I’m not superstitious, but am particular when it comes to the music I play in the car en route to the stream. Radio surely doesn’t cut it. And while they do have their place in the car’s regular CD rotation, neither do pop or rap albums. Trips through the countryside beckon for something simpler and slower. Enter: Johnny Cash.
It’s a CD with an unclear backstory or origin that has been in my family’s possession ever since we started taking road trips through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Actually they are a pair of CDs, discs 1 & 2 of ‘Johnny Cash’s Greatest Hits’. The one I’m talking about begins with the solo strumming of a guitar to the track ‘Man In Black’; disc 2. The first disc opens with the infamous line, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” and is reserved for strictly non-fishing roadtrips.
I’m not quite sure how I began associating this specific album with the sights, sounds, and smells of trout fishing. By accident, more than likely. None of the songs are fishing related, but most conjure images of a western landscape.
The track ‘Highwayman’ plays about halfway through the album and describes scenes such as initiating roadside theft, sailing schooners around the Cape Horn, building the Hoover Dam, and flying star-ships. It’s a timeless outlaw anthem that pairs well with the open road.
Or ‘The Ballad of Ira Hayes’. It reminds me of driving through the small and sleepy farm towns of central Wisconsin, of Amish farmers slowly trailing behind their horse with plow, and wild turkeys huddled in abandoned corn fields.
With a total run-time of around 40 minutes, the album usually plays through its entirety before reaching the destination, occasionally multiple times. I don’t remove the disc, but let it buffer for a few seconds before the familiar guitar strumming begins again. Sometimes the disc becomes a unit of measurement, as in “that stream’s about a CD away” or “that spot’s at least a CD and a half”.
The CD player is fair game again for the trip home. I have memories of blasting Jay-Z and Kanye’s ‘Watch The Throne’ after completing the cutthroat slam and hightailing it out of the Raft River mountains, or some ABBA to lift the mood after a many of fishless outings. But the first leg is reserved for the tunes of Johnny Cash and the second disc of his greatest hits.
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The Path Less Fly Fished 
You write with such compassion, Sam, I love it! I never thought that the music of Johnny Cash would have such a memorable impact on our family, but it sure has.
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