1977, Washington, D.C.: Just a few days after Willie Nelson’s notorious bust for marijuana possession in the Bahamas, where he was banned from the island for life, President Jimmy Carter invited him to perform in the Rose Garden of the White House. At first blush, the two don’t seem like natural bedfellows, but both men love farmers and farming. (Before he became president in 1976, Carter had been a peanut farmer in Georgia.)

Because he liked his music, Carter invited Nelson to play at a few campaign rallies; they got along well. Nelson arrived at the White House wearing sneakers, a red bandana, and tattered jeans—with a beefy J in his pocket. After the gig, Chip Carter, the president’s second son, approached Nelson and whispered something in his ear. Then Nelson did something no one had ever done, at least that we know of, at the White House.

“Chip [Carter] took me down into the bottom of the White House, where the bowling alley is, showed me the Lincoln Bedroom, etc.,” Nelson recalls. “Then we went up to the roof.”

They sat on the roof, sharing a few brewskis—and the gargantuan Austin Torpedo J Nelson had rolled at his hotel. Carter later confessed to his father, “We leaned against the flagpole...and lit one up.”

Nelson remembers: “There I was, smoking weed and watching the city lights flicker like fireflies, thinking back to where I had started, thinking of the twists and turns of my crazy career, thinking how I had somehow managed to stay half sane.”

However, for decades, it was thought of as an apocryphal conspiracy theory— until Nelson, Chip, and President Carter finally corroborated it.

After many years, Carter was asked if this was a true story. He smiled and said: “Yes, my son smoked pot with Willie Nelson on the roof of the White House.”

It was a moment that Chip still relishes.

“We had a ball!”

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