Jim, Johnny And The Orange Blossom Special
I had just turned eight years old when I first heard Johnny Cash.
It was “Orange Blossom Special” and it was playing on my Great Uncle Jim’s 1950’s Clairtone console. Jim had served with the Canadians at Vimy Ridge in 1917. I had seen the scars from the shrapnel wounds on his shins many times as a child. He was a tough man who had seen things. Many of those things were extremely unpleasant.
He was then in his late sixties and the youngest and the last of the 8 Valey brothers left alive and the only one I had ever met. The others, including my grandfather, David, passed away before I was born.
After the war, as the legend of Uncle Jim goes, while most discharged servicemen were marrying pretty girls and buying homes in the suburbs and working in the factories. Uncle Jim was travelling to exotic places like Tibet and New Zealand and Borneo and the deep south of America.
He was a “hippie” before there were hippies. A true original.
He actually escaped in the middle of the night from some town in Georgia in 1949 after getting involved with an early civil rights group, trying to get African Americans registered for the vote. A rock with a note attached, that crashed through the window of the hostel he and others were staying at, convinced him to leave. It simply said -”leave or die KKK.”
Sorrow, Sun Records, racism and Rosa Parks, moral tribulation and redemption and a man in black’s complicated bond and emotional relationship with trains and myriad metaphors contained within are difficult concepts to grasp as a 8 year old. These are things Jim talked about.
Fortunately that day, the “Special”, Johnny and Jim didn’t overwhelm an impressionable and burgeoning 8 year old music nut by trying to solve all the world’s problems. What they did do, was smartly infuse a melodic curiosity and plant an intellectual seed that enabled me, as that seed grew – and I grew, to seek out the deeper meanings behind those ideas and the philosophies surrounding them and to know to work diligently to understand and hopefully master them and mostly, why that is important.
“Why are those people mad at that black man?” I asked, as the black and white television screen itself almost burst into flames; flames of rage, as we watched the news footage roll from Detroit during that long hot summer of 1967.
“Because they’re ignorant” said Jim.
“What’s ignorant?”
“It means they aren’t very smart and have a lot of hate in their hearts.” he patiently answered.
“Don’t EVER let hate take hold in your heart and don’t EVER judge someone just because they’re different from you”
I was thinking about Jim and Johnny today and the “Orange Blossom Special” and what an amazing and wonderful gift they gave me all those years ago!
