Roger Nalezny

It was in California last month. My brother Jay and Chastity Brown and some new friends and I were in a Bay Area bar, and Roger Nalezny—a Minnesota dude who likes local music, family, hockey, and fishing—leaned in and said, "Wanna hear about the time I met Johnny Cash?"

As a matter of fact, we did.

He told it, matter-of-factly but reverently, and the table got quiet. When I got back to Minneapolis (the land, apparently, of 100,000 cabin-fevered aspiring alcoholics at the moment), I called him and had him tell the whole thing over again. He was sitting in his truck on Centerville Lake in Lino Lakes in North St. Paul, where his kids were spending the afternoon ice fishing:

"It was the summer of 1987," said Nalezny, a 46-year-old carpenter and sub-contractor, taking a break from reading Michael Creighton’s State Of Fear.

"A guy I used to work for broke his neck diving off a dock when he was in his mid-40s. We had just built him this beautiful lake home, and he was having a party for the subs (contractors), and he dove and became a quadriplegic. It was tragic; his wife died of alcoholism and he ended up marrying his nurse. He’s still alive.

"Anyway, right when he broke his neck, his kid was 11 or 12. He had always promised to take his kid on these fishing trips, and I was his number one worker, so he sent me on the trips to kind of babysit his kid and take in some great fishin’.

"We were sitting at the Minneapolis airport, going on this high-buck trip; it was probably four grand a head. We were going to Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories in Canada. You know, we’re low-buck guys and everybody else going on this trip are doctors and lawyers and super-wealthy people. It was all these rich people, except for one kid about my age who had an old Aerosmith T-shirt on, so I gravitated towards him.

"He said, `I’m meeting my dad here.’ He told me he was a map freak, and talked about all these places, and we talked a little bit about music, but he never mentioned his dad was Johnny Cash.

"We flew out of Winnipeg and got a connecting flight and we come into this little airport. There’s about 30 or 40 people in the lobby, and Johnny Cash is one of ‘em. We walk across the tarmac, and we’re all walking in the door and that kid (John Carter Cash) is right behind me and I recognized Johnny Cash but couldn’t place him right away and he goes, "Son!" For a split second, I thought he was talking to me.

"They just hugged. And my dad has always been a little shy about showing his emotions, but these guys just laid it all out there. They were really, truly thrilled to see each other. The kid introduced us, and we had the same connecting flights. They went up to Slave Lake, and we went to Bear Lake. We flew a couple hours together. June Carter Cash was there, sitting in the front row of the plane and the love between them was so obvious. Johnny and his son sat back by us and we sat and shot the shit for a couple hours on the way up. It was cooler than hell.

"I told him my buddies and I used to close the bar down and come home and crank `Ring Of Fire’ and just bounce around the place. He got the biggest kick out of that, and then we just swapped fishing stories. He said how much he and June loved to fish, and he was making sure I knew what a special trip I was going on: `This is really something; not a lot of people get to go up here.’ He was just great."

Philosophers have long posited that fishing is a search, and one wonders if a man as gifted as Johnny Cash—a songwriter and searcher to the end—was looking for a slice of peace when he’d throw that line in the water.

"For me, fishing… that’s almost the end of the search," says Nalezny. "It doesn’t get any better than that. You’re at peace, it doesn’t really matter if you catch anything, I just like fishing. I like fishing out of canoes, no dinking around with motors, you propel yourself and go on your way. It’s so easy, and so simple, and fishing should be simple."

And how many times has he told the fish story that involves John and Johnny and June?

"Not that many. I’m not sure how many people can relate to how cool it was. He had such a calming aura, almost. It just made you feel good to be around him. He couldn’t have been any cooler. It was totally peaceful. The only hiccup in the thing was the airline lost June’s luggage, and she was so bummed out about that."