{"id":2812,"date":"2020-04-02T05:51:26","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T05:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/?p=2812"},"modified":"2020-04-02T05:51:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T05:51:26","slug":"charlie-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/biography\/charlie-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"CHARLIE CASH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THE SIMPLE PARADISE OF CHARLIE CASH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Seeder Post by Christopher C. Evans<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hood County News \u2013 June 12, 2003<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hammered metal sign above the road in off Rock Church Highway says \u201cCEDARROCK\u201d — one word — and the road itself it drops off into what seems for an instant to be an abyss. But on a little farther, past a residence and an assortment of outbuildings, there is a cabin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to Mr. Cash\u2019s Neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never mind the assorted piles of this and that that look like junk. Most likely they are stuff Charles D. \u201cCharlie\u201d Cash will turn into something artistically useful. Never mind that Charlie Cash, 72, is known around Hood County as a master spur- and bow-maker — or that his trademark rustic spurs especially will one day be worth a lot more than they are now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days the spurrier of CEDARROCK is in a second bout with bone cancer, the first one with painful shingles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s particularly sad about that is that it\u2019s hard for Charlie Cash, a loquacious little man with beady brown eyes that dance childlike beneath thick brown brows when he talks, to be his regular fun self these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe doctors got it early this time,\u201d he said recently of the cancer, though it is clear related medications have diminished his strength. \u201cAnd if you\u2019ve never had shingles, take my advice, try something else first,\u201d he appended with raised brow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMain thing is, I can\u2019t work,\u201d said Charlie, leaning on a cedar walking stick in his meticulously cluttered, three-chamber shop. \u201cI\u2019ve got 20 orders for spurs right now and I\u2019ve got all of \u2019em started here. It takes me from six to eight hours on each pair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf I could do an hour a day I could catch up, I know I could, but I just give out. I can\u2019t even do an hour a day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, Charlie Cash is still president for life in this hillside 44-acre wash of caliche and cedar, the overalled potentate over an empire concencrated in but not limited to the remarkable log and rock cabin he and his wife, Mildred, built a quarter century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The Cash\u2019s den is reminiscent of the one in the cabin in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs<\/em>, so much so that it is easy to start looking for Sneezy and Grumpy to emerge whistling from a door by the fireplace.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI make every part of the spur — the band, the shank, the rowel,\u201d Charlie said from his favorite armchair. \u201cI get my metal over at Granbury Salvage, just go over and pick it out. The metal I use could have been anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though his own spurs have the initials \u201cCDC\u201d in bronze over the iron, Charlie\u2019s spurs, to those who know them, are anything but ornate. In fact, they are typically very rough around the edges when you get them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Said William \u201cSonny\u201c Joyner, a sometimes working Granbury-based cowboy who owns two pairs of Charlie\u2019s spurs, \u201cI always tell the kids when they get Charlie\u2019s spurs to put `em on and wear `em every day for two months, whether you\u2019re gonna be on a horse that day or not. That rough finish Charlie leaves on there, those sharp edges will smooth right out if you just wear \u2019em. You have to break them in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy spurs are made to be used, that\u2019s the only reason I make them and they should last you a good while,\u201d Charlie Cash said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if someone wanted a pair to hang on the wall?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, I suppose you could<\/em> hang them on the wall,\u201d he said as though he\u2019d never thought of it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie is especially proud of the rowel, which is the round, spinning part of the spur. \u201cThat rowel there, the one that\u2019s on most of my spurs, I designed it myself, it\u2018s called a teardrop rowel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Charlie clambered with the aid of a long cedar walking stick through his notorious \u201cshop\u201d he stopped at times to sit or lean. \u201cThis here\u2019s my rattlesnake den,\u201d he said, pointing at two large diamondback pelts that will one day be part of a Charlie Cash custom bow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I make a bow, I don\u2019t do the bells and whistles,\u201d he said, referring to modern sighted bows with all sorts of gadgetry. \u201cI make a standard recurve or stick bow, just a reggler old Indian bow. It\u2019s the same kind of bow I hunt with. I still do a little deer and turkey hunting, that and maybe some wild hogs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExcept for maybe taking a deer with my muzzleloader, I hunt with with bow and arrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe