Ah Johnny, I really knew you

Emissions: Johnny Cash died a few weeks ago. I loved him. Not that I'm a country music fan per se - most of it sounds to me like the warblings of a drunken cat with adenoid problems.

But he was a part of my childhood, ever-present on my father's stereo as we drove around, singing along at the top of our voices, as if we were his backing band and not just a bunch of nutters in a car.

I cried when I heard he'd gone. I was upset partly for him, partly for his family, partly for his millions of fans, partly for myself. Although, it was hardly unexpected. He had been ill for years, spending numerous stays in hospital suffering complications caused by diabetes. His wife, June, died last May. I suspected then he would follow soon after - she was as he so often said himself, his rock, second only to God in his affections.

Johnny was a legend, a true icon of his time. He appealed to the Godly and Ungodly, to Saints and Sinners alike. For he was a member of both camps himself at various times, a man who walked the line and found himself equally famous for his visits to jail as his devotion to his church.

From a dirt-poor farming family in Dyess, Arkansas, Johnny was surrounded by music growing up, with both parents being talented musicians.

Despite his own incredible gift, he was forced in the 1950s to travel the road taken by thousands before him, northwards to Detroit and its burgeoning motor industry. He briefly worked on the Pontiac assembly line, before biting the bullet and joining the US army.

It was during this period that he got the inspiration for one of his most famous, and certainly funniest songs, One Piece At A Time, which tells the tale of an autoworker so in love with the machines he was producing that he resolved to build one himself with parts stolen gradually from the factory. He figured he'd have it all by the time he retired, and he'd have a $100,000 car that would be the envy of every man.

The narrator tells of secreting out the smaller bits in his lunchbox, while "the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy's mobile home". It's a classic tune, made even more hilarious by the bungling attempts to fit all the disparate pieces together. The narrator and his buddy soon realised they were up against it - they had a '53 transmission, a '73 engine and only one tailfin. They had two headlights on the left and one on the right - "but when we pulled out the switch all three of 'em come on".

He ended up a laughing stock in his psychotic Cadillac and hauled before the courts - but he didn't care. He had his car.

Of course, it's a fiction straight out of Johnny's mischievous brain, and the car never existed, right? Wrong. A little research - ain't the Internet grand? - reveals there actually is a One Piece At A Time car. One Oklahoma Cash fan, Bill Patch, was so taken with Johnny and his tale of a light-fingered car enthusiast that he built one. Just like in the song, it was a hotchpotch of various Caddies over the years, down to the mismatched headlights and wonky rear fenders.

Patch, who was trying to raise funds for his local Lions Club, brought his 1949-73 Cadillac Coupé Sedan De Ville to the House of Cash in Tennessee to present it to his hero (and try to cajole a benefit gig or two out of him, no doubt). By all accounts Johnny was delighted, and accepted the invitation to play a couple of fundraisers.

I can imagine him when he saw it - his creased, lived-in face lighting up with an angelic smile, his gravelly baritone chortling away.

Apparently, it's still in the House of Cash, under wraps. I hope June and Johnny are cruising around Heaven in one just like it. They'll have the only one there is in town.