Pardon Johnny Cash – Flower Pickin' Festival

Robbie Ward wrote this story for the British fanzine Johnny Cash: the Man In Black (www.johnnycashfanzine.com). Hope you enjoy.

Starkville, Miss., – Standing inside the Starkville City Jail, in October, visitors to the Southern United States city stood inside a small cell on a Saturday morning and wondered what it might feel like confined against their will in such a small space.

A few visitors inside the jail kicked the cell for fun.

When Johnny Cash kicked the steel door inside the cell known as the ‘drunk tank’ in 1965, he didn’t see much humor about his situation at the time. Local authorities arrested him for public drunkenness, didn’t take his name and left him in the jail for the night. He kicked the steel door so hard he broke one of his toes. Cash wrote the song Starkville City Jail about the experience and told his side of the story, saying he was arrested for picking flowers.

For the third year, Starkville hosted one of the world’s best celebrations of Cash’s life – the ‘Johnny Cash Flower Pickin’ Festival.’ Along with fans from Germany, France, England and throughout the United States, members of Cash’s family visited the small town of about 26,000 people to celebrate the Man in Black’s spirit of rebellion and redemption.

Rosanne Cash has said events associated with Starkville embody her father’s life – goodnatured fun, a few mistakes, a lot of music, redemption.

Of the seven times Cash was arrested, he wrote a song about one of those experiences – Starkville.

After a night of partying in 1965 after performing the concert at Mississippi State University, Cash wandered through the small Southern U.S. city to see what he might find. He found a few parties at the university and another at a private residence nearby. After a few locals dropped him off at the University Motel, they thought he planned to sleep a few hours before leaving the city to perform another concert the next evening. In the same motel, Luther Perkins and June Carter, not yet his wife, slept in their own rooms. Marshall Grant decided to drive to Memphis after the show to spend the night with his wife, Etta.

Restless and not ready for sleep, Cash went for a late-night stroll to buy a pack of cigarettes. It’s too bad he didn’t know the local convenience stores were closed for the night. He stopped at a private residence along the way when he noticed the yard covered with flowers. Someone called the local authorities, who later arrested him, not believing he was who he claimed to be.

A gaunt, thin man at the time, Cash found himself in the middle of his amphetamine addiction during his Starkville visit. Local police thought he was a vagrant.

“Come over here,” one of the officers yelled at Cash.

“Hold on a second. I’m Johnny Cash,” Johnny yelled back.

“Yeah. And I’m Dwight D. Eisenhower,” the officer said. “Get the hell over here. You’re going to jail.”

And so he did… And so he wrote about the experience in his song.

I was whistlin’, pickin’ flowers, swayin’ in the southern breeze.
I found myself surrounded; one policeman said: “That’s him.
Come along, wild flower child. Don’t you know that it’s two a.m.”
They’re bound to get you.
‘Cause they got a curfew.
And you go to the Starkville City Jail.

When Cash performed the song to the prisoners at San Quentin State Prison in 1969, the song was his way of showing the inmates that he might not have served any time in a penitentiary, but he could understand how they felt. The song is of the same spirit of many of his other humorous songs, such as Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog and A Boy Named Sue.

However, more than 40 years after the arrest and four years after Cash died, a preacher, a bar owner, and a few other Cash fans in the city thought it might be a good idea to convince the city to ‘pardon’ Cash. After all, his life represents the idea of redemption to fans throughout the world, and his offense was ‘pickin’ flowers,’ not murder.

Lou Robin, Johnny Cash’s manger from 1973-2003 wrote a letter to the city about the planned celebration endorsing the event.

“I’m sure that Johnny would have been the first visitor in town… had he been able,” Robin wrote. “Here’s looking forward to what we hope will become a yearly event.”

During the first two years, city and county leaders symbolically issued ‘pardons’ to Cash’s friends and family who attended the festival. Visitors at the festival those years included Marty Stuart, Billy Joe Shaver, Marshall Grant, Rosanne Cash, Joanne Cash, Kathy Cash Tittle and Jimmy Tittle.

But after two years of pardoning Cash, it was time for something different. Carlene Carter and Justin Townes Earle performed at the festival this year, along with Jimmy Tittle and many other musicians. Everyone involved in the festival knows that forgiveness, such that the pardon represented, is a two-way street, so Carlene and Kathy stood on the festival stage and ‘pardoned’ Starkville, each giving the city’s mayor a flower.

The annual festival weekend includes public talks about Cash, jail tours, musical performances throughout the city and ends on Sunday with a ‘redemption’ church service. John Francis, a musician living in Nashville whose music is produced by John Carter Cash, performed at the festival, including at the Sunday gospel service.

Standing in a parking lot near the police department talking about the festival, Francis said he would return to Starkville.

“This is big,” he said. “This is about redemption.”