I like to be in America! O.K. by me in America! Everything free in America! For a small fee in America!

One habit Mrs. RWP and I have developed is stopping every Sunday morning on the way to church to have a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant with hash browns (potatoes) and coffee at our local Burger King. Usually there are old songs being piped throughout the establishment (to help us digest our food, I suppose, or to hurry us along to make room for other customers).

A couple of weeks ago I heard "That's The Way (Uh Huh, Uh Huh) I Like It (Uh Huh, Uh Huh)" and was sure it was being performed by either Creedence Clearwater Revival or Hall & Oates. When I looked it up on my widdle smartphone, however, I was completely wrong. It was by KC & The Sunshine Band. That particular stop for breakfast inspired my later post about Creedence Clearwater Revival and their song about them old cotton fields back home.

You take inspiration where you find it.

This week the song that lodged in my brain at Burger King was Paul Simon singing "Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard" from 1972.

You know I had to look it up. According to my source (don't look now but it starts with a W), the song is about two boys ("Me and Julio") who have broken a law, although the exact law that has been broken is not stated in the song. When "the mama pajama" finds out what they have done, she goes to the police station to report the crime. The individuals are later arrested, but released when a "radical priest" intervenes. The meaning and references in the song have long provoked debate. In a July 20, 1972 interview for Rolling Stone, Jon Landau asked Simon: "What is it that the mama saw? The whole world wants to know." Simon replied, "I have no idea what it is... Something sexual is what I imagine, but when I say 'something', I never bothered to figure out what it was. Didn't make any difference to me."

In all these years I have never imagined that the song was about "something sexual"; I always thought it was about a transaction involving the sale/purchase of illicit drugs.

Live and learn.

P.S. -- I grew up in the country. If Paul Simon had grown up in my part of the world and knew the kind of people I knew, his song would probably have been "Me and Julio Out In The Cornfield" or "Me and Julio Down By The Stock Tank" or "Me and Julio Up In The Hayloft"...I'm just sayin'.

P.P.S. -- Any thought you may have of me and Julio interacting in any way whatsoever is a complete figment of your overwrought imagination.

P.P.P.S. -- A considerate blogger would probably include here a youtube clip of the song in question, but in the interest of audience participation I am going to let you find it yourself.

P.P.P.P.S. -- In conclusion, I leave you with a completely unrelated trivia factoid of the day. When Dick Van Dyke left the Broadway cast of "Bye, Bye, Birdie" to start his television series, he was replaced by Gene Rayburn who is most remembered today as the host of several incarnations of Match Game on the telly. Mr. Rayburn's understudy in "Bye, Bye, Birdie" was Charles Nelson Reilly, who also spent many years on Match Game.