By Timothy T. Tater, Chief Spud and Editor
The Sweet Potato
(Thibodeaux, La,)-It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day, when Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. What Mama never told us over that black-eyed peas and biscuits was that the Tallahatchie Bridge sits a mere twenty feet above the water—about the height of a diving board at the Greenwood municipal pool.
Billie Joe had been planning his exit for months. He hated that his name was spelled with an “ie” instead of simply “y.” He felt that people didn’t take him seriously and he just knew that he had to get out of Mississippi. It bothered him just like the odd spelling of a childhood friend, Geoffrey. Why can’t people spell things normally?
Every week, he’d been throwing his savings off that bridge in waterproof lockboxes weighted just enough to sink but marked with fishing floats he could spot from below. He’d saved away $43,000 from working at the sawmill, money that would’ve taken him a lifetime to save if he’d kept buying Mama flowers and putting gas in that rusted-out Chevy.
The splash was spectacular. Brother saw it from the ridge. But what Brother didn’t see was Billie Joe swimming under the bridge trusses, holding his breath like he’d practiced, gathering up those lockboxes one by one, and stuffing them into a waterproof duffel bag he’d stashed in the crawfish traps.
For three days, while folks dragged the river and Mama cried into her apron, Billie Joe McAllister lived under that bridge, eating catfish he caught with his bare hands and waiting for the search parties to give up.
On the fourth day, he hitchhiked to Louisiana. He renamed himself B.J. Kind of ironic that he picked a state that has many towns and parishes that have unusual spellings, too.
Today, if you drive through Thibodaux, Louisiana, you’ll see a billboard: “B.J.’s Nice Used Cars & McCallister & Friends Funeral Services—We’ll Get You Coming AND Going!”
He married a Cajun girl named Marie, had four kids, and never once ate black-eyed peas again.
Every June 3rd, he sends Mama an anonymous bouquet of roses. She keeps them on the mantle and never suspects a thing.
*Not really true at all
