Last week I had a chance to visit Johnny Cash's boyhood home in
Dyess, Arkansas. I'm a big fan and there was definitely some feeling of visiting hallowed ground for me but the history of the place is also fascinating. A New Deal initiative to establish family farms from the overgrown Arkansas countryside, the Cash family was given 20 acres and a five room house. At the end of three years, they had fed their family, paid off their $2300 debt to the government and owned the owned the home.
Six people shared the two bedrooms (and four beds) in the house. Somehow Cash's bedroom was particularly fascinating to me. The picture of the cross was framed by young Johnny himself and like much of the furnishings in the house donated back by the Cash family. While, I'm not a religious person, somehow that cross spoke to me and Johnny Cash's story.
