Thirty Years Later, Johnny Cash Continues to Inspire Workplace Theft

Here’s some ammo for the questionable theory that people will do anything they hear about in music lyrics. Johnny Cash’s 1976 novelty song, “One Piece at a Time,” tells the fictional story of a GM assembly-line worker who spends several years smuggling out all the parts necessary to assemble his own Cadillac. The car ends up being a hopelessly cobbled heap that’s nearly laughed out of town. Nonetheless, you guessed it, someone hears the song and decides he has to build one for real. Bill Patch of Welch, Oklahoma, assembled his own “Patch-work” Cadillac, starting with a 1968 chassis and using random Cadillac panels and trim scavenged from local junkyards. The completed vehicle uses parts from 1949 to 1973, has three doors and mismatched tailfins, and just like in the song, “two [headlights] on the left and one on the right” thanks to its ’63 and ’53 fenders. Patch presented the Caddy to Cash as a gift in the late 70s, and it was subsequently featured in the music video for “One Piece.”  Perhaps an even more striking example of life imitating art, however, is this recent story about a yacht-builder who got busted for accumulating stolen parts from work to build his own $2m luxury boat. It’s too bad we’ll never know what that finished product would’ve looked like!