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Clanton's Rant

Paved with bad intentions: Willie Nelson and Texas Highway 130.

by Clanton McNeese | 2005.05.01

Happy birthday, Willie. Thanks for “Crazy,” “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” and the rest of your songs that shine like diamonds amid the fool’s gold of contemporary country music. Now could you just hurry up and die?

Today Willie Nelson turns 72, although he doesn’t look a day over 95. It would have been the perfect occasion for the Texas legislature to name a stretch of State Highway 130 in his honor. That was the idea presented by Gonzalo Barrientos, a Democratic legislator who praised Nelson for his music and his efforts to aid farmers. It’s the kind of empty gesture that politicians specialize in, kind of like thanking the troops or selecting state flowers. If you can’t get together to name some asphalt after the guy who wrote “On the Road Again,” well, what can you agree on?

Nothing, I guess, at least in Texas. Enter a couple of Republicans representing districts that contain smidgens of the aforementioned highway. Willie Nelson, according to Jeff Wentworth and Steve Ogden, is unfit to be honored by the Lone Star State. No, Wentworth and Ogden are not country music critics offended by Nelson’s preference for sporting a bandanna headband rather than a cowboy hat. In fact, they condemn Willie’s habits of drinking, smoking, and promoting the legalization of weed. Oh, yeah, and his other habit of supporting Democrats.

This mini-debate made the Texas legislators look foolish, as if the world does not already have a sufficiently low opinion of this squabbling, gerrymandering, lethal injection-approving, Tom DeLay-producing body. So a less controversial objection to Nelson’s fitness was raised: Willie ain’t dead yet. Does this mean that when he expires, the expressway is his? Time and Texas will tell.

In those areas where Republicans ran the Name Game franchises, it seemed that one couldn’t help but happen across a Reagan airport, parking lot or sewage disposal treatment plant, long before the former president went from just brain-death to body-death and a transcontinental string of SRO funeral appearances. I’d bet there were a few of those Reagan sites in Texas. So those legislators who imply that Willie Nelson has only to die to achieve paved glory may be lying through their chaw-stained teeth.

Despite all this sagebrush stupidity, I support the defeat of the Willie Nelson Highway. The way I see it, breathing or not, Willie hasn’t coughed up the cash. If Willie or Madonna or LeBron wants a personal name on a public project, let each one pay. By now Americans know how the deal is done: you want your name on an arena, a stadium, or any slab of concrete, you buy the naming rights. Check out Cleveland: the Gund Arena and Jacobs Fields weren’t named by popular vote or papal baptism. Gordon Gund and Richard Jacobs paid about $14 million each for the honor. They got bargains in small market Cleveland. Why is San Francisco’s new playground called Pacific Bell Park? Because Pacific Telesis plunked down $50 million. Back in Texas, Enron promised $100 million to get its logo on the home field of the Houston Astros. Unfortunately, other issues forced the corporation to bail out on the deal.

It’s a great way for governments to raise cash. Let every public building, every parking meter, every tree in every park go on the auction block. You want to give your first born child a taste of fame? Get her name on the corner fire hydrant. Your ancient uncle finally dies and leaves you a bundle? Maybe he deserves a plaque on the local middle school tool shed.

The possibilities are at the edge of infinite. Naturally, proceeds will soar as the sites grow grander. Imagine the bidding war for Ground Zero naming rights.

Of course, in these pious times, the morality issue must not be totally ignored. Occupying one famous spot is Ulysses S., a notorious smoker and drinker who should be exhumed and evicted. Then his dwelling can go to the highest bidder among America’s egomaniacs. Years from now, an old gag will have a new punch line: Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? Donald Trump.

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