Ode To Billie Joe
Actually, it was, I just looked it up. It peaked at number one on August 13th in the summer of '66. The same summer the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City" was a smash. That track reigned at number one right before Donovan's hit.
It may be hot in NYC, but the weather's turned in L.A. A couple of nights ago I actually needed the down comforter. And this morning, when I emerged from my house, I noticed the light was different. Fall is coming.
I've come to hate summer. It's not what it used to be, a vacation. And I NEVER want to go back to school, but I'd love to have the eight weeks free, to go to camp. Hell, I'd make that deal right now. I'd go to camp FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! You're all thrown in together, no one leaves...that's my idea of heaven. Maybe as the only boy in a family run by women I'm looking for that male-bonding, that camaraderie and the socials...
Actually, in the summer of '66 there were no socials. I went to Boy Scout camp. Boy Scout camp has got no infrastructure. It could be removed in an hour. Which is probably why it cost $22 a week. I could have saved if I'd gone earlier in the summer with my troop, I could have paid $18, but I was gone then, our family had traveled cross-country. Those family trips are indelibly etched in my brain. You always think you're going to go back. Actually, I made a specific effort to go back to Yellowstone. Amazing how it's the same, but different.
But, as an adult, one works. One stays inside. I want to walk down the street with a blade of grass between my teeth. I want to hear the ringing bell of the Good Humor truck and rush out to buy a Toasted Almond. I want to go to the beach.
Not Malibu. Not Hawaii or the Caribbean. The local beach in Connecticut had a concrete block pavilion. Jennings Beach held no glamour, it was an extension of the community. But there was a freedom. There was that walk every afternoon up and down the sand.
Hearing "Sunshine Superman" on the radio this afternoon brought this all back, put a smile on my face. What came next had me pushing the button back in '67, but decades later I was riveted. Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe" was FASCINATING!
You've got to understand, we hated everything that wasn't rock. We almost hated everything that wasn't English. But Top Forty radio still contained records made for our elders. I know every lick of "Hello Dolly", it's taken years for me to appreciate it. And even though I could enjoy "Strangers In The Night," it seemed so SCHMALTZY! The music I liked STOOD for something. Unlike this country concoction about Billie Joe McAllister jumping off that damn bridge. Which I had to hear ad infinitum that summer, when I returned from Philmont Scout Ranch and went back to Boy Scout camp to earn enough merit badges to make Eagle, when "Ode To Billie Joe" was number one for four weeks straight.
"There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"
This is the line that cracked me up today. That's now a joke. Uttered both by people with land and without it. Ranchers and not. If someone shows up late or tired they say they were plowing, doing some work on the back forty. Did they get this concept from "Ode To Billie Joe"?
"And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?"
This was back when suicide was still a dirty word, before parents started worrying about their kids offing themselves. But that's what happens too often. I just saw him! He looked fine to me!
My friend who committed suicide didn't look fine to me. He called me in the middle of the night all freaked out. I recognized myself years previously in his voice. I insisted he go home to stay with his family, he needed 24-hour watch. When they went out for the night he went into the basement and hung himself.
"A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billie Joe"
Time marches on. You get involved in your own life, moving forward. You're living in the present and you hear a record and you're jutted right back to the past. Albeit older. And wiser.
What did they throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
I didn't care 40 years ago.
And I'm not sure I'm truly concerned today.
But what fascinates me was that it all happened on the third of June. When the sun was out. During the heat of the summer. When everybody's supposed to be happy.