also makes knives,\u201d said Mildred McDonald Cash, pointing to some of her husband\u2019s framed cutlery on a den wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Douglas Cash was born June 18, 1930, at Needmore, a few miles south of Muleshoe in Bailey County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy father and my uncle opened a store there, named it the Needmore Store and named the town in the process,\u201d he said. \u201cYou needed more of everything there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie said he is descended from the Cashes of Scotland. \u201cKing Richard took all their land and gave it to poor people, they ended up coming over here to West Virginia about 1600, I think it was, where the king gave them something like 22,000 acres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlmost all the Cashes I know of came from those Cashes,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a Howard Cash who was one of George Washington\u2018s colonels. My great-grandads were in the Civil War. Great-grandpa Francis Cash fired them cannons, he couldn\u2019t hear it thunder after that. My Great-grandpa Howard Cash was a saddlemaker who was with (General) Granbury when Granbury was killed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howard Cash, according to Charlie, was a boot and tack man at the famous XIT Ranch in the Panhandle and later went into the boot-making business with a man named Justin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie\u2019s father, Jerome Morrow \u201cDutch\u201d Cash, married to \u201cthe youngest Hinton girl, Blanche,\u201d as Charlie describes his mama. \u201cMy daddy was a horse trader who had the store and could do a lot of different things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1934, Dutch and Blanche Cash moved their family to Ryon in southern Oklahoma, then a few years later to Weneetka in eastern Oklahoma. \u201cWeneetka was right there next to the Creek Reservation,\u201d Charlie recalled, something that piqued his fascination with the ways of Native Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he was nine the family, by now two sons and an adopted daughter, moved back to Texas, this time to Enochs, yet another wind- and sand-caressed hamlet south of Muleshoe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at Enochs that Charlie met a man who would in retrospect be his mentor, a singing farrier named Carl Hall. \u201cHe was an old man who had a blacksmith shop where I\u2019d go and watch, hang out,\u201d Charlie said. \u201cHe\u2019d sing all the time but he couldn\u2019t hold a tune with a bucket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs far as a desire to work with hot metal, I think I always had that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was also, he says, always a fan of projectiles and the contraptions that propel them. \u201cI always loved bows, ever since I can remember.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1948 Charlie took a high school sheepskin from Bula High School south of Muleshoe, home of the fighting Bulldogs. \u201cThe lights from the old football stadium are still there but they use the building for a barn,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I was growing up in the area of Bula, Needmore and Enochs, that was about the time those big farms started getting split up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After high school Charlie Cash \u201cwent into the Army for three years, nine months and 15 days…It was a good experience. I was all up and down the West Coast and Alaska. I started out in communications but ended up being a cable splicer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he got out of the service in 1952 Charlie Cash headed for the Fort Worth area. \u201cI lived in River Oaks for a short period,\u201d he said. \u201cI met Mildred while we were both working at Williamson-Dickey. She was born in Dallas but had lived most of her life in Fort Worth. We got married.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time later Charlie became a journeyman electrician, something that afforded some historic moments of which he is still proud. He was involved in rewiring the presses at both Fort Worth newspapers and did electrical work at the home of Amon Carter Sr.\u2019s daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson, on historic Broad Avenue in west Fort Worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That he receives today and lives primarily on a pension from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which whom he has more than 50 years of membership, is another source of pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1962 Charlie entered and won the Texas archery championship at San Marcos, later finishing \u201cin about 10th place\u201d at the national tournament in Hot Springs, Ark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there are things Charlie specifically doesn\u2019t do these days one is cut cedar near as much as he used to or would like. \u201cFor every half acre of cedar I sold when I first came out here I paid for an acre of land,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI\u2019ve wore out 26 chainsaws out here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor is he into the animal business as he once was. \u201cRight now I\u2019ve got a mule, donkey, a llama, some goats and some Barbados sheep,\u201d he said. \u201cI use those Barbados sheep because when the fireweeds come up the sheep will eat \u2019em and that\u2019ll save all that moisture for the grass in July and August.