The song begins on June 3 with the narrator, her brother and her father returning from farming chores to the family house for dinner. After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, Mama says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge". At the dinner table, the father seems unmoved, commenting, "Billie Joe never had a lick o' sense," before asking for the biscuits and adding that there's "five more acres in the lower forty, I've got to plow." Her brother is intrigued ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday ... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), but not enough to be distracted from the lunchtime meal. He recalls a prank that he, "Tom," and Billie Joe played on the narrator, by putting a frog down her back at the Carroll County picture show.