Posted on Sat, Jul. 04, 2009  Comments   (0)

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Kennedy: So where’s Willie Nelson? On the road again

Willie’s Place is open.

But Willie’s not in place.

When singer Willie Nelson’s new beer-cafe-and-alternative-fuel-truck-stop opened a year ago near Hillsboro, we thought he might be back every year for his annual Fourth of July Picnic.

Instead, he’s performing in . . . Indiana and Michigan?

"He got a good deal," said Carl Cornelius, age "about 70," mayor of the tiny town of Carl’s Corner and partner in what is now called Willie’s Place at Carl’s Corner.

"If he gets a good deal, he goes. If he doesn’t, he comes here."

I hope nobody came to Fort Worth on Saturday looking for Nelson. The satellite radio channel that usually covers his picnic promoted a "Radio Picnic" broadcast, but it’s a replay of his 2006 Stockyards picnic.

To some of us, that was the last great picnic. In 2007, Nelson took the picnic to Washington. The 2008 picnic was near San Antonio, although Nelson spent much of the weekend opening Willie’s Place.

This year, Nelson went north for big names and big numbers.

The big names: Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp, co-stars Saturday in South Bend, Ind., at an event billed on tickets as a "Picnic."

The big number: 72.

Not Nelson. (He’s 76.)

The expected daytime temperature was 72 Saturday in Indiana. Same for today, when Nelson sings at a festival in western Michigan.

"Willie’s no fool," said Joe Nick Patoski of Wimberley, a Fort Worth native and author of Nelson’s 2008 biography.

"He’s playing all the angles. And he’s staying cool."

Cornelius agreed.

"It’s hot — and we’re all gettin’ older, you know?" he said by phone from the biodiesel truck stop, affiliated with Dallas-based Evolution Fuels.

Cornelius was planning to spend his Fourth of July the all-America way: leading the monthly meeting of the Carl’s Corner Town Council.

The council "chamber" is a dining room in the truck stop’s Blue Skies Cafe.

Cornelius bought the land in 1979 and built a beer store in a mobile home. He later built an empire that originally included a truck stop and bar with "dancin’ girls" and Dallas artist Bob Wade’s 8-foot dancing frog sculptures on top.

He has been mayor since the town was incorporated in 1986.

"Don’t nobody else want to be mayor out here," he said. "My phone rings night and day. People take that word servant literally."

He and Nelson want to expand Carl’s Corner into a Texas version of Branson, Mo., he said, including more clubs and a waterpark.

I asked where they’ll start.

"Where I’ll start first," he said with a laugh, "is by catching up on some sleep."

That’s never off the menu at Willie’s Place.

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