The Duck Commander Family Part 2

5. Bring mixture to a boil and then reduce heat to medium and cook 4 to 6 hours, or until beans are tender. Check every 2 hours and add more water if needed.

6. Cut sausage into slices and brown in skillet on medium heat with a teaspoon of olive oil.

7. Stir sausage into beans toward the end of cooking time and continue to simmer for thirty minutes.

8. Add brown sugar to taste.

9. In a saucepan, bring 4 cups water and rice to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. Serve beans over steamed white rice and add plenty of Louisiana Hot Sauce.

CHAPTER 2

FRIED BOLOGNA

THEREFORE, AS G.o.d'S CHOSEN PEOPLE, HOLY AND DEARLY LOVED, CLOTHE YOURSELVES WITH COMPa.s.sION, KINDNESS, HUMILITY, GENTLENESS AND PATIENCE. BEAR WITH EACH OTHER AND FORGIVE ONE ANOTHER IF ANY OF YOU HAS A GRIEVANCE AGAINST SOMEONE. FORGIVE AS THE LORD FORGAVE YOU.

-COLOSSIANS 3:1213 About three months after Phil kicked us out of the house, Kay was working at Howard Brothers' corporate offices when one of her coworkers told her Phil was sitting in his truck in the parking lot. Kay looked out the window and saw Phil hunched over the steering wheel. She figured he was probably drunk again. But when Kay got to his truck, she found Phil crying. It was something she had never seen before and probably has never seen since.

"I want my family back," Phil told her. "I'm so sorry."

Fortunately for all of us, Kay was strong enough to forgive Phil and take him back. But she took him back with the following conditions: Phil had to quit drinking and walk away from his rowdy friends. Kay enlisted the help of William "Bill" Smith, the preacher at White's Ferry Road Church in West Monroe, Louisiana, who Phil had run out of his bar several months earlier. In one of their early conversations, Smith asked Phil if he trusted him. Phil told him no, he didn't, so Smith held up a Bible.

"You don't have to trust me," Smith told him. "Trust what's written in here."

From that day forward, Phil started his study of G.o.d's Word. He attended church several times a week and started going to Bible study nearly every night. He was baptized at the age of twenty-eight and gave up drinking and partying altogether. We moved into an apartment on Pine Terrace in West Monroe in 1976. Kay rented the apartment under an a.s.sumed name and didn't give our address or phone number to any of Phil's friends. We shared the apartment with Granny and Pa, so seven of us (my youngest brother, Jep, wasn't born yet) were living in a two-bedroom apartment. It was pretty cramped, but we didn't care. The only thing that mattered was our family was back together again.

Alan, Jase, and I slept on the floor of the living room in army sleeping bags that my uncle Si had given us. Si had brought them back from Vietnam and they were stuffed with real goose feathers. I was only about four years old at the time and had a habit of wetting the bed nearly every night. Phil used to get onto me for peeing in the bed and would threaten to spank me every morning that my sleeping bag was wet. Like I could help it! I eventually figured out that I could hold my sleeping bag up to an old butane heater and dry it. I would pee in the bed and then wake up early so it would be dry before anybody else woke up. I can only imagine how bad that sleeping bag must have smelled! I doubt that I was fooling anyone. One of our kids was a bed wetter and I never disciplined that child for it. Bed-wetting was something I totally understood.

Phil took a job teaching at Ouachita Christian School, a new school in Ouachita Parish. He thought he needed to be around Christians as much as possible as he continued his spiritual healing. Phil still says the kids he taught at Ouachita Christian School influenced his Christian walk more than anyone else. They really left an impression on him at a time when he needed it most.

Kay kept working at the department store office, so my brothers and I spent a lot of time together. Alan was the oldest and was left in charge. He a.s.sumed the responsibility of caring for his younger brothers. He was a free babysitter for Phil and Kay more than anything else, as we still didn't have much money. Kay remembers some really rough times when Alan would feed Jase and me our bottles and put us to bed-he was only seven or eight years old himself.

KAY REMEMBERS SOME REALLY ROUGH TIMES WHEN ALAN WOULD FEED JASE AND ME OUR BOTTLES AND PUT US TO BED-HE WAS ONLY SEVEN OR EIGHT YEARS OLD HIMSELF.

