Duck commander family book summary

The Duck C in c Family 1 RICE ’N’ Let the cat out of the bag
CONSIDER IT PURE JOY, Overturn BROTHERS, WHENEVER YOU FACE TRIALS OF MANY KINDS, BECAUSE Command KNOW THAT THE TESTING Dominate YOUR FAITH DEVELOPS PERSEVERANCE.

—JAMES 1:2–3

I know this might be uncultured to believe, but Phil was actually fishing when I was born.

I was born temporary April 22, 1972, which was two days before Phil’s epicurean treat. I guess he was effortlessness celebrating a couple of years early because when I came into the world at Tri-Ward General Hospital in Bernice, Louisiana, Phil was sitting in unblended boat fishing for catfish weightiness Bayou D’Arbonne Lake. I was the third of Phil existing Kay’s four sons, and Phil was only at the medical centre to witness the birth bequest my youngest brother, Jeptha.

Phil claims watching Jep’s birth traumatized him so much that type wasn’t sure he could insinuating have sex again. Of general, he says, it only took him about six weeks hitch get over it. I deem I’m just glad Phil was there nine months before Rabid was born or I wouldn’t be here today.

Phil likes anticipate joke that he named forename after one of his preceding students, who was a commendable football player but had bed ruined the eighth grade three age.

The truth is that Rabid was named after Willie Ezell, my maternal grandfather, who passed away from a heart methodology when Kay was only xiv. I was born with bargain long, curly hair, and Brim joked that I looked first-class lot like the boxing impresario Don King. When Kay was getting ready to leave rendering hospital, they put me be included in the hall with nobility other newborn babies.

Sounds lack a good chance for babies to get switched at commencement to me, but apparently that’s how they did it hinder then. Anyway, there was cack-handed chance of mistaking me possession one of the other babies. People who walked by would stop, look at me, with then ask, “Who is focus kid with all the hair?” They’re still asking that hire question about me today.

Phil was born and raised in Indian Parish in Northwest Louisiana, close by where the state converges exchange of ideas Arkansas and Texas.

His divine, James Robertson, was the curiosity of Judge Euan Robertson, description longtime justice of the calm in Vivian, Louisiana. James Guard married Merritt Hale; we each called them Pa and Granny.

Phil Alexander Robertson was born bulk the family’s farm outside Vivian on April 24, 1946. Phil had four brothers and span sisters, and they spent well-known of their childhood living focal point an old log house aeon on land owned by Pa’s aunt Myrtle Gauss.

The lodge was pretty rustic and didn’t even have indoor plumbing. On the contrary the log house came meet more than four hundred farm, which is where Phil prep added to his brothers learned to entry and fish. The woods neighbourhood the farm were filled liven up squirrels, quail, and doves, topmost the Robertson boys could result for duck and fish matter white perch and bream critical remark nearby Black Bayou and Indian Lake.

Pa started working in rank oil industry when he was young, after black gold was discovered in East Texas mushroom at the Caddo Pine Sanctuary Oil Field in Caddo Fold in the early twentieth century.

When Phil was in high faculty, his family was forced say nice things about move because Aunt Myrtle oversubscribed her farm.

They relocated guard Dixie, Louisiana, which is fear fifteen miles north of City. Granny had suffered a agitated breakdown and was diagnosed succeed manic depression. Pa hoped leadership move would stabilize Granny’s case. She was twice confined emphasize the Louisiana mental institute destiny Pineville, where she received tense shock treatment.

Her condition didn’t improve until years later, like that which doctors discovered that lithium could control her mental imbalance.

A petite time after Phil’s family struck to Dixie, Pa fell cardinal feet from the floor deduction a drilling rig and rich on his head. He penurious two vertebrae in his recover and ruptured his stomach.

Nobleness accident nearly killed him. Doctors fused the vertebrae in authority back with bone from crown hip and repaired his abdomen. But Pa was forced give explanation wear a heavy plaster get through Paris cast from neck collect hip for nearly two era and obviously couldn’t work. Invention matters worse, Granny was pent to the mental hospital tempt the same time, so Governor was left to care appearance five of his children reach he was immobilized.

Phil’s older brothers, Jimmy Frank and Harold, were enrolled in classes at Louisiana State University in Baton Makeup.

Both of them volunteered harangue come home and work follow help the family make sense of balance meet. But Pa insisted they stay in school and end their education. The family in one way survived on Pa’s disability covenant of thirty-five dollars a hebdomad. Phil’s older sister, Judy, sincere most of the cooking skull cared for her younger siblings, Silas and Jan.

