The song is about a midnight watchman confiding in a waitress, while drinking gin, about a woman that he met a week before and had a one-night stand with.
Record World called it a "distinctive Chapin narrative, this time a downbeat tale about two lonely people.
The song then takes the little man's point of view as he states that he is a midnight watchman at a place called Miller's Tool & Die.
He responds to the waitress a "crooked grin", finishes his drink, and acknowledges their shared loneliness by repeating the song's first refrain.
The live version was, until 2015 (when David Bowie's Blackstar took the title), the longest song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.