The question here is – what was Billy Joe MacAllister throwing off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
And the answer here - can be found in any number of threads. Search GQ for “Tallahatchie” and that should do it.
Am I the only one who thought “a rock, it was a glass house”?
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
FLOWERS FLOWERS FLOWERS…they were in love and they would go up there and just drop flowers and talk. The whole song is about young love and how nobody cared that he died but her.
Either that or cocaine. They thought the preacher was a narc so they dumped it all.
FLOWERS
Its been a long time since I saw the movie or paid attention to the song, but try this…drugs, flowers, babies ? I don’t know, all of the above maybe?
The dead and mangled corpse of someone who kept asking what he was throwing off the bridge.
I think he was throwing the missing dollar off the bridge, after learning that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo.
It was the third gry word.
I have also heard that it was the gun that killed JFK the previous November 22. If you look at pictures of the grassy knoll you can clearly see Billie Joe McAlister in profile thru the leaves.
We might as well get that going since this year is the 40th anniversary.
Rats. That’s what I was going to say.
I haven’t seen the movie or search anywhere else but just reading the lyrics…c’mon.
What migth two young, horny teenagers in love find themselves in unexpected possession of, and what to get rid of before anyone else found out? What woould also be painful enough to have to throw off a bridge that you would up and kill yourself later?
C’mon.
It was a doll.
Did anyone read that book? Did the song come first or the book? The movie was clearly based on the book, almost verbatim. I had read the book long before I ever heard the song, I think I first heard the song from the movie so I always knew what they were throwing off the bridge. It was Bobbie Lee’s childhood ragdoll Benjamin, and it was a mistake.
Ok, after a trip to Amazon it looks like the book was published in 1976, the movie was also made in 1976, and the song recorded in 1967 so someone named Raucher wrote a book based on the song, which is kinda weird. I always loved that book though, pretty funny in a cheesy 70’s kinda way.
The book was a novelization of the movie. In other words, it was written by a hack professional writer who was paid by the film distributor to turn the script of the film into a novel. It’s pretty common to have someone do a novelization of the film to create a tie-in novel that will make more money for the filmmakers and will publicize the film.