September 1967, Nashville, Tennessee. The sidewalk outside Baptist Hospital on Church Street, a Thursday afternoon. A 10-year-old girl named Lucy Briggs stands on the concrete with a coffee can at her feet and sings. She is not a good singer. She knows she is not a good singer.
She has known this since second grade when Mrs. Patterson asked the class to sing a verse of my old Kentucky home. And Lucy sang hers. And the boy next to her, Tommy Aldrich, said, “You sound like a screen door.” And the class laughed. And Mrs. Patterson said that was unkind, but did not say it was untrue. Lucy does not sing because she is good at it.
She sings because it is the only thing she can do right now that has any chance of producing what she needs, which is money. and she has been standing on this sidewalk for 2 hours and the coffee can has $1.37 in it and she needs considerably more than that. She is singing Folsome Prison Blues.
She learned it from her mother, which is an unusual song for a mother to teach a 10-year-old, but her mother, Carol Briggs, is an unusual woman in several respects. a woman who grew up in Das, Arkansas and came to Nashville at 22 to find work and founded as a seamstress at a dry goods store on 2nd Avenue and stayed and who has been singing Johnny Cash songs in the house on 8th Avenue South where she and Lucy live since before Lucy was old enough to understand the words.
Carol says cash is from her part of the world and his voice sounds like home. And some nights when the rent is tight and the hours are long, his voice is the thing that makes the house feel like a house instead of a place where hard things happen. Carol Briggs is in Baptist Hospital right now.
She has been there for 6 days. The thing the doctors found in her chest in August needs to come out. And the surgery is scheduled for Monday. And the surgery costs money that Carol does not have. And the hospital has been patient, but has made clear in the way that hospitals make things clear with paperwork and careful language that patience has limits.
Lucy knows this. She is 10 years old and she knows this the way children know the serious things that adults discuss in low voices in the kitchen after they think the child is asleep. She has been awake for most of those conversations for six days. She knows the number. She has written it on the inside cover of her notebook in pencil.
She looks at it in the morning before school and after school and at night. The number does not change by looking at it. She has tried. She cannot think of anything to do except this. So, she is standing on the sidewalk outside Baptist Hospital with a coffee can and singing Folsome Prison Blues to the people who walk past on their way in and out of the building.
most of whom do not stop and some of whom dropped coins without looking. And one of whom, an older man in a good coat, stopped and listened for a full verse and put a dollar bill in the can and said, “You’ve got heart, young lady.” and kept walking. That was the best moment of the two hours.
She has been holding on to it since. She is in the middle of the second verse when she makes the mistake. The line is, “I know I had it coming.” She sings, “I know I had it coming.” The difference is small and most people would not notice it. And the people passing on the sidewalk certainly do not notice it, but someone does.
What Lucy Briggs does not know, standing on the Church Street sidewalk with her coffee can is that a man has been walking toward her from the parking lot on the other side of the street for the last 30 seconds. He is tall and thin and wearing dark clothes and he has been at Baptist Hospital visiting a musician he knows who is recovering from an operation and he is on his way back to his car and he heard the voice from across the street before he saw the person the voice was coming from.
And when he crossed the street and saw that the voice belonged to a 10-year-old girl with a coffee can, he stopped walking and stood on the sidewalk and listened. He listened for one full verse before he said anything. Here is the story. Johnny Cash was 35 years old in September 1967 and he was in the middle of the hardest years, the years before Folsam, before the sobriety held before June pulled him the final distance back.
He was not at his best in September 1967. and he knew it and carried that knowledge the way he carried difficult things internally and without performance going through the days with a specific discipline of a man who has decided to keep going regardless of the condition he is in. He was visiting a friend at Baptist Hospital on a Thursday afternoon.
He had parked in the lot across Church Street and walked over and spent an hour at the bedside and was walking back when he heard it. The voice was coming from the sidewalk in front of the hospital entrance. Small and not particularly touneful, but entirely committed, which was the thing that made him stop.
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He had grown listening to voices, and he understood the difference between a voice that was performing and a voice that was working. And this voice was working in the specific way of someone who has something writing on the outcome. He crossed Church Street. He saw the girl 10 years old maybe in a school dress that had been ironed that morning.
A coffee can on the concrete in front of her with a few bills and some coins visible through the plastic lid that someone had modified with a slot. She was singing Fulsome Prison Blues and she was on the second verse. He listened. She sang I know I had it coming. Cash said coming. Lucy stopped singing.
