In 1985, I was 6 years old, I wore a 6X dress size (meaning extra large, for those of you w/out kid-stuff knowledge), my father was a race horse trainer, my mother a house wife and my 15 year old brother a pain in my ass. I remember not really liking my life. My parents were always at each other’s throats (sometimes literally) or my father was out of the house with an ETA for his return a mystery. We lived in Buena Park California, a stones throw from Knott’s Berry Farm, in a middle class neighborhood I always had the feeling we couldn’t quite afford.
I was an “old soul” type of child, 6 going on 36, I spoke with an adults’ vocabulary, not knowing what half the words I was saying really meant, I insisted on blow-drying my little bebita hairdo every single day, and when they would take me to the beach I would sit on my towel refusing to get “dirty” in the sand or water. I was a depressed child, for reasons I still can’t really put my finger on today, as evident by my mother’s favorite story to tell from my youth… One time she was walking by my bedroom and she saw me sitting with all my stuffed animals around me quietly sobbing. She asked “What’s wrong Ann?” I said, “Nothing, I’m just sad.” She said “Well, would you like a Popsicle?” Surely thinking that a treat would cheer me up. I replied “No, I would just like to be left alone please.” (Well, at least I was polite in my solitude.)
I didn’t really like much of anything in those days, not even dance, which made no sense to me, and they made me wear tights, and I hated tights. But there were two things I very distinctly remember having a fondness for. One was a Disney cartoon in which Goofy or someone was stranded on a desert isle and he is chased on to the beach where an animated crab plays boogie woogie on a piano which washed ashore. I knew I liked that part of the cartoon. I also liked my parent’s small record collection. Three of the records were mine. I had Cinderella and two other short story albums (with tales like King Midas, Rip Van Winkle, Rapunzle, etc). In the “grown-up” set, which my brother seemed to favor, there were records with stories I couldn’t quite fully comprehend, but I knew I liked them. A few Marty Robbins albums (with ballads about the old west, reminiscent of all the Clint Eastwood movies I would be forced to watch, and my favorite song of the time - something about a white sports coat) also, among my favorites, a Johnny Cash album with his rendition of Sunday Morning Coming Down on it. Not knowing much about music, a subject that I still profess to know very little about, I knew, as sure as I was standing there, that that was a damn good song.
Later that year my family moved to Riverside California, my parents became Dairy Queen franchisees, my brother remained a pain in my ass and I became a “latch key kid,” riding the Blue Bird home from school each day. I still thought I was an adult and I still displayed signs of loneliness, so my parents again enrolled me in dance, my father became as he likes to say, “the bus” and “hauled” me and my next-door neighbor to the dance studio three times a week, a pattern that would continue for over a decade.
Really the only time I spent with either of my parents were on those rides with my father, in his single-cab Chevrolet truck, which he would exchange every three years, for a similar make vehicle, just in a different color. We had only three standard destinations we would be bound for - school, dance class or “the barn,” where he kept his horses.
The trips to school I always disliked, they were short trips, and let’s face it, I had to go to school, which always sucks, and at that age you actually care what other’s think about you, to the point where it can sometimes rule your life. I remember asking my father, probably more like yelling at him, in my pre-adolescent angst, to remove his cowboy hat when he dropped me off, as it “embarrassed” me. He of course refused and said “Anna, this is who I am, so you better learn to deal with it. In fact, this is who we are so don’t let it embarrass you, that is no way to live.” Even beyond the hat thing I just never really cared for the trips to school.
But the drives to dance or the barn, were longer across-town trips with a much more enjoyable destination, and with an added incentive - music. My father would play music unlike anybody else’s parents that I knew. In the rotation were Marty Robbins (Gunfighter Ballads), Johnny Cash (The Sun Years), Patsy Cline (Greatest Hits), Elvis (Greatest Hits), The Highway Men, Fats Domino (Greatest Hits), Jackie Wilson (Greatest Hits) and some newer (at the time) country artists like Crystal Gail and George Strait. I knew every word to every song by heart, I knew the order the songs came in and I loved to sing along
My father never seemed to mind my horrible voice, although on occasion, after a really bad rendition of something he might say “Guerra, why don’t you let them sing it?” But he knew that I loved the songs, and I knew that he loved the songs, and we both knew that the music was a necessary part of the enjoyability of our daily treks together.
