signal cut out began a whole lecture about the moon and space travel from the headmaster but I hardly listened; dreaming instead of that light unhurried bouncy walk the man had on the television moon. Maybe I could fly like that. The almost casual weightlessness of it seemed so natural. Flying in a spaceship to the moon seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

On the way home from school that day we bounced in slow motion, waving our arms about and greeting our knights and dragons and war-men with slow-motion moon bows and sing song moon voices. Laughing. Flying just a little bit every four or five bounces. Then a little bit more.

Bouncing on a moon of cheese.

Letters to My Mother, The Collection, is a series of stories from my childhood growing up on a beach in New Zealand- many, many years ago. The stories are interesting to untangle because they are written by an adult (me) using the memories of a child (me). Which makes them as fascinating to write, for me, as I hope they are to read, for you.

This period in my substack - almost two years ago now- is filled with stories such as these. Back in the day. Follow the link below if you would like to see the original post.

Don’t forget to leave a comment on your way out. Tell us your moon stories.

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