100 Miles Out of the Way on the Longest Dirt Road Ever

I came home a little over a week ago to stay with Dad while Mom went out of town for a retreat. Even though he has Parkinson’s and a really bad back, Dad likes to have some adventures, so adventures, we had. Our first task, shortly after Mom left was to head across the bridge into Memphis for some real barbecue! Dad had been thinking about Cozy Corner ribs, and I had been thinking about Memphis ‘cue in general, so we headed in to pick up our dinner for the night. Now, I know some of you are thinking that I live in Virginia, just over the line from North Carolina, so surely, I can get some decent ‘cue there. Well, the truth is, no one does ribs like Memphis, and NC is no exception. I can’t eat that stuff over there… it’s just not right at all, and the sauce should NEVER be runny! YUCK! They can have it, and I’ll just come home periodically to indulge in the food of the Gods! As usual, it did not disappoint. Cozy Corner is not one of those places where outsiders go, which just means more for us. I daresay it is one of the top two places in the world for ribs, and the other is also in Memphis. That was well worth the drive.

The next day, we loaded into the truck and headed to a little-known town about an hour north of the lake called Dyess, Arkansas. If you haven’t heard of Dyess, you’re probably not alone, and if you have, you probably know of it because of its most famous resident – JR Cash, known to the world as Johnny Cash. Dyess is where Johnny Cash lived from the age of three until he left home to join the Air Force. Our visit to this small community taught Dad and me so much more about how important this town of less than 300 residents was in the mid-20th century. During the Great Depression, as part of the Roosevelt’s New Deal, Dyess became one of the first, as well as the largest, agrarian community in the nation. Families from poorer parts of Arkansas, including the Cash family, were moved to Dyess and provided with 40 acre farms and white clapboard houses to farm the land. Growing up in Memphis, I’d learned about the WPA – how they had built the rock bridges in Overton Park, and how they had built the original Crump Stadium, sadly no longer standing behind Memphis Central High School. I’d even learned that, although it was the largest stadium in Memphis at the time, no college or professional football games could be played there because the field ran East to West, instead of the regulation North to South (put in place so that players never had the sun in their eyes!). I’d never learned about the agrarian communities like Dyess that dotted the Mississippi Valley.

After a long and wet, and sometimes tedious, ride through rural Arkansas, passing landscape peppered with small houses that appeared to be little more than shacks or lean-tos, on “the longest dirt road” Dad had ever been on (He swore we were “lost 100 miles out of the way”, but Waze knew we weren’t), we finally made it to Historic Dyess Colony: Boyhood Home of Johnny Cash. Dad was pretty tired and pretty sore, so assisted by Tim Allen (NOT the actor) and Shelby Dodson, we were able to borrow the museum’s wheelchair and tour the original City Hall. We opted to forgo touring the actual house because Dad was so tired, but we had a personal escort and we were able to really learn a lot about this small, friendly place. It was worth the drive just to meet such friendly people, who shared so graciously of themselves and their community with us. I will definitely return and bring Abby when we are back this way together, and I recommend it for a short adventure within an hour and a half of Memphis. And, in case you didn’t know, Johnny Cash was the Vice President of his senior class at Dyess High School.

Thank you again to Tim and Shelby, and I’ll see you again next year with my daughter in tow.