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| The Childhood Home of Johnny Cash |
Johnny Cash was born in the year 1932, to a poor farm couple, Carrie and Ray Cash. Johnny was the fourth of seven children. Ray Cash suffered greatly during the depression and when Johnny was born, the family lived in a rundown house, next to the railroad tracks in Kingsland, Arkansas. The house did not have glass in the windows and during the winter, Carrie hung blankets over the windows to help keep the cold out.
New Deal Farm
In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt’s new deal was taking effect and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration offered resettlement to farmers displaced by the depression. The offer consisted of twenty acres of land, a house and barn, a mule and cow, and groceries for a year. The house was not free, but came with a no money down mortgage. The government expected the farmers to grow cotton and make payment after the first harvest.
Dyess Arkansas
The Cash family relocated to Dyess in the Northeast corner of Arkansas. A government truck picked up the family and transported them to their new home. To the Cash family the new house was a marked improvement over the rundown shack in Kingsland. The new house had a living room, dining room, kitchen, two large bedrooms, and a front and back porch. An outhouse served as a toilet. However, the house did not have running water or electricity. A government crew of thirty men built the entire house, barn, and smokehouse, in only two days.
A thick growth of trees and shrubs occupied the land. Ray Cash and his oldest son, Roy, worked six days a week, sunup to sundown, to clear the land of cottonwood, elm, scrub oak, hickory, ash, and an assortment of buses and vines. By planting season the first year, the men managed to clear three acres for planting. The family planted two acres with cotton and on the other acre; they planted corn, sweet potatoes, beans, tomatoes and strawberries.
Johnny Cash Picks Cotton
The second year the family lived in Dyess, the five-year-old Johnny Cash began to work in the fields. Johnny’s first job was as a water boy, toting water to the other members of the family who tended the crops. When he reached the age of eight, Johnny began to pick cotton. The harvest was good for the family and they typically brought in two bales of cotton per acre. Expert cotton graders rated the Cash’s crop as Strict High Middlin. There are six grades of cotton: Strict High Middlin, High Middlin, Fair to Middlin, Middlin, Low Middlin, and Strict Low Middlin. A difference between grades could amount to seven cents a pound.
Cotton picking was not an easy task. Cash recounted in his autobiography, Cash, how the cotton bolls were prickly and after a few days of picking, his fingers spotted numerous painful wounds. However, Johnny said the worst part of growing cotton was not the planting or harvesting, it was pulling weeds all summer long.
Five Feet High and Rising
Weather is sometimes the friend of farmers and at other times their worst enemy. Johnny’s song, “Five Feet High and Rising,” came from personal experience as the Cash family evacuated from their house as the Mississippi river flooded. Besides the weather, an infestation of army worms wiped out thousands of acres of cotton.
Gospel and Country Music
The Cash family regularly attended a Baptist church and learned to love the gospel songs that he heard. Soon he was singing songs while working in the fields. The young Johnny showed a remarkable aptitude for music. Johnny made friends with a handicapped kid at school, Jesse Barnhill. Jesse had a crippled leg an arm from a bout with infantile paralysis. Even so, Jesse would strum country music on an old Gibson flattop guitar. Once Johnny made a comment about Jesse’s handicap and remarked how he could play the guitar. Johnny said that Jesse’s reply stuck with him the rest of his life. Jesse said, “Sometimes, when you lose a gift, you get another one.” Johnny started to sing the country songs that he heard Jesse sing and made a decision that country music was the type of music he was going to make magic.
Personal Tragedy for Johnny
When he was twelve, Johnny suffered a personal loss that would haunt him the rest of his life. His beloved older brother, and best friend, Jack, died in a horrible accident. Jack was cut open with a saw while cutting posts. He lingered in a hospital for a few days and then died. Jack’s death affected Johnny deeply and in his autobiography, Johnny says he still dreams of Jack every two or three weeks.
Johnny left the family farm upon graduating from high school. Within a few months, he enlisted in the Air Force. After his hitch in the Air Force, Johnny worked a few odd jobs and then his music career took off. However, he never forgot the old family farm. In the mid 1990s, he took his family to Dyess, to the fields he worked as a child. The family house was crumbling, yet the memories of Jack and him roasting peanuts, were so strong he could smell the peanuts. The music inside him came from his childhood on the farm, and Johnny never forgot that time of his life.
Reference:
Cash, Johnny and Carr, Patrick. Cash. San Francisco, Ca. HaperCollins, 1997
Neimark, Anne E. Up close: Johnny Cash. USA, Viking, 2007
Official Website of Johnny Cash, http://www.johnnycash.com/
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