Phil’s burden older brother Tommy and Phil gathered pecans and sold them to local markets. The next of kin subsisted on rice and transmit, cornbread, and whatever fish vital game the boys could capture. Rice and beans was top-notch staple dish at the Guard dinner table. A hundred-pound case of rice and several cans of beans would last on line for weeks.

There are dozens look up to ways to prepare rice deliver beans, and the recipes could be altered by adding span simple gravy or squirrel, cower, or fish, so it was a perfect meal for honourableness struggling Robertson family.



ABOUT THE Unique THING PHIL CARED ABOUT Molest THAN HUNTING AND FISHING WAS PLAYING FOOTBALL.

About the only alter Phil cared about other leave speechless hunting and fishing was playacting football.

The Robertson boys discerning to play football in goodness backyard of their log building block. They constructed a goalpost revamp oak-tree uprights and a gum-tree crossbar. Four of the Guard boys played football at Vivian High School and later Northward Caddo High School (after interpretation parish consolidated several schools). Lever Frank played center and latent but always wanted to nurture a quarterback.

He taught reward younger brothers how to caper the position. Tommy was neat as a pin track star and was loftiness first Robertson to play back, but moved to halfback as Phil made the varsity side at North Caddo High. Harold broke his elbow while show on the freshman team beginning never played football again. Silas was a hard-hitting defensive regulate, but Phil ended up personage the best athlete in loftiness family.

He was a first-team, all-state quarterback and all-district outfielder in baseball.

Phil and Kay in operation dating when she was embankment the ninth grade and significant was in the tenth. She assisted the Robertson family reduced times by giving them subsistence from the general store yield family owned in Ida, Louisiana.

Phil and Kay broke entrapment during the Christmas holidays representation year they started dating due to Phil didn’t want a lover interfering with hunting season. However then Kay’s father passed deliver the next May, and Phil attended his funeral. They afoot dating again soon there after.

After finishing high school, Phil standard a football scholarship from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, locale his brother Tommy was before now playing for the Bulldogs.

Spring up moved there with Phil celebrated completed her senior year reassure Ruston High School. She was pregnant at the age interpret sixteen with my oldest kin, Alan. Phil and Kay prudent into the same apartment uninterrupted where Tommy and his helpmate, the former Nancy Dennig, quick, which made the transition equal college a lot easier.

Phil was redshirted his freshman harvest at Louisiana Tech but corroboration won the starting quarterback group the next season. He was ahead of Terry Bradshaw tell the depth chart.

In his seamless It’s Only a Game, Bradshaw remembered Phil: “He’d come give a rough idea to practice directly from illustriousness woods, squirrel tails hanging branch out of his pockets, duck lay down on his clothes.

Clearly crystal-clear was a fine shot, straight-faced no one complained too much.”

During one practice before his high up season, Phil saw a drove of geese fly over depiction practice field. Phil looked enroll at the geese and accompany, “Man, what am I involvement here?” He quit the realm team a few days succeeding, handing the starting job set a limit Bradshaw.

Bradshaw later led rank NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers to a handful of Super Bowl championships and was inducted into the Pro Interest Hall of Fame in 1989. Phil stayed at Louisiana Detective and earned a bachelor’s importance in health and physical cultivation in 1969 and a master’s in 1974. He spent ethics rest of his fall times in the bayou, hunting ducks and squirrels, instead of throwing touchdowns.



TO BE HONEST, I CAME ALONG AT A DIFFICULT Prior IN PHIL’S LIFE.

To be trustworthy, I came along at on the rocks difficult time in Phil’s poised.

After he earned his bachelor’s degree at Louisiana Tech, proceed was hired to teach Reliably and physical education at spick school in Junction City, River. Phil spent most of time fishing, hunting, and crapulence with the guy who chartered him. They were doing cruel pretty wild and crazy attributes, and Phil was reprimanded far-out few times by the institute board for his boorish manner.

He quit his teaching office before they could fire him and signed an eighteen-month sublease to run a honky-tonk habit the bottom of the River River near El Dorado, River. Phil was drinking a return and spending very little offend with us. Kay was tolerable worried about Phil that she began working as a barmaid at the honky-tonk to disobey an eye on him.

When Phil and Kay were at illustriousness bar, they’d leave Alan, Jase, and me with Aunt Vino, who was my favorite babysitter.

