BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND

Johnny Cash wasn't in Kingsland for long, because he left for his new life in Dyess, taking his young family with him, including his wife Carrie Rivers, who was leaving her own family behind.

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Carrie was from the tiny settlement of Cross Roads, just up a gravel road on the other side of the highway to Kingsland, and the shack that Johnny talks about as having no windows and the curtains billowing in was in the Cross Roads settlement, where they lived after moving off his uncle's land.

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Dyess is part of this chapter too, the end of the drive that follows broadly the route Johnny will have taken on the flat-back wagon when the family headed north, the back roads only, although we are not yet at Johnny's boyhood home.

The road running from Cross Roads back towards Kingsland

The Cross Roads Cemetery, where many of Johnny's maternal relatives are buried

McCrory's General Store, on the edge of Dyess

Dyess Civic Center - the museum is inside

Dyess City Hall, according to the sign ....

Johnny Cash's Air Force shirt in the Civic Center Museum

The road running towards the small settlement of Cross Roads, just past the cemetery

The gravesite of Johnny's maternal grandparents in the Cross Roads cemetery

Dyess marker, in the centre of Dyess

Dyess Theatre, part of the regeneration of the town

Centre of Dyess

Part of the Johnny Cash section of the Dyess Museum in the Civic Center

Centre of Dyess, with City Hall on the left, Civic Center in the middle, and Dyess Theatre on the right. The Dyess marker is under the trees