Today Is the Third of June, a.k.a. "Ode to Billie Joe" Day

by Sean Nelson"Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge"
Though today shows no signs of being especially dusty (or indeed delta), it IS the third of June, which means it's the very day Bobbie Gentry—or her first person narrator, anyway—first hears the news from her mama that Billie Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie bridge, in one of the most haunting pop songs ever recorded.
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty delta day/ I was out choppin' co