On a cold, overcast January day last year, some friends and I decided to say hello to Johnny Cash and June Carter.

But hold on, you might be saying.  Didn’t they both die over five years ago?

Yes, they did.  But their final resting place is in Hendersonville, TN, only twenty minutes from my apartment, at the Henderson Memory Gardens.  You can find the place on any of the increasing number of Celebrities’ Final Resting Place websites, sites more than a little morbid but ones that do serve a purpose.  We were bored, my friends were in from out of town, and nothing says Nashville like the specter of Johnny Cash (you will need both hands to count the number of times you hear “Folsom Prison Blues” during a night spent among the downtown honky-tonks). 

Pulling into the parking lot behind the funeral home, we scanned the grounds and figured our task a difficult one.  Almost none of the gravestones at the cemetery rose more than a couple inches off the ground.  Finding one gravestone amongst a thousand spread across many acres did not seem a particularly respectful way to spend time in a cemetery, looking down to read a name and then saying, “Nope, not him,” before moving on.

We’d expected a mausoleum of some sort, a massive tombstone, signs pointing to the grave and numbered maps to see whatever other stars’ remains may be nearby.  I’ve heard that Bob Marley’s gravesite is besieged by homeless “rastas” smoking pot and pontificating on the Late Great; maybe for Johnny, we’d see local “songwriters” swigging whisky and singing Cash songs to each other.  We should’ve known better: this is the South, the Bible Belt, a part of the country supposedly too genteel for that sort of thing, and at the end of his life Johnny was a devout Christian.  Respect and modesty were concepts as important to his fans as they were to Cash and his family.

We thought about turning around and heading home, NOT all but defiling a city park’s worth of gravestones while searching for that of a man we only knew through his music, of allowing everyone, not just Johnny and June but all of the cemetery’s residents, to rest in peace.

And then we saw tourists, wearing black t-shirts embossed with the word “CASH,” scanning the ground, looking back and forth in confusion before smiling and pointing.  Their lack of shame showed us the way, and, it must be said, we were grateful.  We let them pay their respects, let them have their special time: no doubt they came a longer way than we did.  They laid flowers and took pictures before shuffling off with smiles on their faces.

Other than the beaten-down yellow grass surrounding the tombstone, there was little sign that giants of American popular culture lay below.  Johnny and June share a plot, a dual headstone with their names, dates of birth and death, and a scripture verse.  Modest to the end.  Certain members of the legendary Carter Family lay nearby, a whole section of country music’s vast and rich history beneath our feet.

I felt taking pictures would be disrespectful, but my girlfriend and my good buddy Joe both had their cameras out before I could say anything.  My mind wandered off, “Folsom Prison” and “I Still Miss Someone” blasting away on my internal jukebox, Johnny’s sonorous voice echoing from below the grass, back through the ages.  We paid our respects, and, well, didn’t see a whole lot else to do.

I’d heard that Luther Perkins, Johnny Cash’s original lead guitar player, the one who wrote that simple but perfect solo for “Folsom Prison,” dead in a house fire in 1968, was buried close by.  I set off to find his grave, but such a search was a non-starter: every headstone throughout the winding expanse of verdant acreage looked almost exactly the same.  We stood around, bewildered, trying to do the tourist thing but always cognizant of the fact that we were on sacred ground.

An adjacent tombstone satisfied our curiosity, gave us something else to look at, someone else’s grave to stand above and ponder, this for Merle Kilgore, a country producer, Hank Williams, Jr., confidant, songwriter, and June Carter’s writing partner on “Ring of Fire.”  His tombstone is the standard by which all tombstones should be judged, a solid six feet long with a large picture of himself etched into the bronze, an etching of his smiling face with hand extended, showing off “All My Rings,” as the words below proclaim.  This guy knew how to make a statement for all eternity, dispensing modesty in mortality for the chance, once and for all, to one up John and June and all other surrounding graves.

Pondering his gravestone made us chuckle for a bit before we decided that we best be moving on.  We stopped on the way home to eat some barbecue at a local Hendersonville roadhouse, one with pictures of Johnny Cash and June Carter on the walls.  They lived nearby their entire married lives in a house that burned down last year before Barry Gibb (yes, from the Bee Gees) could turn it into a Johnny Cash museum.  We bought booze at a local liquor store for cheaper than we would find it in Nashville and headed home, ready for a night on the town, for a night spent basking, in large part, in the genius of Johnny’s songwriting and its continued, all-but-sacred presence in the local country music scene.

We heard “Folsom Prison” four times that night, by my count, but we were only out for a few hours.  A few days later we discovered an acquaintance is Merle Kilgore’s granddaughter, and that yes, she is mildly embarrassed by his final statement.  Finding her bemusement funny, I realized I haven’t been to either of my grandfathers’ final resting places.  Not since the funerals.  I don’t even know what they look like.

Johnny, June, and Merle Kilgore, however…I got those taken care of.