What did Billy Joe and his girl throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
Will we ever know what was thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge?
What is the gossip here? Was there a scandal?
What is the point made in this song?
Discussing the incident, those around the dinner table were very nonchalant… was jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge a common occurrence?
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In this photograph from the November 10, 1967 issue of Life magazine, Gentry crosses the Tallahatchie Bridge in Money, Mississippi
Gentry’s comments on the lyrics
In August 1967, Gentry told the Los Angeles Times she wanted to show “people’s lack of ability” to empathize with others’ “tragedy.” She pointed out the mother, who noticed but did not understand her daughter’s lack of appetite, while later the daughter is unaware of the similarity of her mother’s behavior after the father dies. Gentry explained that both characters had “isolated themselves in their own personal tragedies” and remained unconcerned for the others. The songwriter compared the end product to a play. On the object thrown off the Tallahatchie Bridge, she commented that the audience had found more meanings than she had intended. Gentry mentioned that theories of the time included a baby, a wedding ring and flowers. While she indicated that what happened at the bridge was the motivation behind Billie Joe’s suicide, she also left it open to the listener’s interpretation. Gentry said she had no answer and her sole motivation was to show “people’s apathy”.
In an interview with the Associated Press in November 1967, Gentry called the song “a study in unconscious cruelty.” She also said that audiences were still asking her what was thrown off the bridge rather than noticing “the thoughtlessness of people expressed in the song,” adding that what had been thrown was unimportant. She said people suggested to her it was a draft card, or a bottle of LSD pills. The songwriter clarified that she knew what it was, but said she considered it irrelevant to the story and deliberately left that interpretation open. Gentry remarked that the song’s message revolved around the “nonchalant way” the family discussed the suicide. She also said that what was thrown off of the bridge was included because it established a relationship between Billie Joe and the daughter, providing “a possible motivation for his suicide the next day”. The interview ended with Gentry’s suggestion that it could have been a wedding ring. Gentry told The New York Times in 1969: “I had my own idea what it was while I was writing it, but it’s not that important. Actually it was something symbolic. But I’ve never told anyone what it was, not even my own dear mother.”
Speculation may be entertaining but, apparently, futile.
What happened to Bobbie Gentry?
Gentry had 11 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and four singles on the United Kingdom Top 40. Her album Fancy brought her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. After her first albums, she had a successful run of variety shows on the Las Vegas Strip. In the late 1970s, Gentry lost interest in performing, and subsequently retired from the music industry.
The last time Gentry appeared in public was when she attended the Academy of Country Music Awards on April 30, 1982. Since that time, she has not recorded, performed or been interviewed. One 2016 news report stated that Gentry lives in a gated community near Memphis, Tennessee. According to another, Gentry lives in a gated community in Los Angeles.
The lovely Bobbie achieved her ambitions, made a fortune then got going while the going was good … 
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@Bretrick 
In the song, it was heard that ‘Billie Joe never had a lick of sense’, so the listener will probably assume he was not the full shilling and he tended to do things without any apparent reason. Or, are there other more sinister explanations?
Over to the forum members 
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I always thought it was a still born baby and that they were secret lovers?
But if Gentry says it was something symbolic, then maybe not
Was that the first she’d heard he died at the table? That’s why she stopped eating?
And he didn’t “have a lick of sense , maybe he was impulsive and daft, or a bit simple?
That they were throwing something over together doesn’t suggest that they argued or fell out, they were co-operating?
Maybe evidence of their relationship, or rings or something, because they knew they couldn’t be together
I didn’t think it was so much about indifference as secrets in families and not knowing what’s really going on in each other’s lives
There was a film made in 1976 & they threw a rag doll off the bridge to signify the end of childhood, Billie Joe was gay & that is why he killed himself, he couldn’t cope with being like that.
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He couldn’t cope being like that, OR, was it all the inuendo etc from so called friends. Life can all too often be cruel to those who are different to the majority😢
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For speculators with time on their hands, there is an inferior movie:
Ode to Billy Joe (film) - Wikipedia.
Set in 1953, the film explores the budding relationship between teenagers Billy Joe McAllister (Benson) and Bobbie Lee Hartley (O’Connor) (who corresponds to the unnamed narrator of the original song), despite resistance from Hartley’s family, who contend she is too young to date. One night at a jamboree, McAllister gets drunk and seems nauseated and confused when entering a makeshift brothel behind the gathering. It turns out that in his inebriated state, he had sex with another man, later revealed to be his sawmill boss, Dewey Barksdale (James Best).
After his intimate encounter with Barksdale, Billy Joe disappears for several days. He then returns, and Bobbie Lee finally submits to her passions at a secluded spot near the bridge and encourages him to make love to her. Owing to his guilt, however, Billy Joe cannot consummate their relationship. He admits to Bobbie Lee that he has been with a man, and when she tries to reason that he was drunk, so maybe didn’t have complete control of himself and didn’t really know what was going on, he confesses that he knew what he was doing, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway because he wanted to. Tearfully, he bids her an enigmatic goodbye, and subsequently kills himself by jumping off the bridge spanning the Tallahatchie River. The local preacher, who saw Billy Joe and Bobbie Lee together, and other townsfolk spread the false story that Billy Joe committed suicide because he learned he had impregnated Bobbie Lee out of wedlock. For the sake of the family, Bobbie Lee’s brother insists that she either quietly pursue an abortion or, if she insists upon having the baby, leave town.
In the film, as in the novel, the object thrown from the bridge is Bobbie Lee’s ragdoll, symbolizing throwing away her childhood and innocence and becoming an adult.
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