Ode To Billie Joe

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was bailing hay And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat And Mama hollered out the back door "Yo remember to wipe your feet" And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Chalk Toridge" "Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Talahatchie Bridge" 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" Mama said "it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow" Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Chalk Toridge And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Talahatchie Bridge 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 saw mill yesterday on Chalk Toridge" "And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Talahatchie Bridge" 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 Chalk Toridge" "And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Talahatchie 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 Toopellow 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 Chalk Toridge And drop them into the muddy water off the Talahatchie Bridge