Gambling Willie

Isn't it amazing what you can find out about people if you study them?

Take Willie Nelson, for example.

I was disappointed when his publicist turned down my request for an interview after Willie scheduled a concert in North Charleston, S.C., about 10 miles away from where I live.

The rejection ruffled my feathers, of course, but I shrugged it off and decided to do some research on Nelson for a book I am considering writing about him and his relationship with Waylon Jennings during their outlaw years.

My Internet research turned up an intriguing book that Willie wrote on the road called 'The Facts of Life and Other Dirty Jokes."

The book was amazing for the way Willie wrote it, as well as the information it revealed. Here are some things about Willie Nelson that I didn't know and I suspect my readers don't know. Some of the information may be familiar to you, but the rest of it will come as a surprise.

Brace yourself...

...Willie loves jokes, especially if they're dirty and involve sex.

He is a gambler. When he is riding in his bus across country to get to the site of his next concert, he plays poker, dominoes, blackjack or whatever other gambling games are available. He will accept a bet on just about anything.

He was assisted in writing the book by his daughter, Lana, and a colorful character named Kinky Friedman.

He nicknamed his bus Honeysuckle rose 111, after his movie of the same name that co-starred Dyan Cannon and Slim Pickens.

He grew up in a small Texas town, where he was largely raised by his grandparents. William and Nancy Nelson.

He wrote his best-known song, "On The Road Again," in an airplane with Sydney Pollack and Jerry Schatzberg. They were talking about needing a theme song for the movie "Honeysuckle Rose." Pollack was the producer and Schatzberg was the director. Willie asked them what they wanted the song to say...

...and Sydney said, "Something about being on the road."

Willie responded, without the music, "You mean something like 'On the road again, on the road again, I just can't wait to be on the road again'? They were stunned and nodded. The song stuck.

He said he learned more about life in his first six years in Abbott, TX. than he has learned since -- smoking, drinking, and cussing are definitely the three subjects in which I excelled.

As a child, he smoked anything he could get his hands on - from corn silks to cedar bark, coffee grounds, and Grapevines before graduating to Bull Durham roll your own tobacco. That was where he learned to roll joints and boasts:

"That's why I can roll a joint faster than any living person."

He loves practical jokes. When he was young, he and his friends would attach a string to a purse and toss it into the highway near his home. When a car would stop and the driver got out to retrieve it, they would frustrate him by dragging it across the road and running away.

He believes in family, religion, and forgiveness although 'forgetting takes much longer.'

Willie's first job was as a tree trimmer. Once he got caught on a rope about 40 feet from the ground, and had to jump for safety between two power lines! When he hit the ground, he quit and never returned to his job.

He considers himself one of the luckiest guys in the world. Once he was broke in a bar and bet $30 he didn't have on a boxer in black trunks. His selection won the fight and the loser paid him off. When a friend asked him what he would have done if he had lost, he responded, "I never thought of it because I never gave losing a thought. I felt lucky. I was and I still am."

He played football for his high school team in Abbott and their motto was 'A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.' He added, "Even if you die, you'll die fighting."

Willie has written some of the best selling country songs of all time, including 'Night Life,' 'Hello Walls,' 'Funny How Time Slips Away,' 'Crazy' and co-authored 'Good Hearted Woman' with Waylon Jennings.

The 'outlaw' label was given to him and Waylon by Hazel Smith a friend and writer from Nashville, TN. who had considered 'renegade' but rejected it in favor of 'outlaw.' after researching its definition in Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: 'Living on the outside of the written law.'

Some of his fans are regulars who have been attending his concerts for many years. A woman named Diane once presented him with two Gene Autry and Roy Rogers guitars and promised him a third with the Hopalong Cassidy label on it. Willie once said, "If I had my way, Gene, Roy and Hoppy movies would be required viewing in every school in the world."

Willie served in the U.S. Air Force in Biloxi, MS. in 1950. He loved Gulfport and Biloxi (I have played poker there) because of the gambling casinos.

He loves sad songs but says there is a thin line between singing the song and reliving it in a concert.

He added:

"Sometimes I believe the reason a lot of country singers and writers like Hank Williams, Floyd Tillman and George Jones have gone off the deep end was that they could not find that thin line Sometimes they can be victims of their own words, myself included."