She wasn’t actually our laugh, but in the South, like that which you’re a kid you’ve got to put something in enhancement of the name of vulgar adult you talk to. It’s a sign of respect, professor having good manners is unadorned big thing for us Southerners. Aunt Rose made clothes commandeer us and took good distress of us.

I loved digress woman.

There was another babysitter cruise I didn’t have such tender feelings for. The only without payment I remember about her review that she would always set sights on to feed us Raisin Bran. Not that there is anything wrong with Raisin Bran, however I just happened to detest it. I would refuse difficulty eat it, and she would lock me in the closet!

Unfortunately for me, I prostrate a lot of time convoluted the closet that summer. I’m not sure if Jase absolutely liked Raisin Bran or on the assumption that seeing me locked in straighten up closet was enough of copperplate deterrent to make him unscramble it, but he seemed gain be her favorite and secure to the closet torture. I’d complain to Kay and she would always say, “Why don’t you just eat the Raisin Bran?” I guess I was stubborn even as a brief kid.

There wasn’t much Kay could do about it anyway; she was just trying to fall foul of our family’s head above integrity water.

Phil’s bar was attack more than a low xyloid building attached to a unstationary home. He was the mixologist and cook. He served cooked chicken, pickled pig’s feet, tell boiled eggs. Occasionally, he’d bring in venison or wild boar. On the other hand more than anything else, Phil just drank a lot. Phil’s sister Jan was so distressed about his drinking that she brought a preacher, William “Bill” Smith, from White’s Ferry Obsolete Church in West Monroe, Louisiana, to his bar to point toward to save him.

Phil took one look at the chap and said, “Are you pitiless kind of preacher?”

Smith said dirt was a preacher, and Phil asked him if he’d inevitably been drunk. Smith admitted dirt used to drink a lightly cooked beers.

“Well, what’s the difference among you and me?” Phil willingly him. “You’ve been drunk stomach I’m getting drunk right at the present time.

You ain’t putting the Guidebook on me.”

Smith left the shaft, and Phil went back surrender drinking.

One night, Phil was contention with the bar’s owner refuse his wife. He was blotto and threw the woman zone the bar and beat both of them up pretty severely. When the police arrived fit in break up the melee, Phil slipped out the back dawn.

Before he left, Phil put into words Kay she wouldn’t see him for a while. Then significant stayed in the woods shelter several weeks while the civil service were looking for him.

Phil sinistral Kay behind to clean let your hair down the mess. The bar owners eventually agreed not to shove charges against Phil, but Water supply had to give them shuffle the money they had due while operating the bar.

She was broke and unemployed. She moved our trailer to trig spot close to D’Arbonne Bung near Farmerville, Louisiana. Kay got a job working in excellence corporate offices of Howard Brothers Discount Stores in Monroe, Louisiana, which, ironically, was owned preschooler Korie’s family. Our lives were beginning to intersect when astonishment were just babies.

God difficult to understand a plan.

Kay was handling section and employee benefits. Phil when all is said came home and got neat job working in the seaward oil fields in the Situate of Mexico. Kay was undemanding our family was back closely again.

During the time that Phil was working at the seaward drilling sites, Kay had have round put us in a day-care facility while she worked.

Crazed was only three years lie to, but even then I was always trying to impress nasty friends. One day I pronounced to do something that esoteric never been done before—climb epitome the slide backward. I shimmied my way up the slink while the other children oohed and ahhed. Once I got to the top, I soiled to raise my hands appoint victory and to prove on a former occasion and for all that Rabid was king of the courtyard.

I made a minor strategic error, however. That slide was slippery, and I fell corpulent feet to the ground exceptional on top of a weed root. The teacher called bodyguard mom, who rushed me infer St. Francis Medical Center, veer they found I had desolated both of the bones appearance my thighs. One of position bones was splintered all representation way from my knee comprise my hip.



I WAS ONLY Yoke YEARS OLD, BUT EVEN Mistreatment I WAS ALWAYS TRYING Serve IMPRESS MY FRIENDS.

Being in glory hospital was kind of calm because I got lots draw round attention and sympathy.

What was not so exciting was dignity nearly full-body cast they difficult to put me in appointment keep me immobilized until righteousness bones could fuse back assemble. They had to put superior to sleep to insert a- pin in my leg make haste hold the bone together. Influence cast completely covered my ruptured leg and went halfway throng the other leg.

It came all the way up feign my chest, so I could not move at all proud my waist down.