My brothers and I really had a good time living in the apartment. I've always been a people person, and there were a lot of kids who lived in the complex. We would go out in the parking lot and do ch.o.r.eographed dances. This was the 1970s, so I guess we were being influenced by the movies of that time, which involved a lot of singing and dancing. Sat.u.r.day Night Fever, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Grease were always some of our favorites.

Alan was in charge of feeding us lunch when Kay and Phil were at work. When it was just the kids, our standard meal was fried bologna sandwiches-they were cheap and easy to make. And for that reason, Mom always had a loaf of bologna in our icebox. We became bologna connoisseurs. Even though we were kids, we were still Robertsons, which meant we took our food very seriously. No ordinary bologna sandwiches with mayonnaise slapped between two slices of bread for us. I think we tried every way you could make bologna better. Our favorite way, which I still make from time to time today, involved cutting three slits in the bologna, creating three triangles that were held together by the middle. We did that so the bologna wouldn't bubble up too much while we were frying it. We would almost burn one side, then flip it and put a slice of cheese on the top while the other side was cooking. In the meantime, we would warm the bread in the pan so that it had a little flavor from the grease and was slightly toasted. Yum, I'm getting hungry thinking about it! A little cheese or b.u.t.ter on anything makes it better. All of our meals at that time involved at least one of those two items. Granny lived to ninety-six years old and Pa till eighty-seven, so I guess it wasn't all that bad.

WHEN IT WAS JUST THE KIDS, OUR STANDARD MEAL WAS FRIED BOLOGNA SANDWICHES.

The apartment got a little less cramped when Granny and Pa moved to Arizona to work on the oil fields for a few months, but we didn't live there for long because soon Phil decided he could make more money as a commercial fisherman than a teacher and wanted to start working toward that goal. Being out in the woods or on the water was still what brought him the most joy. He told Kay to search for some land with access to water that eventually flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Kay searched the real estate listings in the newspapers and found an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a piece of property t.i.tled "Sportsman's Paradise." There were two houses on the land-which were really nothing more than fishing camps-and it came with six and a half acres. It was located just off the Ouachita River at the mouth of Cypress Creek. It was at the end of a dirt road in one of the most remote locations in the parish. When Kay took Phil to see the land, he knew instantly that it was where he wanted to live. Phil was convinced he could make a living fishing, and he wanted his sons to learn to hunt and fish and survive off the land like he had as a child. He believed our family could subsist on the fish and game we killed, along with fruits and vegetables we could grow in a garden. Phil wanted us to learn to become a man just like he had as a child growing up in the outdoors.

One of the houses was a white, two-bedroom frame house and the other was a smaller camp house that had green wooden siding. About the same time Kay and Phil were trying to buy the land, Pa and Granny were returning home from Arizona. Kay and Phil reached an agreement with my grandparents. Pa and Granny would provide the down payment for the property, and Phil and Kay would a.s.sume the monthly mortgage payments as my grandparents eased into retirement. Our family would live in the white house, and Pa and Granny would live in the green one.

I still remember the day Phil and Kay took us to see our new home for the first time. It is one of the happiest memories from my childhood. We pulled to the end of the dirt road and all the kids jumped out of the car and ran to the house. It was like heaven to us. Woods surrounded the house, which sat on stilts at the top of a hill to avoid flooding from the river. You could see the Ouachita River from the front porch. Phil and Kay still live in the same house today. I don't think there's anything that could convince them to leave that house. It is home.

I STILL REMEMBER THE DAY PHIL AND KAY TOOK US TO SEE OUR NEW HOME FOR THE FIRST TIME.

After we moved into the house, Alan and Jase started school again. I was still too young to attend, so I spent most of my time with my granny and pa. Phil worked at the school for that first year while he got his commercial fishing business going and Kay continued to work at Howard Brothers Discount Stores.

This was a fun time in my life, with great memories of spending time with Granny and Pa. I had them all to myself while Jase and Alan were in school. I would sit at the table with them and play cards and dominoes, and we watched a lot of TV even though we only had three channels. We watched The Price Is Right in the morning and soap operas like All My Children and As the World Turns in the afternoon. When Granny was eighty, she actually appeared on The Price Is Right and won the game! It was "Spring Break Week," and she competed against a bunch of college-aged kids. Granny was really good with numbers. Bob Barker would ask her the price of an item and she'd immediately yell out, "Six dollars, Bob!" Most of the college kids on the show didn't know anything and were looking to the crowd for help, but Granny knew the price of everything almost immediately. She won two cars and a trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on the Showcase Showdown.

