60 Year Ago: Johnny Cash is Arrested for “Picking Flowers”

Of course, there was a little more going on than innocently picking flowers. But that’s how Johnny Cash loved to portray it at the time, before he was more open and honest about his substance abuse issues, which were likely responsible for him roaming the streets of Starkville, Mississippi in the wee morning hours of May 11th, 1965.

When a police officer rolling by at about 2:00 AM observed Johnny Cash in the front yard of a house near the corner of what’s now Martin Luther King Drive and North Jackson Street, flower picking might have been involved to some extent. But so were other bouts of drunk and disorderly conduct, and the officer placed The Man in Black under arrest. Earlier that night, Cash had played a show at Mississippi State University.

The incident would later be memorialized in Cash’s song “Starkville City Jail,” but that’s not where he ended up on his botanical excursion. It was actually the Oktibbeha County Jail where they put him behind bars, with no other real intent than to dry him out. But Johnny Cash was having none of it. He spent most of the time pacing the back and forth in the cell, hollering at the guards, and at times, kicking at the cell door, eventually breaking his toe, and damaging a $40 shoe.

As the story goes, later that morning when they let Johnny Cash go after levying a $36 fine from him, he handed his busted shoe to his 15-year-old cellmate and told him, “Here’s a souvenir. I’m Johnny Cash.”

Johnny Cash famously got to tell his side of the story four years later when audio was captured of his performance at San Quentin Prison in California on February 24th, 1969. That recording would later become the At San Quentin album that would help revitalize Cash’s career. While speaking to the inmates about his various dalliances with the law, Cash said,

“You wouldn’t believe it, one night I got in jail in Starkville, Mississippi for picking flowers. I was walking down the street… going to get me some cigarettes or something. ‘Bout two in the morning, after a show I think it was. Anyway, I reached down and picked a dandelion here, and a daisy there as I went along, and this car pulls up. He said, ‘Get it the hell in here, boy; what are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m just picking flowers.’ Well, $36 for picking flowers and a night in jail. You can’t hardly win, can ya? No telling what they’d do if you pull an apple or something.”

The song “Starkville City Jail” became a fan favorite, even if it it might have told a fairly bias side of the story.

Well, I left my motel room down at the Starkville Motel
The town had gone to sleep and I was feelin’ fairly well
I strolled along the sidewalk ‘neath the sweet magnolia trees
I was whistlin’, pickin’ flowers, swayin’ in the southern breeze
I found myself surrounded, one policeman said, “That’s him
Come along, wild flower child, don’t you know that it’s 2 AM?“

The City of Starkville soon became known for being an uptight place thanks to the song. But eventually Starkville would take Johnny’s tongue lashings and disorderly conduct moment in stride, and even commemorate it. At the 2007 “Johnny Cash Flower Pickin’ Festival” years after Cash’s death, Cash was officially pardoned, though the pardon was mostly symbolic since they never charged him with a crime. They also gave Cash’s daughter Cindy $36 as repayment for the fine.

Then in 2021, the Mississippi Country Music Trail Commission in coordination with the Starkville Convention and Visitors Bureau officially placed a commemorative plaque at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and North Jackson Street in Starkville where the incident occurred. It’s the 35th Mississippi Country Music Marker on the trail. Marty Stuart, who played guitar for Cash early in his career, was there for the unveiling.

There are other commemorations of the cash moment in Starkville. Room 22 at the Starkville Motel where Cash (didn’t) stay that night has a sign on the door marked “May 11th, 1965” commemorating the moment. A mural was also unveiled in Starkville earlier this year, though they used Cash’s mug shot not from the Starkville incident, but his arrest later in the year in El Paso, TX when he tried to bring hundreds of amphetamines over the border in his guitar case. They might want to correct that.

“I’d like to get back at the fella down in Starkville, Mississippi… that still has my $36,” Johnny Cash famously squawked at San Quentin in 1969. Well eventually, he did.

– – – – – – – –

If you enjoyed this article, consider leaving Saving Country Music A TIP.