9/13/2003

2003-09-13 - 10:20 a.m.

Johnny Cash crossed the goal line yesterday. I heard it on the way to work. He was 71 and from what I have seen of him lately, he was sick for awhile.

What did he mean to me? I remember one Christmas when the record I was half way through unwrapping looked like the little drummer boy and I shouted out as much. Turned out, after a full unwrapping, to be a Johnny Cash album. I remember listening to 'a boy named Sue' and in another song the lyrics "...I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die..." I was around 11 or 12 years old.

I lost track of the record and Johnny himself through my teens and twenties but in my thirties during a failing marriage and a sinking turn to alcohol, I rediscovered the raw, biting, comiserating charm of 'The Man in Black'.

Johnny slowed the falling of my lost heart and soul, or at least fell with it, to make it seem like I had company; someone along for the ride. The songs are haunting and real, as one who felt the sting of booze and drugs and lost relationships himself.

His last records with Rick Ruben are, to me, his best. I hear bare Johnny and the singing wood and steel of his heartfully strummed and picked guitar. He is one of the best parts of America.

My 12 year old daughter called me yesterday, just to tell me that Johnny Cash had died. What that man meant to me impressed her so much that she knew it was important to share.