Posted on 06/02/2015 10:07:16 PM PDT by re_nortex
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet" And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" "Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"'n' Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas "Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please" "There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow" 'n' Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge'n' Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night? "I'll have another piece-a apple pie, you know it don't seem right" "I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge" "And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"'n' Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?" "I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite" "That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today" "Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way" "He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge" "And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe 'n' Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
That’s always the way I took it.
That is not completely accurate
Gentry. Real last name Skeeter.....yes a can of worms with that name no question
Her parents divorced when she was very young and her mom went to southern California.
She stayed in north central Mississippi with her grandparents and lived on their rural farm near Houston in Chickasaw county which is named for arguably the states most warlike Indian tribe from pre Trail of Tears era
At around 10th grade she moved to California to be with her momma and to enter show business given she had her grandmas singing and piano talent and was already showing signs she was pretty photogenic
That’s a synopsis
Her Mississippi dawl is genuine and she makes no attempt to hide it unlike most southern college class kids today
Chickasaw county is nowhere near the delta btw
It is north Mississippi hill country The land of Faulkner
Closest delta is about 50 miles due west past Grenada
I have no clue why Wiki says she went to school in Greenwood which is the Delta on the Yazoo but is an hour and a half minimum from Houston in Chickasaw county
Delta sounded better.
A timely posting of a great, American classic. Thanks.
The clue is right in here, 2 times?
I seriously cannot figure the clue. She is a girl going to Choctaw Ridge, how is that indicative of a homosexual encounter?
Sorry to be I guess, dense, but I can’t figure it out, no how.
[how is that indicative of a homosexual encounter?]
Huh???
The singer and the guy threw something off the bridge. Had to be a baby for him to have taken such an extreme measure later. It was their baby.
That’s why the girl has no appetite and why she’s still throwing flowers off the bridge a year later.
That’s what I thought but the poster in post 15 said it was a homosexual encounter and clue was hidden in those lines.?
See post 7
Yeah, I was explaining the song was pretty clear. I don’t know how somebody got something “else” out of the song.
The poster (me) in post 15 said no such thing.
The poster (me) in post 15 said no such thing (regarding it as a homosexual encounter).
Just that the song has fairly-obvious clues.
Yes, I thought about that after I posted. Suffering from the onset of CRS.
Obviously Brother Taylor was there on the bridge when Billy Joe “jumped”. I have always thought he followed them and pushed BJ off the bridge to have her for himself. When he said he saw BJ and her throw something off the bridge, it was a cover. She wasn’t eating because of what she knew and also knew no one would take her word over his.
Always the ‘agenda’ from Hollywood. Sigh.
The fact that the movie is so dated — and a poor effort at unpacking Gentry's evocative pop song — may be why it has yet to be released on Blu-ray and can't be streamed on Netflix. It's on Amazon Prime, but here's a better use of those 107 minutes: Listen to the Gentry tune 25 times in a row.
The film was produced and directed by Max Baer, Jr.! The guy who played Jethro on The Beverly Hillbillies.
Jim Stafford was married to Bobbie for awhile. I remember he was questioned about her and he something that it was quite a ride and that she was bat.... crazy.
Or maybe they were throwing Barack Obama's real birth certificate into the river. Billie Joe killed himself when he realized that their action would make it possible for him to become President some day using a fake birth certificate.
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