FIVE FEET HIGH AND RISING

johnny Cash's family moved from Kingsland, where they had been reliant on Johnny's uncle to provide them with accommodation and for Johnny's father to find work, often by riding the boxcars as an itinerant labourer. The move to Dyess, two hundred miles north of Kingsland, meant a whole new start, as Johnny's father became part of a new community as part of the New Deal Program, an effort to find work for the poor during the Depression.

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Dyess is a small place, and Johnny's boyhood home is about a mile outside, down a gravel road, and the place where Johnny learned to love music, where his brother Jack died, and where his parents lived when Johnny started to make it as a singer.

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The house had fallen into disrepair but has now been renovated, with the most amazing find of all being the original linoleum in the living area. Those in charge have replicated the furniture exactly, and the piano is the one owned by the Cash family. The images are exactly how it looked when Johnny was growing up.

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Johnny Cash's boyhood home in Dyess

The road into Dyess from Johnny Cash's boyhood home

The rear yard of the Cash family home, looking out towards the fields once tended by them

The rear of the Cash family home

The living area in the Cash family home, with original linoleum and the Cash family piano

Johnny Cash's brother's bed in the bedroom they shared

Johnny Cash's parents bed

The Cash family kitchen, with the doorway to the dining room to the left

Looking towards the living area from the Cash family kitchen

Johnny Cash's boyhood home

The front porch at Johnny Cash's boyhood home

The rear yard immediately behind the Cash family home

A water pump at the side of the Cash family home, on the Dyess side

Where Johnny Cash would sit and listen to the radio

Johnny Cash's bed

Johnny Cash's sister's bed, in her parents' bedroom

The Cash family dining area, with the kitchen to the right, looking from the living area

Where Johnny would listen to the radio, from the kitchen doorway