On this date, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

I still remember quite clearly getting ready for school each morning in the early Fall of 1967. My mother would have the radio going in her bedroom, and every day we'd hear Bobbie Gentry's Ode To Billy Joe. I think it's a wonderful tune, kinda spooky, almost creepy in the instrumentation. I consider it the national anthem of Southern Gothic culture. A very nice mix of sounds. Hearing it every morning at that age kinda wraps a song around your DNA, I still enjoy the record, and it still keeps me interested in its tale.
There are very few real mysteries in pop culture. Oh, there are always lyrics to be decoded. There are whole cottage industries devoted to going through some of the songs of Dylan, the Beatles, the Doors and REM. But that's a kind of symbolic cryptography; actual story-based mysteries are few and far between. The only other one that comes to mind offhand is who was Carly Simon singing about in You're So Vain, (the smart money says it was Beatty). But Bobbie Gentry created a plotline that is just as intriguing now as it was nearly 40 years ago. Just what the hell did Billy Joe and that girl throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why did he follow it a day or two later? There was the movie made in the 70's - I've not actually seen it, but the plot I've read about seems unlikely to me. It doesn't really fit the lyrics and the idea that a novice C&W singer in the mid sixties was going to write about a gay boy's suicide as their first commercial release doesn't really ring true to me.
There are sites out there that go into analysis of the song in great detail, but none of them really crack the case. The mystery is still there. There are only a couple of ways to get the answer: Bobbie Gentry ain't talkin', and neither is the Tallahatchie...

http://www.geocities.com/odetobobbiegentry/lyric/lotbj.htm