Being a gauche disproportion girl, made of all legs and freckles, with bad teeth and a love for my father’s music, I never really felt like I would be winning any popularity contests anytime soon. But I came across as sweet and articulate, and I remained shy and quiet enough to stay off of everyone’s radar in the way of taunting, and managed to forge a few friendships.
Moving ahead to 1995, I am fifteen years old, my parent again sense I’m growing lonely, they buy me a black dog for my birthday, an Australian Cattle Dog (who is to this day still the craziest animal I’ve ever met in person). I name him Johnny Doggin Cash Moreno. The “Doggin” is Moreno family slang for dog, derived from my mispronunciation as a child, and the rest of the name’s origins is evident.
My brother, now 24 years old, is no longer a pain in my ass, and I consider him almost a friend. He lets me tag along with him to two types of events baseball games and all ages concerts, our favorite artist, of course, the man in black. That year we saw Johnny Cash play 6 different county fairs in California, and twice at Knott’s Berry Farm.
Tony (my brother) and I schlepped ourselves up and down the state, all for the sole purpose of hearing ol’ Johnny sing us some songs and tell us some stories, and we couldn’t get enough of it. Our companions in this endeavor were the usual county fair-going types; the farmers, the patriots, the fogies, the Bible beaters, and the like. Amidst the less that glamorous surroundings, I was always the youngest fan in the crowd, and could never really understand why what I thought to be one of the greatest living singer song writers and storytellers was relegated to playing county fairs, and not even drawing that large of a crowd while he did it. But that all soon changed.
Johnny released the CASH album, and suddenly my brother and I found ourselves headed to Los Angeles where we saw Johnny play with relatively unknown artist Beck, to a full house at the Pantages Theater (big time for a 16 year old kid from Riverside who is used to seeing June Carter kick her shoes off on stage from the bleachers of some God forsaken county fair). So it was in this sea of L.A. hipsters that our taste in music instantly became validated by pop culture, and our travels seemed strangely and uniquely cool.
Throw in a few cross country trips with my brother in which the music of Johnny Cash made up the bulk of our traveling sound track along with a couple of pilgrimages, to Hendersonville and Memphis, and you’ll begin to understand mine and my families long standing love affair with the music of the man in black.
Later in life I found others who had a similar affection for Mr. Cash’s music; my last boyfriend, a man almost, paralyze by the death of his larger than life father (a truly remarkable person), would turn to Johnny’s music for solace anytime he needed to feel the depths of the human experience, whether it be remembering and reminiscing about his dad, or drinking whiskey alone after he and I had one of our typical knock-down drag-out fights.
Turning to the stories of Mr. Cash, is not a phenomenon I feel to be unique to just those I know, but rather something that is probably done all over the county. But, it does act as a particularly poignant remembrance to those living in the plastic paradise of Southern California, Johnny’s stories remind us of the American heartland which most of us seldom or never see, of the downtrodden of this nation and of the raw emotions we all try so hard to contain in order to function in “civilized” west coast society.
I offer this drawn out story solely in support of my closing statement, as I consider myself in the very purest way to be a bit of a authority on the topic of Johnny Cash, his music and the slice of Americana they both represent. I know the music and biography of Mr. Cash pretty well, I have been to the birthplace of the music, and the death place of the man who created it. I recognize his stories to be an important part of the soundtrack of my life and of the lives of those dearest to me, his voice as that of working class America and his legacy to define and redefine a substantial part of this country’s musical lexicon. And it is with full confidence in my understanding on this subject that I now say…
Reader, Walk The Line is a damn fine film, and whether you are a Johnny Cash fan or not, you would be remiss to not see it in the theater.
Although my brother disagrees with me (he hasn’t exactly outgrown his ability to be a pain in my ass)
August 15th, 2007