Ode To Billy Joe

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta

day

I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was baling

hay

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"

Then she said "I got some news this morning from

Chocktow Ridge

Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahachee

Bridge"

Papa said to Mama as he passed around the black eyed

peas

"Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass

the biscuits, please

There's five more acres in the lower forty I got to

plow"

And Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow

Seems like nothing ever comes to no good on Chocktow

Ridge

And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the

Tallahachee Bridge

Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billy

Joe,

Put a frog down my back at the Carrol County picture

show,

And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday

night,

I'll have another piece of apple pie, you know, it

don't seem right'

I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctow Ridge

And now you tell me Billy Joe jumped off the

Tallahatchee Bridge

Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your

appetite?

I've been cooking 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 on

Chocktow Ridge

And she and Billy Joe was throwing something off the

Tallahachee Bridge"

A year has come and gone since we heard the news about

Billy Joe

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 picking flowers up on

Chocktow Ridge

And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahachee

Bridge