The Trucks Stop Here
Carl's Corner, Texas,
Oct. 1, 2005
(CBS)
About an hour or so south of Dallas you come upon a little town called Carl's Corner. It's pretty much a truck stop. And this is pretty much Carl: mayor, judge, fire chief, police chief.
Carl Cornelius bought some less-than-prime property out here and built his now legendary truck stop. He wanted a liquor license, but first he needed a city. So he built that too.
"I went and got 21 mobile homes and got the biggest families I could find, cause I needed 201 people to live here 6 months in order to incorporate."
Carl wanted to create a Shangri la for truckers. Over the years it's featured a strip club and a chapel, a drive thru beer window and a drive in movie theater for 18-wheelers."
We had a masseuse out here at one time," Carl said. "Truckers love to have their feet rubbed."
He put in an indoor swimming pool and outdoor Jacuzzis. As mayor, he performed weddings here.
Carl has even hosted foreign dignitaries. Prince Albert of Monaco stopped by once and dined on his Texas-sized chicken fried steaks,which might be viewed by some today as an assassination attempt.
Carl and his truck stop have even been celebrated in song.
Things seemed to be merrily rolling along when tragedy struck. Three of Carl's children died. "I lost 3 boys. It knocked the wind out of me. A lot of memories around here."
With the deaths of his sons, Carl lost interest in just about everything and was about to shut down Carl's Corner. That's when an old friend came into the picture--Willie Nelson.
"He called me and said don't shut that place down. Let's do something."
Carl and Willie both tend to think big. They built an 850-seat theater where the swimming pool and strip joint used to be and where Willie played to a packed house last week.
And that's just the half of it. Willie had become interested in alternative fuels and was burning soybean oil in his tour buses and recycled oil from deep fat fryers in his Mercedes. He and Carl decided to produce this bio-diesel fuel and sell it at the truck stop. They call it Biowillie. Carl didn't even know what it was.
"(Willie) explained it to me. He was so enthused with it. He said, 'Let's put in one island.' And I said the hell with that if you believe in this damned thing lets do all of it. We did the whole, everything is biodiesel."
The farmers could be growing this and we could be lessening our dependency on energies abroad and get out of wars over oil, speaking more plainly.
"Not to mention the truckers seem to really like the stuff."
I want to try some of this bio," said one trucker. "Long way to try it, 40 miles out of the way. If I can get better mileage it's great. It's kind of unusual, but Willie's kind of unusual."
"I got the book where the people started writing notes," said Carl. "These guys are doing the testimony. So they're the ones who sold me on biodiesel. One of them said your diesel is great but your pancakes suck."
Biowillie can be made from soybeans, sunflower seeds, and even animal fat.
Is it true you could put your chicken fried steaks in there as animal fats and run to San Antonio with it?
"And halfway back," said Willie.
These days there's a lot of Willie in Carl's Corner. Said Willie: "I tell people I won this truck stop in a poker game, and now I'm trying to lose it back. Every time I put the deed on the table everybody folds."
But the two have even bigger plans."We want to build a plant right here at Carl's Corner," said Willie. " We could, I think, make about 2 million gallons a year."
Carl is putting a satellite radio station in the truck stop and is thinking about building more theaters in town." It's conceivable you can put another one over here and another and another, and all of a sudden you'd have another Branson, Missouri here," said Carl.
Some people think they're both a little nuts. And if they are crazy, that means things are getting back to normal in Carl's Corner." My get up and go had got up and went. So I guess it's come back," said Carl.
And has it. Carl recently created a shirt designed for pot-bellied truck drivers--maternity wear for men. You never know what to expect around here.
© MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc.
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