(An earworm, if you're not familiar with the term, is when a song gets stuck in your head and keeps playing over and over.)

At least I think an earworm must be camping out on the night table because the last few nights every time I wake during the night "Ode to Billy Joe" is going through my head. Probably because yesterday was the Third of June, and that's how the song starts. In fact, I remember looking at my calendar on Sunday and seeing the date for Tuesday and thinking, "It was the third of June, another sleepy dusty Delta day." That's when it started. Last night, lying awake and hearing the song in my head I decided to relax and enjoy it. I started thinking about what a great example of story telling, and of writing, it is. It's spare, and simple. She shows and doesn't tell. She implies deep emotion but all we hear are the simple things that people say to each other around the dinner table.

It was the third of June, another steamy sunny midwest day three years ago that my mother took a sudden turn for the worse. She died on June 6th. Which this year is the 40th anniversary of Bobby Kennedy's death. I remember telling her about his death on the telephone, calling her from a girlfriend's house where we had just heard the news on TV. My mother was also a fan of "Ode to Billy Joe."

Here, begging the pardon of the copyright police, are the lyrics to Ode to Billy Joe, by Bobbie Gentry:

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet"
And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge"
"Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
"Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please"
"There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"
And Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
"I'll have another piece of apple pie, you know it don't seem right"
"I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge"
"And now you tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

And Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?"
"I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite"
"That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today"
"Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way"
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
"And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
And Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything
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"