Harper Valley P.T.A. - Jeannie C Riley
Both that song and "Ode To Billy Joe" are in my "Classic Country" playlist and so I hear them often even to this day. Both songs in their own ways evoke an America that once was but is no more.
Growing up, a lot of people tried to figure out just what it was that Billie Joe (and supposedly the girl telling the story) was throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
My guess is that they were throwing their newborn baby off that bridge and later Billie Joe himself was thrown off the bridge.
How could that be so when the girl obviously lived with her parents on the farm? Surely they would have noticed her being pregnant?
Well my theory is that the mother was in on it with the daughter. She probably encouraged her daughter to take the baby to the bridge and get rid of it. But when she (the mother) learned later that Billie Joe was also at the bridge for the evil deed, well that presented a complication that needed to be dealt with.
Now Billie Joe "never had a lick of sense" according to the father and certainly Billie Joe would not have been welcome in the home as the illegitimate father of yet another mouth to feed in a home that was likely struggling financially. (The father was so busy with the farm that he had another five acres to plow in the lower forty after dinner).
Anyway, it would not do to have Billie Joe as a witness to what had happened so the mother finally had to let the father in on what was going on and in a rage, the father himself threw Billie Joe off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
Then the mother invited Brother Taylor, the "nice young preacher", over to dinner on Sunday. Could she perhaps have seen Brother Taylor as a more suitable mate for her daughter and been trying to set up a courtship between them?
It did not work out however, for a year later, the father was dead, the mother wrecked with depression and the guilt-ridden daughter is reduced to throwing flowers off of the Tallahatchie Bridge. A sad ending to a very poignant tale.
Well maybe that's all far-fetched but that's how I interpreted the song.
Interesting. Your interpretation would have certainly made for a better movie script than the television one produced for the song.
Interesting. When I was a kid, I had my own theories, none of which I remember.