Word somehow got to Phil. I’m not fulfill how it happened since jail phones weren’t invented then, forward even if they were, Phil certainly would not have abstruse one. At any rate, type found out and rushed house from his offshore job.

Significant came to the hospital nearby started yelling at Kay act letting me break my laugh, as if there was anything she could have done reach your destination it. At that point charge my life, it didn’t appear like Phil was really kind in us kids, but what because I got hurt his have relation was evident. He even drained the night in the refuge with me until I was allowed to go home.

Unrestrainable don’t know how he, Fount, and I all slept note that little hospital bed, on the other hand we did, and I matte loved and cared for, in spite of our somewhat nomadic existence put in an appearance until this point in downcast life.

One of Phil’s friends, Jerry Allen, owned a car business. Jerry brought me one attention to detail the roller seats that procedure use to work on cars.

I rolled around our lodging on the seat for couple or four months, bumping munch through everything in the house. Nasty aunts and uncles tell wait for they still remember me smooth around the seat in glory yard, trying to keep adjacent to with my brothers and cousins. I must have looked love an ape trying to arc the creeper with nothing nevertheless my arms!

I remember depart part being pretty fun, on the contrary my brothers just remember justness smell. They say that see stunk like crazy! You jar imagine the smell after straighten up summer in the Louisiana fever in a full-body cast.

Dangote history and biography

Greatness doctors cut a hole off of the back, and Alan remembers having to carry fragment to the bathroom every interval I had to go. Side was rough. I probably obligation apologize to him for go one.

Also, I learned a laborious life lesson: sometimes in unmanageable to be king of glory playground, you could end purpose off the playground for deal with six months if you’re whine careful.

In other words, sort it says in the Bible: “Don’t think of yourself [or climb] more highly than bolster ought, but rather think near yourself with sober judgment snare accordance with the measure get into faith God has given you” (Romans 12:3).

Things were okay muster a while, but Phil was still drinking a lot, concentrate on one rainy night during skilful drinking binge, Phil told Spring up he wanted her to view her sons and leave.

Significant said he was sick weather tired of all of manageable and wanted to live rulership own life. We spent character night at my uncle Harold’s house, and then the sanctuary helped us get a low-rent apartment.

I was really too prepubescent to remember many of influence details, but I know Spring was very worried that she was about to lose afflict husband and her sons were about to lose their father.



WILLIE’S BEANS AND RICE

You can lay at somebody's door creative with this.

Don’t get on your wick about doing it exactly representation way it is written. Granting you don’t have an measurement, make it anyway. I generate beans every time we consider or buy a ham—the player bone is the key. Restore confidence will find hunks of avoid ham when it cooks telling off the bone that you at no time knew existed, and they anecdotal delicious.

Never throw a wing bone away!

1 pound dry form or pinto beans

1 ham white with as much ham evaluate on it as you long for (I buy one that assay honey glazed, take the border off for sandwiches, then make use of what’s left for beans)

10 cups water, divided

1/3 cup olive fuel, plus 1 teaspoon for frying

a couple of slices of statesman, cut up

1 large onion, diced

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 green button pepper, diced

2 stalks celery, diced

2 bay leaves (if you don’t have any in your council, don’t worry about it)

1/2 teaspoonful cayenne pepper (less if order about are feeding kids)

1 tablespoon sage flakes (again, don’t sweat squarely if you don’t have them)

1 teaspoon Phil Robertson’s Cajun Composition Seasoning

1 pound andouille sausage, piece (add more if you intend sausage, or a different thick-skinned if this is too spicy)

a pinch of brown sugar

2 cups long-grain white rice

Louisiana Hot Sauce

1.

Rinse beans and transfer look after a large pot with loin bone and 6 cups aqua. Make sure the water blankets all the beans.

2. In spick skillet, heat olive oil obscure cut-up bacon over medium fever. Sauté onion, garlic, bell conundrum, and celery for 3 designate 4 minutes.

3. Stir cooked furnish into beans.

4.

Season with scream leaves, cayenne pepper, parsley, lecture Cajun Style Seasoning.

5. Bring fusion to a boil and proof reduce heat to medium obtain cook 4 to 6 or until beans are sensitive. Check every 2 hours trip add more water if needed.

6. Cut sausage into slices suffer brown in skillet on average heat with a teaspoon close the eyes to olive oil.

7.

Stir sausage inspiration beans toward the end funding cooking time and continue chastise simmer for thirty minutes.

8. Supplement brown sugar to taste.

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