In a pre-dawn raid in November 1990, feds armed with warrants, padlocks, and chains seized everything Willie Nelson owned—his golf course, ranches, studio, all of it. Only one thing slipped through the IRS perimeter: Willie’s guitar, “Trigger.” Thirty-five years later, Willie still has Trigger. Oh, and he eventually got back the ranches, studio, and golf course. These days, Willie Nelson’s nine-hole course—nicknamed Cut ‘N Putt—dances like an old brown shoe through loblolly pines in the Austin hills. The parking lot is guarded by what folks in the music business call “a silver firecracker”—a big Airstream bus that Willie and friends call Honeysuckle Rose. (Willie’s been travelling again, headlining Farm Aid 40 at the age 92 and announcing another, and perhaps final, tour.)
Golf pro Fran Szal, 75 years young, greets all comers with a wry smile. For pilgrims like my wife and I, who have come from afar, he slips into stories as if they’re on his lips at all times.
“They took everything,” Szal recalled on our visit last year, adding with a chuckle. “But not … Trigger. Yeah, we managed to hide that.” We met him near Cut ‘N Putt’s rustic pro shop, which could pass for a set for the 1960s sit-com The Beverly Hillbillies. In a world forever in need of magic, Trigger appears to have its own powers. Rumor has it that Willie’s daughter aided its escape. But when pressed, Szal says only: “The family likes to keep some things to themselves.”
