The folk singer at the Coventry Farmer’s Market began playing Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”
As I listened, I found myself remembering the moment I learned about Cash’s death, back in September of 2003. I was sitting on a fence at Camp Jewell in Colebrook, CT, surrounded by a bunch of hungry fifth graders. We were beginning day two of our three day, two night overnight trip, waiting for the breakfast bell to ring, when someone told us about his death.
His wife, June Carter Cash, had died just four months earlier.
In memory of Johnny Cash, we spent the next two days listening to my friends, Rob and Andy, play his music on their guitars as we sang as many of his songs that we knew, including “Ring of Fire.”
A little more than a year later, Andy found me singing “Ring of Fire” on the stage in my classroom in an attempt to irritate my students. He then spent the next couple weeks teaching his student ensemble to play the song. Then, on the Friday before Christmas break, he convinced me to sing the song in front of the entire school during our weekly assembly.
I am not a singer of any kind, but I stood there, in front of 500 students and more than a hundred parents, singing “Ring of Fire” for no other reason than I liked the song and Andy’s students could play it.
Elysha, who was teaching in the same school with me back then and was sitting in the audience, had a flicker of concern that I might be singing “Ring of Fire” as the opening to a public marriage proposal.
I proposed 13 days later on the steps of Grand Central Station.
Still a public proposal, but in front of friends and family and hundreds of strangers.
Not students and faculty.
A couple years later, I was working as the DJ for a wedding where the only music we were permitted to play during dinner was songs by Johnny Cash. It didn’t take long for guests to approach and ask us what the hell we were doing. Even after I explained that this was a specific request of the bride and groom (and that the music would be very different during dancing), many guests still directed their anger at me.
Appropriately so. Never direct an ounce of anger at a bride and groom on their wedding day. Only a selfish fool would do such a thing.
All of these thoughts filtered through my mind as I stood in the grass at the farmer’s market, listening to that man sing Johnny Cash’s song.
That’s the beauty of art. Johnny Cash has been gone for 18 years, yet his music continues to hold a significant place in this world. His music, his lyrics, and if you’re listening to an original recording, his voice are still important parts of our culture today.
Two decades later, people still love his music.
Even better, sometimes a particular bit of creation, like “Ring of Fire,” written by June Carter Cash in 1963 and popularized by her husband that same year, can weave its way into the lives of an audience, becoming indelibly attached to unforgettable memories of time spent with children and friends outdoors, amusing teaching moments, unexpected and unwarranted public singing, marriage proposals, weddings, and more.
My deepest hope as a writer and storyteller is to produce something someday that has the lasting import and appeal of “Ring of Fire,” and that perhaps, it might even come to mean as much to someone in this world as much as this song has come to mean to me.
