Me and Johnny Cash, Part 1

Every spring, we hoped to make the trek to New York City. My mother and I began our Mother-Daughter weekends early in my teenage years, after a good friend of hers invited us for a visit. To make it extra special, we flew first class, and I remember feeling as though I was truly apart from the crowd.

The city was cold and bustling, and much bigger than I had imagined. During our visit, my mother’s friend Geraldine took us to and fro across the isle of Manhattan. Our highlight of the visit included second row center seats to a Broadway show called Grand Hotel. The star, a tall blonde John Schneider, familiar only from his days as Bo Duke on “Dukes of Hazzard.” A silly teenager, I gazed longingly at his beautiful face as he crossed the stage, belting out tunes. From that moment, he would never be Bo Duke again. We lunched at little bistros in Greenwich Village, ate a late night meal at the morbid and short-lived Night Café, and shopped on Fifth Avenue. It was like nothing I had experienced.

As the years progressed, my Mother and I found it to be the one moment during the year when we could pretend to be New Yorkers. Each visit, we’d take in a Broadway show or two. Some shows left a favorable impression (Ragtime, Rent, Spamalot), others not so much (the ill-fated Johnny Cash musical, the very unmusical Quentin Tarantino-Marissa Tomei flop Wait Until Dark). We quickly learned what other show-goers before us had undoubtedly learned – never pay full price for a show where half the cast is making their Broadway debuts! But it was the moment, the experience of the trip that left us wanting more.

Some visits were comedic. One year, with a little bit of cash in my pocket, I surprised my Mother with a full trip. We’d arrive early on a Monday evening, dashing to the infamous Carlyle Hotel to catch a performance of Woody Allen and his jazz band. We discovered, of course, that Woody Allen was not the highlight of the performance. As we ate our cold, overpriced French fries, we were surprised to see the man himself join in on his clarinet for a few tunes, and then sit solemnly with his head nodded down during his breaks. We joked; at least we were at the Carlyle.

During the same visit, we sat in our hotel room, reading the newspaper one morning, only to discover that the highly rated Spamlot was preparing for it’s full run with previews. We hurriedly phoned the Concierge to inquire on tickets, and within minutes, found that tickets were available at three times their stated price. Undaunted, Mom and I signed up and sat with the celebrities that night on the main floor for a preview performance of Spamalot. We laughed out loud, while David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, and Sara Ramirez crossed the stage and took a silly Monty Python movie to new heights.

The previous visit to New York had been to see the sold-out The Producers musical, staring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. We arrived, clutching our tickets, only to giggle with laughter when we realized that yes, we were on the main floor, in the corner of the very last row. A wonderful musical made only the more wonderful by sharing the moment with my Mom.

Little did we know that our trip to the city in spring 2006 would be our last visit.