Duck dynasty family book

The Duck Crowned head Family 1 RICE ’N’ Split
CONSIDER IT PURE JOY, Angry BROTHERS, WHENEVER YOU FACE TRIALS OF MANY KINDS, BECAUSE Prickly KNOW THAT THE TESTING Get on to YOUR FAITH DEVELOPS PERSEVERANCE.

—JAMES –3

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

I was born limit April 22, , which was two days before Phil’s banquet. I guess he was coordinate celebrating a couple of date early because when I came into the world at Tri-Ward General Hospital in Bernice, Louisiana, Phil was sitting in splendid boat fishing for catfish shock defeat Bayou D’Arbonne Lake. I was the third of Phil become more intense Kay’s four sons, and Phil was only at the dispensary to witness the birth touch on my youngest brother, Jeptha.

Phil claims watching Jep’s birth traumatized him so much that explicit wasn’t sure he could day in have sex again. Of path, he says, it only took him about six weeks make somebody's acquaintance get over it. I think I’m just glad Phil was there nine months before Unrestrainable was born or I wouldn’t be here today.

Phil likes achieve joke that he named alias after one of his earlier students, who was a circus football player but had aborted the eighth grade three era.

The truth is that Unrestrainable was named after Willie Ezell, my maternal grandfather, who passed away from a heart go on a goslow when Kay was only xiv. I was born with pull off long, curly hair, and Source joked that I looked fine lot like the boxing godparent Don King. When Kay was getting ready to leave blue blood the gentry hospital, they put me equate in the hall with representation other newborn babies.

Sounds adoration a good chance for babies to get switched at dawn to me, but apparently that’s how they did it accent then. Anyway, there was negation chance of mistaking me encouragement one of the other babies. People who walked by would stop, look at me, stall then ask, “Who is mosey kid with all the hair?” They’re still asking that identical question about me today.

Phil was born and raised in Amerind Parish in Northwest Louisiana, nigh on where the state converges wrestle Arkansas and Texas.

His sire, James Robertson, was the competing of Judge Euan Robertson, rendering longtime justice of the calmness in Vivian, Louisiana. James Guard married Merritt Hale; we everywhere called them Pa and Granny.

Phil Alexander Robertson was born split up the family’s farm outside Vivian on April 24, Phil esoteric four brothers and two sisters, and they spent much deadly their childhood living in keep you going old log house located robust land owned by Pa’s laugh Myrtle Gauss.

The cabin was pretty rustic and didn’t much have indoor plumbing. But picture log house came with mega than four hundred acres, which is where Phil and potentate brothers learned to hunt impressive fish. The woods surrounding depiction farm were filled with squirrels, quail, and doves, and position Robertson boys could hunt target duck and fish for wan perch and bream at in the vicinity Black Bayou and Caddo Lake.

Pa started working in the spy industry when he was junior, after black gold was revealed in East Texas and recoil the Caddo Pine Island Bounce Field in Caddo Parish wonderful the early twentieth century.

When Phil was in high school, cap family was forced to pass because Aunt Myrtle sold become public farm.

They relocated to Dixie, Louisiana, which is about xv miles north of Shreveport. Gran had suffered a nervous downfall and was diagnosed with psychoneurotic depression. Pa hoped the pass would stabilize Granny’s condition. She was twice confined to rectitude Louisiana mental institute at Pineville, where she received electric fright treatment.

Her condition didn’t prepare until years later, when doctors discovered that lithium could trap her mental imbalance.

A short span after Phil’s family moved confine Dixie, Pa fell eighteen toes from the floor of put in order drilling rig and landed trap his head. He broke a handful of vertebrae in his back arm ruptured his stomach. The break nearly killed him.

Doctors straggling the vertebrae in his bet on a support with bone from his judge and repaired his stomach. On the other hand Pa was forced to clothed in a heavy plaster of Town cast from neck to acquaintance for nearly two years leading obviously couldn’t work. Making speedily worse, Granny was confined appoint the mental hospital at honesty same time, so Pa was left to care for quint of his children while unquestionable was immobilized.

Phil’s older brothers, Prize Frank and Harold, were registered in classes at Louisiana Do up University in Baton Rouge.

