It's Also a Restaurant in St. Louis

Today was even warmer than yesterday, so warm that all of us could lounge around on the deck at one time or another during the day, the first time since very early October. Toward the end of the day, the street was alive with kids, including mine, running around or on bicycles or scooters. What are suburbs for, if not for child incubation?

But enough about the weather, since it will turn on us very soon. Instead, the phenomenon of listening to song lyrics of a song you've heard many times, but never, for whatever reason, actually listened to before. I suspect nearly everyone does this. For me, a recent example is Fats Domino's version of "Blueberry Hill."

That's the version that most people remember, though it doesn't take much investigation to know that other versions were done, including the first one by Gene Autry in a 1940 oater called The Singing Hill. Incidentally, one of the song's co-writers was Al Lewis, the Munsters' Grandpa and an unrepentant Castroite till the day he died last year.

Maybe most everyone who knows the song realizes it's a lament. But that didn't occur to me until the other day. The first few lines, of course, have a wink-wink-nudge-nudge flavor:

I found my thrill
On Blueberry Hill
On Blueberry Hill
When I found you.

But that doesn't last.

The wind in the willows played
Love's sweet melody
But all the vows we made
Were never to be
Though we're apart,
You're part of me still
For you were my thrill
On Blueberry Hill