Large Marge an Phantom 309: Historical Folklore Origins?

Factual Questions
1

We were listening to a mid-70s collection of trucking songs last night (we got us a con-voooooy…), and it included Red Sovines “Phantom 309.” We were struck by the similarities between this song and the “Large Marge” vignette from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

For those of you not familiar with either, both tales go a little like this:

The storyteller is hitchiking along a lonely road. A trucker stops and picks him up; they chat a bit and continue down the road. Eventually the driver pulls into a truck stop and lets the storyteller out, then continues on. The storyteller enters the truck stop, sits down at the counter, and says, “yeah, I got a ride with Big Joe/Large Marge.” All the customers stop talking, and the counterman turns white and says something like, “We all know Big Joe/Large Marge. See, ten years ago, he/she was killed in an accident, trying to avoid a school bus full of kids. But he/she still roams the raods, picking up hitchikers like yourself.”

Now, it’s pretty clear that the story in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure was lifted from “Phantom 309.” But the story just has a feel like it’s older than that, like an old folktale. What’s the origin of the story?

2

It’s the reverse of the very common “phantom hitchhiker” motif - usually, it’s the driver that’s the storyteller and the hitchhiker that’s the ghost. It’s such a natural mutation of the story, that I’d guess it springs from the same fuzzy origins. The antecedents extend back well before the automotive age:

Brunvand used “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” as the title of his first urban legend book.

See “Origins” in the snopes article, and note that they manage to dig a prototype of the story out of the New Testament - I think that’s stretching it a bit.

(fade out, cuing “Bringing Mary Home” by the Country Gentlemen)