Johnny Cash Pardoned For Illegal Landscaping

September 13th, 2007 // 4 Comments

johnnycash.jpgFour decades after he was hauled off to the pokey for snagging a stranger’s flowers right out of their yard, Johnny Cash will be officially let off the hook by the uptight Mississippi town that put him away in the first place:

It is reported that Cash was arrested in May 1965 whilst picking flowers from somebody’s garden in the town, inspiring him to write a song ‘Starkville City Jail’, which he performed at San Quentin prison.

Johnny Cash later wrote in his autobiography that he was arrested whilst walking from his motel to a grocery store after a party on the Mississippi State University campus.

“I was screaming, cussing, and kicking at the cell door all night long until I finally broke my big toe,” he explained. “At 8am the next morning they let me out when they knew I was sober.”

Now that’s gangsta. The get out of jail free card will be posthumously bestowed upon the Man in Black at the “Johnny Cash Flower Pickin’ Festival” in November.

Johnny Cash To Recieve Pardon 42 Years After His Arrest [NME via Paper Thin Walls]


  1. FATAL_BIPOLAR_HOTNESS

    What an eventful life.. He makes Ray Charles look like a real sinner!

  2. JohnOO

    “I pardon thee, Johnathan Cash, for picking a ye-olde flower”. Don’t people have better things to be doing with their lives than this?

  3. Ned Raggett

    Yeah, complaining about it.

  4. ragandboneshop

    He picked those flowers just to watch them die.

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