Texas' favorite great-uncle, Willie Nelson, released a new, second autobiography this week, and among the charmingly melodic recollections of It's a Long Story is the revelation that Nelson, just hours after being released from jail in the Bahamas, visited the White House and sparked a fat one on its esteemed rooftop.
That story's not exactly new: Nelson has recounted it from time to time over the years. But, like your family reunion's best raconteur, his wit and unique Texas brand of storytelling never get old.
Other amusing anecdotes include how he "majored in dominoes" at Baylor before his GI money ran out; the time he ran into a burning house to snatch two guitar cases -- one containing his famed Martin N-20, Trigger, and the other harboring "two pounds of primo Colombian pot;" his admission that he once purposely set fire to a billboard in his hometown that said, "Abbott, Home of Willie Nelson," to keep tourists from finding out where he lived; and, his last run-in with the law when Louisiana officers boarded his tour bus and asked what was wrong with a soundly sleeping friend/employee Ben Dorcy, who was 83 years old at the time.
Nelson's response: Nothing, he's dead.
Here, he wryly sets the White House story straight while gracefully handling a gushing CNN interviewer: