The Cashwanox

In mourning for Johnny Cash I have been playing all Johnny Cash, all the time, in my CD player. I've listened to Cocaine Blues at least 30 times in the last week. To make up for the sin of that song, I've listen to Gray Stone Chapel nearly as many times.

But when the Equinox ends, I will end also the Cashwanox. Had I had my shit together I'd have gotten some of my freinds involved. But the most likely person to participate would Captain Ian Clunies-Ross who is currently stuck on the banks of the Euphrates. (A situation he reminds us regularly: "That Sucks")

But its just as good as the morning for Johnny Cash is a personal thing. He was the first recording artist I really paid attention too. His death has brought back childhood memories of Christmas 1971 in England when my parents gave me a cassette tape recorder. I made little waste of time flipping through their album collection and putting the Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison, San Quenton, and the Johnny Cash show albums to tape. How ridiculous was that, that a 10 year old with three tapes to his name had two and half hours of Johnny Cash? The other half hour was Simon and Garfunkel. The even more ridiculous thing was that I didn't spend anytime goofing around just recording my or my friends voices. But what can I say I was a military brat, and I didn't know there was any other kind of music but country. Well at least that you were allowed to listen too.

To Johnny who kept a small boy's mind occupied while he sat in a cooker apple tree in a small mildewed village in England, yearning for a return to a country where Country music even existed, I give thanks that you existed.