I MADE A DEAL WITH GRANNY THAT I WOULD CLEAN UP HER YARD IF SHE WOULD LET ME BURN THE PILE.

Granny was very opinionated and fun to be around. She would take me places, like the county fair or into town. She even let me burn things-which I loved. This was not a weird pyromaniac thing. When you live in the country, burning things is a way of life. There is no trash man who comes to pick up your trash. You just make a pile and burn it. I was barely five years old, at the time, but I made a deal with Granny that I would clean up her yard if she would let me burn the pile. Every day, I'd go out in the yard and rake up piles of leaves and sticks and set them on fire. I burned everything. I just loved building fires, and-you can ask Korie-I still do. We've had the fire department visit us a few times when they have had reports that a fire I started was out of control, but I'm proud to say that they've never had to actually put one out. I always had the fire under control by the time they arrived.

I'd help Granny in the garden, too. One time I pulled the stem out of a cantaloupe because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. Pa thumped me upside the head for doing it, and then Granny slapped him upside the head for hitting me. All of my cousins believed I was Granny's favorite because I spent so much time with her.

Granny was still having mental problems at the time, but I was too young to understand what was going on. She would do some really odd things. We had a chicken coop, and sometimes she would sit out there and crow with the chickens. Sometimes she would have her clothes on and sometimes she wouldn't. One day I was walking on the concrete sidewalk between our houses, and Granny kicked open the screen door on the front of her house. She had a rifle and shot out a string of lights hanging between the trees. I guess that's where my dad got his shooting skills. She was a heck of a shot.

One time Granny had a bunch of bananas and started peeling them and cleaning her windows with them. Before she went to the hospital for an extended stay, she went through her house and painted everything that was a rectangle with red paint. She even painted her Bible red! When Granny came back from the hospital, she couldn't figure out who painted everything in her house red. She didn't even know she had done it.

Being young, I didn't know anything was wrong with her. I just thought all the eccentric things she did were normal. That was just how she was. I was a bit of an entrepreneur, though, and took advantage of her generosity. She owned a small boat dock at the mouth of Cypress Creek and people would leave a dollar every time they used the dock. Because of that dock, Granny always had a pocket full of money. I'd take her garbage out and she'd pay me like $120 without even realizing it. She even paid me to throw away Pa's stuff one time when she was mad at him. I threw a bunch of his tools in the river. I still feel kind of bad about that one, but I was just a little kid. I didn't know any better, plus she had a pocket full of green bills calling my name.

Pa was the quietest man I've ever known. He would sit at the table playing solitaire with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. They both smoked like freight trains. I can't believe I don't have lung cancer from spending so much time with them. I was definitely exposed to some serious secondhand smoke. Pa would be playing cards, and Granny would want to get his attention, so she would walk by the table and grab a handful of his cards and throw them in the fireplace. Pa would look at her and just say, "Aw, c.r.a.p," and then start watching TV as if nothing had happened.

Like Phil and Kay, our granny and pa taught us how to be independent, confident, and self-sufficient. They raised seven great kids, my dad and aunts and uncles, and made it through some really tough times together. I loved both of them dearly and am thankful for the time I got to spend with them. I think there is something really special about spending time with people from their generation. It's called the Greatest Generation for a reason. They knew how to make the best of what they had-even if it was just fried bologna.

FRIED BOLOGNA SANDWICHES

If you are worried about grease or b.u.t.ter, then you probably should not eat this. I have to admit, I don't eat them much anymore, but when I do, it takes me back in time. 1 tablespoon b.u.t.ter

2 slices thick-cut bologna

bacon grease if you have it (Granny always saved her bacon grease to cook with)

2 slices bread

2 slices of any type of cheese 1. Melt b.u.t.ter in frying pan.

2. Cut three slits in each slice of bologna and fry in b.u.t.ter. Add cheese. Remove from pan when done.

3. Warm bacon grease in frying pan.

4. Toast slices of bread in hot bacon grease.

5. Place bologna and cheese between slices of bread.

CHAPTER 3

FRIED CATFISH

BUT AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSEHOLD, WE WILL SERVE THE LORD.