What Brother Taylor Saw

Nevertheless, both the song AND the movie involved Billie Joe, a bridge, Mississippi, Brother Taylor and gravity upon something thrown off a bridge.

Clearly there was some anticipation of viewers having heard the inspiration, I mean the song.

Otherwise, that fellow on the bank when Benjamin fell would be a complete mystery to viewers.

Which, as far as the movie is concerned, Brother Taylor is a loose thread; insignificant.

The song left doors to be opened. The movie failed to open those doors, but merely took a different path altogether.

Had the song instead come out in the forties and the movie is made in the fifties, Billy Joe would have had an entirely different reason for jumping off that bridge.

Had the song come out in the seventies and the movie was made in the eighties, again still taking place in 1959, a different reason.

Dealing with homosexuality was a theme of the seventies. A disease-of-the-week.

As far as the movie goes, it is a dated piece of nostalgia. I don't recall scoffing at it in my post.

But 'your thoughts' are most appreciated.

Thanks!

[deleted]

You remind me of an experience I endured just a few weeks ago where I finally looked at a young man at work and realized he was indeed a dead ringer for a fellow I knew in high school who was killed in an auto accident (he was in junior high, don't know how that figures in non-American grading, teen years?) and when I went home and looked up this fellow, who I knew was much younger than me back then, in the school annual, I was astounded at how young he was.

Why?

Because I continued to age obviously, and he likewise obviously hasn't. Still, it was quite a shock. He was so young and I was so hurt by his death.

I think we can always be troubled by the passing of a person, especially one younger than us.

another incident, a teenager who I knew was born while his mother was single. She later married another fellow when he was of preschool age.

Needless to say, this youth developed the attitude and got into trouble.

One Sunday, out of the blue, he comes to our house and asks what his real father had been like.

I had never met his father, but knew his picture was in an old school annual (me and school annuals, eh?), but I showed this child nothing, nor told him about it.

His father had been killed in a fire, and this kid knew this.

He even once called me up and asked me how I felt when my father died, and I had to tell him my biological father was still alive, and I chose not to see this man for very troubling personal reasons. I concluded this child was having difficulties with his step-father at the time.

So what eventually happened to the son? He likewise was killed in a terrible tragedy, never even knowing what his father had looked like.

Odd to find this now...a friend of mine from high school supposedly shot himself right after graduation. He was a friend, but not a close friend because he wasn't very sociable, but I was as close to him as he let anyone get. It tore me up for years because I kept asking myself if there was anything I should have seen or could have done. I tried to find out exactly what had happened, and when, and where he was buried, but no one knew. It was like he has never existed! He was just that quiet weird kid that everyone heard had shot himself, but no one in the neighborhood knew any details.

Something just seemed off to me and I could not let it go. After I had a child with Aspergers, it hit me that the guy I knew in high school was exactly like that. That's the same way he acted but I guess no one knew what to call it then. On and off over the years, I've spent more time and money than I'd care to admit trying to find out SOMETHING about what happened to this boy, but I still hit a brick wall every time.

After awhile, when it started to bother me, I'd write a story where something changes for him and he lives. I've got four of them at the moment. Even after all these years not a week goes by that I don't think of him.

It is absolutely bizarre to be reading this now, of all times, as a classmate's suicide has recently taken place and yesterday I got a response to Ode To Billy Joe, and reread my own words about the girl feeling guilty over the guy's death and how I myself tried to friend my classmate on Facebook and he never responded.

And now today, I get a response to a seventies episode of a Christian show called Insight, and an episode entitled, Death of Superman, about a handicapped man who locks himself in a freezer. My nickname on a job about 20 years ago was Superman.

Thru a series of events, I have also been given two dates, Feb. 10th and 18th, so I guess I will see if anything happens then.