Johnny Cash Sings About A Special Cadillac

By the sounds of it Johnny Cash, the deep-voiced minstrel of the Nashville Sound, has a new hit on his hands-and the people at Cadillac Motor Division in Detroit couldn't be more pleased. Cash, who amused his fans several years ago with his saga about a distraught "Boy Named Sue," has now taken up the ballad of a frustrated assembly line worker from Kentucky who just couldn't resist the looks of those Cadillacs he helped assemble.

As Cash tells it, "Everyday I'd watch those beauties roll by, and sometimes I'd hang my head and cry, cause I always wanted the one that was long and black." The obvious answer: "I'd devised myself a plan that should be the envy of most any man, I'd sneak it out of there in the lunch box in my hand." Now granted, "gettin' caught meant getting fired, but I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired, I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand."

So, startin' back in '49, Cash's hero leaves work every day with a lunch box full of Cadillac parts. As the years add up, so does the list of missing parts-first an engine here, then a trunk there, "a transmission and all the chrome." What wouldn't fit in the lunch bucket "was snuck out in my buddy's mobile home." Come assembly day, however, and the story hits a sour note . . . "Now up to now my plan went all right, til we tried to put it all together one night, and that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong. The transmission was a '53 and the motor turned out to be a '73, then when we tried to put in the bolts, all the holes were gone." While the car turns out to be more mix than match, the folks at Cadillac are happy with the attention coming their was as a result.

"We're elated to have people talking about Cadillac," said Edward C. Kennard, Cadillac general manager and a vice president of GM, when asked about the song by a Detroit newspaper reporter. "Obviously, we don't condone employee theft, but we think that basically, most of our employees are honest," Kennard added. Meanwhile, there's been some talk in newspaper accounts that Cash may serenade the plant's 11,000 workers when he comes off a singing tour. Should that be the case, the visit will no doubt be as memorable for Cash as for the workers, considering the country music star had a one-week stint as a punch press operator there back in 1950. Personnel files at Pontiac Motor Division, Pontiac, Mich., have him listed as John R. Cash, but "he's the same one," a spokesman there recalls. Unlike the Kentuckian he sings about, however, Cash headed back to his farm in Arkansas, according to his file. Just for the record, there's nothing mentioned about what kind of car he was driving when he left.