This Impressive Cake Has Many Layers

He thinks better of the idea and, instead, writes “Strawberry Cake.” In the song, a man from the street sneaks into the Plaza Hotel, yearns for the cake and, remembering his days picking strawberries in California and his life leading to that moment, grabs the cake and flies out the side door. He outruns the chef and headwaiter and eventually lands in the bushes where no one can find him. He devours the entire cake in rapture, alone, sated and alive. It does not surprise me that Cash, a fellow Southerner and Nashvillian, chose strawberry cake as an antihero’s coveted prize, or that the cake itself is at the center of a personal reckoning about class.