She looked at the man who had said the word. He was very tall and thin and wearing dark clothes, and he was looking at her with an expression that was not unkind, but was direct in a way that most adults were not direct with her. She said, “What?” He said, “The word is coming, not coming. The G is there. I know I had it coming.
” Lucy stared at him. She said, “I’ve been singing it that way my whole life.” Cash said, “How old are you?” Lucy said, “10.” Cash said, “Then your whole life is not very long yet. The word is coming.” Lucy looked at him for a moment. She said, “Do you know this song?” Cash said, “I wrote it.
” The sidewalk outside Baptist Hospital on Church Street in Nashville, Tennessee went very quiet in the way that things go quiet when a sentence has been said that rearranges the available information completely. Lucy looked at him. She looked at the coffee can. She looked at him again. She said, “You’re Johnny Cash.” He said, “Yes.
” She said, “My mother is going to die when she hears this.” The specific choice of words, given where her mother currently was, landed between them with a weight that neither of them acknowledged directly, but both of them felt. Cash said, “Your mother knows this song.” Lucy said, “She taught it to me. She’s from Das.
She says you’re from her part of the world.” Cash was quiet for a moment. He said, “What’s her name?” Lucy said, “Carol. Carol Briggs. She’s inside. She’s been inside for 6 days. Cash said, “What’s wrong with her?” Lucy said, “There’s something in her chest that has to come out. They’re going to do it Monday.
It costs a lot of money and we don’t have it.” She said it the way she had been saying it in her head for 6 days, flat and without the waiver that the words wanted to have because she had decided somewhere in the first day that she was not going to cry about it in front of anyone because crying did not produce what was needed and what was needed was in the coffee can.
And the coffee can was not full enough. Cash looked at the coffee can. He looked at the girl. He said, “How much do you need?” Lucy had the number memorized. She said it. Cash looked at the number. She said, “The way he looked at numbers. The way a man looks at something he is measuring against what he has available.
Direct and without drama.” Then he reached into his coat. Where are you watching from? Drop your state or country in the comments. I want to know how far this story reaches. He did not take out his wallet. He took out a small notebook and a pen and he wrote something on a page and tore it out and handed it to Lucy. Lucy looked at it.
It was a name and a phone number. The name was a man at Baptist Hospital’s billing department. At the bottom of the page, Cash had written four words. Tell them John called. Lucy looked up. Cash said, “That number will take care of Monday. Your mother’s surgery is covered.” Lucy said, “I don’t understand.
” Cash said, “You don’t need to understand it yet. You just need to give that piece of paper to whoever is handling your mother’s account in there and tell them John called. Can you do that?” Lucy said, “Yes, but I don’t.” “How are you?” Cash said, “Your mother is from Das.” I’m from Dus. That’s enough.
He said it the way you say something when it is the complete explanation and the complete justification and the complete answer and there is nothing useful to add to it. Das Arkansas the flat delta land the cotton rose the depression era houses on numbered roads. two people from that ground in a city that was not that ground and everything that came from it being enough of a connection to make a surgery on a Monday morning possible.
Lucy stood on the sidewalk with the piece of paper in her hand. Cash looked at the coffee can. He looked at her. He said, “You’ve been out here 2 hours.” Lucy said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “How much is in there?” She said, “$137 and some nickels.” Cash reached into his pocket and added to the can without counting what he was adding.
He said, “That’s yours, not for the hospital. For you. Buy something you want.” Then he said, “The word is coming with the G. Your mother will want you to sing it right.” He turned and walked back across Church Street to the parking lot. Lucy watched him go. She stood on the sidewalk with the piece of paper in one hand and the coffee can in the other and watched the tall, thin man in dark clothes walk across Church Street and get into a car and drive away.
She went inside. She found the billing office. She gave the woman at the desk the piece of paper. The woman read it. She picked up the phone. She made a call. She spoke in a low voice for about a minute. She set the phone down and looked at Lucy and said, “Your mother’s account has been taken care of.
The surgery will proceed on Monday as scheduled.” Lucy said, “What does that mean exactly?” The woman said, “It means it’s paid for.” Lucy stood at the billing desk for a moment. She was 10 years old, and she had been carrying a number in her head for 6 days, and the number was gone, and she did not know exactly what to do with the space where the number had been.
