Waylon Jennings (and me)

This is a re-post about a LONG night hanging out with Waylon Jennings. I'm guessing it was 1969 or '70. I was living at the DeVille Motor Inn by O'Hare Airport in Chicago where I was employed as a life guard. My job at the pool to keep airline stewardesses from drowning, or worse yet...meeting Don Chapman. He was a DJ at WJJD radio, the top country station in the market at the time. Don Chapman was a fun-loving guy, who could drink gin in the morning, right after his #1 listened to show (from 6am to 9am) was over. Sometimes he would bring a Styrofoam barrel shaped cooler out to the pool filled with gin and tonic. He would lay on a lounge chair and occasionally tap "the pig" as it became affectionately known. I liked Don a lot and we became friends and eventually roommates. He also was half owner of a roadhouse type country music bar called The Rock'in Horse in Stone Park. It was a sprawling basement saloon under a strip mall that feature "name" entertainment on weekends. One Saturday night Waylon Jennings was playing, and we arrived early to greet him and have a few pre-show beverages. After getting acquainted, Don and I sat down at a front row table for a dynamite two set show that went past 1AM in the morning. After the music stopped and the drunken crowd stumbled out, we sat down with Waylon to count out the gate and pay the band. Don keep the bar open and we drank some MORE, then Waylon proceeded to put large amounts of pharmaceuticals on the table for general consumption. I recall we pounded beer with the waitresses and talked smart until the help started stacking chairs on tables and threw us out. The band had long since retired to the tour bus parked in the lot. Back then Waylon wasn't the star he became a few short years later, but he was a great guy to get drunk with and a hell of a nice fella. Now he's in the Country Music Hall of Fame and I consider myself fortunate enough to have met him (but what a hangover).