The Duck Commander Family (4 page)

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 advertisement for a piece of property titled “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 assume 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.

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.

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, crap,” 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.

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