Signs of Something Very Wrong with Brad DeLong, Part CXXXIV

While watching the Johnny Cash movie, "Walk the Line," he spends a substantial part of the movie spinning increasingly ridiculous and implausible scenarios as to how a man who committed felony murder in Nevada (Reno) could have wound up incarcerated in a California state penitentiary (Folsom Prison).

I mean, federalism.

Comments

[dj moonbat]

Wasn't he in Folsom as a performer?

[Brad DeLong]

Well, yes. But he was in Folsom as a performer because he wrote the song:

I hear the train a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine,
Since, I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin' on,
But that train keeps a-rollin',
On down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy,
Don't ever play with guns,"
But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die,
When I hear that whistle blowin',
I hang my head and cry.

I bet there's rich folks eatin',
In a fancy dining car,
They're probably drinkin' coffee,
And smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Well, if they freed me from this prison,
If that railroad train was mine,
I bet I'd move out over a little,
Farther down the line,
Far from Folsom Prison,
That's where I want to stay,
And I'd let that lonesome whistle,
Blow my Blues away.

[jerry]

The murderer in the song fled from Reno along highway 80, west bound. He was caught 30 minutes later in Truckee by the California Highway Patrol for felony speeding. He was imprisoned in California because he wouldn't agree to be extradited.

[jerry]

Theory 2, No one in prison wants to be known for having been imprisoned for littering. The "murderer" in this song, like Arlo just two decades later was arrested for littering on Thanksgiving. Since this occured in the lull between Korea and Vietnam, there was no draft and no Group W Bench.... He did have the Folsom Prison Blues, but he just couldn't mention the littering....

[derek]

Reno, CA... often mistaken for its more famous Nevada namesake.

[Brad DeLong]

Yep. Those three theories are the kinda thing I mean...

[Zach]

He was in prison in CA for a different crime.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Only a college professor could so complicate a hillbilly-goes-to-prison song. I can see it now.

"Factual Errors In Prison Songs: A Comparative of Johnny Cash versus Merle Haggerd."

The Journal of Popular Culture

Delong, 3:2006

Speaking as a Cash expert and someone who had hillbilly ancestors spend time in prison, I believe it was Reno Nevada, he fled, and is in jail on four attempted murder charges due to a shootout with the California Highway Patrol. BEsides, try this

"I shot a man in Sacremento, just to watch him die"

Doesn't work.

[Calton Bolick]

"I shot a man in Chico, just to watch him die."

Scans, but still doesn't work, somehow.

I have to admit that the Reno reference bothered me the first time I heard the song, when I was 12, and it bothers me still.

[You knew that much about federalism and criminal procedure when you were 12?]

[Calton Bolick]

No, I knew the difference between California and Nevada, and what a state prison is.

[dsquared]

It also ought to bother you that the main railroad (the one on which a train bound for San Antonio, TX would be rolling) doesn't pass through Folsom; it goes the other side of Sacramento. Folsom is a terminus on the Sacramento Valley Railroad so there is no "bend" near the prison for the train to be "rolling round". There is a local street railway that passes quite near Folsom Prison, but it's electric and therefore the trains wouldn't have whistles.

I therefore suspect that what the Cash character can hear is the steam trains on the Folsom Valley Railway. This is a narrow-gauge line which does run quite close to the prison (or at least, to the Prison Museum). Needless to say it doesn't have fancy dining cars, and if Cash were to get onto it it wouldn't go very "far from Folsom Prison" as it is only a journey of about 3/4 of a mile in the local park. It's really quite undignified.

[ajay]

Maybe that's the point: the irony is that Cash is torturing himself with images of fine dining and rolling down to San Antonio, when, in fact, that's not what he's hearing at all.
I was about to suggest that he was out on work release somewhere near the main line, but a) that's unlikely for a murderer and b) he says he hasn't seen the sunshine since he don't know when.

[David Margolies]

Okay, here is a much simpler theory: shooting the guy is Reno was just one of a long list of crimes committed, but the one which best showed that (1) he ignored his mom's advice and did play with guns, and (2) he is a low-down rotten person. He is in Folsom serving time for one of the other offenses.

[Marcus Sitz]

Fortunately the protagonist in the song didn't commit a cold-blooded murder during the first half-dozen miles after he crossed the California-Nevada state line.

Then he would have been in Sierra County, whose county seat (Downieville) is the site of the in-working-order ...

Sheriff's Gallows.

Gurk!

[Dave MB]

One of the many things I loved about the movie was that
it essentially answers this question, as well as the related
one about why a train in California would be bound in
particular for San Antonio. In the movie, Cash writes the
song in Germany after seeing a B-movie about Folsom.
He would appear not to have traveled much except for joining
the Air Force, and may not even have known that Reno is in
Nevada or that trains near Folsom, unlike the trains near his
home in Arkansas, might not have San Antonio as a primary
destination. We never see his education, but it could well
have been weak in US geography.

(Wikipedia reports the B-movie inspiration as fact -- presumably
its in the autobiographies that the movie credits as source.)

[Anderson]

Sadly, I wondered about this too. Happily, not as much as some evidently did.

Sarah Vowell says her favorite TV comedy line is "I shot a man in Reno once, just to watch him die; but then I got distracted, so I missed it." From some show that I never watched & thus forgot the name of.

[Ken Houghton]

We see from the movie that the bulk of the song was written in Germany. [insert lebenstraum joke here, correcting German spelling as needed]

Or accept Dave MB's more lucid explanation, and consider that the movie may have had its murder take place in Reno, CA.

[save_the_rustbelt]

On a more interesting note, the movie is probably mistitled.

Cash wrote "I Walk the Line" for his first wife, and was subsequently divorced due to his hard living.

Since the movie was more about June Carter, it should have probably been titled "Ring of Fire," written by June about their red hot love affair.

Now who is overanalyzing! :)

[johne]

"We never see his education, but it could well have been weak in US geography."
If he was educated in the US, it almost certainly was (as well as in every other nation's geography, too; history as well, but let's not get started).

[Disputo]

The song "Ring of Fire" refers not to the "hotness" of their love affair, but to the flames of hell that are the reward for adultery.

One of my big disappointments with the movie is that it totally glossed over June's struggle between her love for Cash and her Christian faith.

In addition, the movie included the obligatory condemning Christian, who hectored June in the store, but drew no connection between the benevolence of June's parents and their religious faith.

I'm beginning to understand the Christian critique of Hollywood.

[Steady Eddie]

Brad, it's because if instead of Reno he used Lodi (another short, two-syllable town which IS in California), he'd still be stuck there again, and couldn't be in Folsom Prison at the same time.

[Cameron Mitchell]

"I shot a man in Reno once, just to watch him die; but then I got distracted, so I missed it."

That is a line Dave Foley says to the camera in a short sketch from "Kids In The Hall."