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie Cash is an authority on many topics and a commentarian on many more. And in the three-plus decades he\u2019s lived here in Charlies World, he\u2019s heard some interesting stuff about southern Hood County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has it on good faith from a woman who once lived on what is now Baker\u2019s Crossing Road, for instance, that \u201ca lot of your moonshiners in the old days lived on that road…You\u2019ll notice that everywhere there\u2019s are briars and post oaks today, that\u2019s where your moonshining families lived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Charlie\u2019s source, \u201cSpringtown, Stephenville and Dublin were your big moonshining places, them and the Fall Creek area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He talks often of a place called \u201cThe Bottom,\u201d which is the lower portion of the Cedarrock complex. \u201cI do have an acre at The Bottom where I plant wheat or oats in the winter,\u201d he said. More than simply a place to do agriculture, The Bottom, to hear Charlie tell it, is where fairly extraordinary stuff happens quite regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere there\u2019s a low spot at The Bottom where you can take your hand, scratch up a few inches of sand and the water\u2019ll bubble out,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a spring. The Indians used it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, stories pertaining to The Bottom seem to themselves fairly bubble out of ol\u2019 Charlie,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One involves a fracas Charlie\u2019s jackass, Roscoe P. Coletrane, had with \u201ctwo mountain lions that cornered him and went after him about two months ago.\u201d Charlie didn\u2019t see how the mountain lions fared. Roscoe sustained cuts, scratches and bruises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subject of just how tough Charlie Cash really is can be debated. On one hand, he \u201ccan be pretty mean,\u201d as he put it. \u201cJust let somebody drive in my driveway that\u2019s not supposed to be in here,\u201d he said, holding up the left-handed muzzleloader he made after his right eye \u201cjust suddenly went blurry\u201d several years ago. \u201cI shoot 70 grains, which is enough where it\u2019ll go all the way through a deer but not enough where I\u2019ll hurt my neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the untough side of Charlie Cash, though, that may well be the biggest legacy of the spurrier of Cedarrock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, if he has a mission left in life, it\u2019s something that seems to slips into his conversations wherever he is. That would be, as he put it, \u201cTo help out these young people today who\u2019ve got a lot of negative influences to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie has for many years donated spurs to be given to winners of local youth rodeos and agricultural contests at the Hood County Stock Show, dozens upon dozens of pairs in all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of Hood County \u201ckids,\u201d however, got their Cash spurs another notable way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a whole bunch of these kids around here wearing Charlie\u2019s spurs who didn\u2019t pay for \u2019em,\u201d said cowboy Joyner, who is considers himself only an acquaintance of Charlie\u2019s. \u201cIn a lot of cases, those kids just never got around to payin\u2019 for \u2019em because Charlie wouldn\u2019t let \u2019em. He\u2019s just a generous old man. \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked about his own kids, Charlie named his real son and daughter, then pointed to a frame above his armchair. The frame contains snapshot of about 20 children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy grandkids,\u201d said Charlie, though actually none of these kids are really related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been that way,\u201d he said, looking down. \u201cIf a kid don\u2019t have a grandpa, I\u2019m their grandpa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie is particularly proud of those instances where he believes he has had a positive influence. \u201cOne little kid we know had them earrings in his ears, I don\u2019t like them earrings, but this little kid liked bows,\u201d he said. \u201cI made a deal with him. I told him if he\u2019d keep them earrings out, I\u2019d make him a bow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Charlie made a bow just to fit the \u201clittle kid,\u201d who was actually in post-adolescence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo far, he\u2019s kept them earrings out,\u201d said Charlie. \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing we gotta do we gotta take care of them kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Jerry Jeff Walker song Charlie Dunn<\/em> about a humble bootmaker, the kicker is a guy, Buck, who worked the register in the boot shop and took people\u2019s money, but never caught onto why folks came back again and again to buy Charlie Dunn\u2019s boots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt makes Charlie real pleased to see me walking with ease,\u201d is one line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another, a reference to poor, dumb Buck, is, \u201cHe never understood the good things Charlie done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who know Charlie Cash, especially those who have visited Mr. Cash\u2019s Neighborhood or wear his spurs, do understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE SIMPLE PARADISE OF CHARLIE CASH The Seeder Post by Christopher C. Evans Hood County News \u2013 June 12, 2003 A hammered metal sign above the road in off Rock Church Highway says \u201cCEDARROCK\u201d — one word — and the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2813,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2812\/revisions\/2813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/granburydepot.org\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}