She said, “Can I go see my mother now?” The woman said, “Of course.” Lucy went upstairs. Carol Briggs was in a room on the fourth floor in a bed by the window, looking smaller than she looked at home, the way people look smaller in hospital beds. She looked up when Lucy came in. She said, “You’re back early.
How much did you get?” Lucy set the coffee can on the bedside table. She said, “Mama, you are not going to believe what happened.” She told her, “Carol Briggs, listened to the story of the sidewalk and the correction and the word coming with the G and the notebook in the piece of paper and tell them John called.
” She listened with the complete attention of a woman who has been lying in a hospital bed for 6 days thinking about a number and is now hearing that the number is gone. When Lucy finished, Carol was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “He corrected your singing first before anything else.” Lucy said, “Yes.
” Carol said, “That sounds right. That sounds exactly right.” She said it the way she said things about people from her part of the world with the specific recognition of someone who has grown up in the same ground and understands the values that ground produces. among them the value that you say the true thing before you do the kind thing because the true thing is a form of respect and respect comes first.
Carol Briggs had her surgery on Monday morning. It went well. She was home on 8th Avenue South by the following Thursday. She sat in her kitchen and she was alive and the house felt like a house again and she put Johnny Cash on the record player which is what she did when she needed the house to feel like a house. She wrote a letter.
She wrote it to the address she found in a music industry directory at the Nashville Public Library. Care of Cash’s management and she wrote it by hand on the good paper she kept for important things. She told him about Das and about her father’s farm on Colony Road and about coming to Nashville at 22 and about teaching Lucy Folsome prison blues because his voice sounded like home. She thanked him.
She said she did not know how to thank him properly and was going to try anyway. She received a reply 3 weeks later. It was short. It was handwritten on plain paper. It said, “Carol Das is enough. I hope you are well. Sing the G JC.” She framed it. It hung in the kitchen on 8th Avenue South for the rest of the time they lived in that house.
Lucy grew up looking at it over breakfast every morning. Now, June Carter Cash Cash told June that evening he came home to Hendersonville and sat at the kitchen table and told her about the sidewalk and the coffee can and the girl singing Flesome Prison Blues with the G missing and the number written in the notebook in the billing office.
June listened without interrupting. When he finished, she said she was singing it wrong. Cash said the G was missing. June said, “And you corrected her first.” Cash said, “The word is coming.” June looked at him. She said, “John.” He said, “Yes.” She said, “You know what you did.
” He said, “I made a phone call.” June said, “You gave that woman her daughter back. You gave that girl her mother back.” She paused. she said. And you corrected the singing first, which is the most Johnny Cash thing that has ever happened. He almost smiled. The particular almost smile that June knew, the one that appeared when something had been said that was true and complete and did not need anything added to it.
She poured coffee. She sat down. She said, “Where’s she from the mother?” Cash said, “Das.” June said, “Of course she is.” She said it with the warmth of someone who is not surprised and is glad not to be surprised. June Carter Cash had grown up in a family that understood what it meant to be from a place and to carry that place with you and to recognize it in other people when you encountered it.
She understood why Das was enough. She had always understood why Das was enough. Lucy Briggs grew up on 8th Avenue South and went to Cone High School and then to Nashville State and became a nurse. She worked at Vanderbilt Medical Center for 31 years. She retired in 2003. She sings the G.
She has always sung the G every time. Since the afternoon, a tall man in dark clothes stopped on a Church Street sidewalk and told her the word was coming with the G because her mother would want her to sing it right. The coffee can is in a box in her daughter’s attic in Brentwood. The letter on the plain paper, the one with the three sentences in the initials, is framed in her daughter’s kitchen the same way it was framed in Carol’s kitchen on 8th Avenue South. Her daughter is 28 years old.
She knows the story. She knows the word is coming with the G. Johnny Cash corrected a 10-year-old girl singing on a Nashville sidewalk before he did anything else because that was who he was. a man from Das who believed that the true thing and the kind thing were not in competition and that if you had to choose an order you put the true thing first because the true thing was its own form of respect.
The correction and the phone call were the same gesture. Both of them said you matter enough for me to get this right. the G, the surgery, the letter on the plain paper, the coffee can with a $137 and some nickels and whatever he added without counting. All of it the same man. All of it Das. If this story reached you, leave a comment.
Tell me where you are watching from. Tell me if there is someone in your life who got the true thing right before they got the kind thing done. Those people are rare and worth remembering. Hit the like button if this is the kind of story you want more of and subscribe so you are here when the next one comes.
