Few people know that before he was famous, the late Johnny Cash tried a chip full of salsa served backstage in Possumneck, Mississippi that changed his life. It was spicy and tangy and smoky and so good that he just couldn’t get it off of his mind. Unfortunately, there was no jar, no label.
Now, there have been rumors that Johnny had kind of an addictive personality. He would sometimes disappear for days on end. People attributed it to drugs or alcohol. The truth is that he would roam the country searching for the special hot sauce of his dreams. He heard rumors and whispers of the deadly condiment and followed them to countless dead ends. He stopped at every Tex Mex restaurant, truck stop, and Mexican grocery in the South without finding what he sought.
One day he heard tell of an old woman, a witch down in the Mayan peninsula in Mexico whom it was said, made the best salsa in the world! He cancelled his next five gigs and headed south. He rode donkeys, Jeeps and horse drawn wagons. He traversed deserts, mountains and jungles before finally reaching the fabled village where the old bruja lived.
He found and entered the old woman’s hut. As luck would have it, she was one of his first big fans, having caught one of his shows at that Holiday Inn in Possumneck, Mississippi while attending a Salsa Aficionado convention where one of her jars of salsa mysteriously disappeared and somehow made its way to a bowl backstage. She consented to sharing her secret recipe with him only after he agreed to write a song for her.
She shared the special Tomatillos grown in Mayan soil. She gave him the seeds from a rare Mexican pepper and showed him the special pan with a rounded bottom, similar to those used in the Far East that she would use to simmer “la lima” or “lime,” the source of the salsa’s tanginess. He asked her if he could just use his regular flat-bottomed pan but she insisted that he must use the round-bottomed pan.
From this came the inspiration for the lyrics: “Because you’re Mayan, I’ll wok the lime!”
