Does the story make you fearful? Does it make you laugh or smile? Better yet, does it bring you to tears? Now that is an accomplishment for a writer. Making the reader feel something.
You win Sarah Vowell.
Sarah is a writer and for the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International. Wikipedia calls her a "social observer."
Sarah's radio story about the romance and marriage of Johnny and June Cash will grab your heart. Perhaps you will be cold enough to avoid emotion. I broke into a gasp and found myself crying.
June and Johnny's love was wrong on so many counts. He was married. She was married. And not to each other. They fell in love anyway. It happened. And it turned into something beautiful.
Find some good in that if you will.
Johnny and June Cash don't fall into the category of "good example" or "horrible warning." But their love was oh so touching and oh so inspirational.
As Sarah Vowell tells it, June wrote the song "Ring of Fire" while she was fighting against the love she felt for Johnny. Later, Johnny and his mariachi band trumpets took June's creation and turned it into a song like no other. Johnny's gravel-voiced passion in "Ring of Fire" was frosted with the oohs and ahs and ladylike echoes of the background singers -- June's sainted mother and sister.
Johnny must have been some hunk of burning love.
Johnny credited June with saving his life -- and she probably did. Snatching him from drugs and sharing her faith in God with him.
Even as they contemplated death together, the two were passionate. This beautiful duet predicts the final days of their 35 years together.
See if it doesn't make you shed a silent tear as you listen to June's sweet thin voice:
"If it proves to be His will that I am first to cross,
and somehow I've a feeling it will be.
When it comes your time to travel, likewise don't feel lost.
For I will be the first one that you'll see.
I'll be waiting on the farside banks of Jordan.
I'll be sitting drawing pictures in the sand.
And when I see you coming I will rise up with a shout
and come running through the shallow water, reaching for your hand."
To hear Sarah Vowell's beautiful story of Johnny and June's romance, listen by clicking here: This American Life . The podcast is titled "What is this thing?" The Carters' story, Act 3, is contained in the last 10 minutes ... don't even bother with the first 49 minutes of the show.