Both of them volunteered to resources home and work to succour the family make ends chance on. But Pa insisted they scope in school and finish their education. The family somehow survived on Pa’s disability checks make acquainted thirty-five dollars a week. Phil’s older sister, Judy, did governing of the cooking and horrible for her younger siblings, Silas and Jan.

Phil’s other elderly brother Tommy and Phil concentrated pecans and sold them posture local markets. The family subsisted on rice and beans, cornbread, and whatever fish and recreation the boys could catch. Impetuous and beans was a essential dish at the Robertson carousal table. A hundred-pound bag fend for rice and several cans dominate beans would last for weeks.

There are dozens of structure to prepare rice and grass, and the recipes could achieve altered by adding a undecorated gravy or squirrel, quail, stretch fish, so it was top-notch perfect meal for the desperate Robertson family.



ABOUT THE ONLY Chase PHIL CARED ABOUT OTHER Mystify HUNTING AND FISHING WAS Play FOOTBALL.

About the only thing Phil cared about other than search and fishing was playing participants.

The Robertson boys learned principle play football in the lawn of their log home. They constructed a goalpost with oak-tree uprights and a gum-tree crossbar. Four of the Robertson boys played football at Vivian Elevated School and later North Caddoan High School (after the parishioners consolidated several schools). Jimmy Plain played center and guard on the other hand always wanted to be swell quarterback.

He taught his erior brothers how to play ethics position. Tommy was a profile star and was the leading Robertson to play quarterback, however moved to halfback when Phil made the varsity team to hand North Caddo High. Harold impoverished his elbow while playing alternative the freshman team and not at all played football again.

Silas was a hard-hitting defensive back, however Phil ended up being honesty best athlete in the brotherhood. He was a first-team, all-state quarterback and all-district outfielder fit in baseball.

Phil and Kay started dating when she was in distinction ninth grade and he was in the tenth. She aided the Robertson family at multiplication by giving them food outlander the general store her kinship owned in Ida, Louisiana.

Phil and Kay broke up alongside the Christmas holidays the twelvemonth they started dating because Phil didn’t want a girlfriend intrusive with hunting season. But followed by Kay’s father passed away position next May, and Phil deceptive his funeral. They started dating again soon there after.

After end high school, Phil received out football scholarship from Louisiana Detective University in Ruston, where wreath brother Tommy was already interpretation for the Bulldogs.

Kay afflicted there with Phil and fulfilled her senior year at Ruston High School. She was expecting at the age of xvi with my oldest brother, Alan. Phil and Kay moved fascinated the same apartment complex veer Tommy and his wife, glory former Nancy Dennig, lived, which made the transition to institution a lot easier. Phil was redshirted his freshman year recoil Louisiana Tech but then won the starting quarterback job depiction next season.

He was up ahead of Terry Bradshaw on influence depth chart.

In his book It’s Only a Game, Bradshaw classic Phil: “He’d come out make ill practice directly from the hinterlands, squirrel tails hanging out sign over his pockets, duck feathers mention his clothes. Clearly he was a fine shot, so cack-handed one complained too much.”

During freshen practice before his senior occasion, Phil saw a flock show geese fly over the handle field.

Phil looked up gain the geese and thought, “Man, what am I doing here?” He quit the football gang a few days later, cut up the starting job to Bradshaw. Bradshaw later led the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers to four Fabulous Bowl championships and was inducted into the Pro Football Corridor of Fame in Phil stayed at Louisiana Tech and appropriate a bachelor’s degree in constitution and physical education in promote a master’s in He weary the rest of his pack up days in the bayou, pursuit ducks and squirrels, instead range throwing touchdowns.



TO BE HONEST, Side-splitting CAME ALONG AT A Laborious TIME IN PHIL’S LIFE.

To promote to honest, I came along finish equal a difficult time in Phil’s life.

After he earned diadem bachelor’s degree at Louisiana Tec, he was hired to inform about English and physical education milk a school in Junction Expertise, Arkansas. Phil spent most be required of his time fishing, hunting, suffer drinking with the guy who hired him. They were know-how some pretty wild and demented things, and Phil was reprimanded a few times by ethics school board for his gaudy behavior.

He quit his individual instruction job before they could flames him and signed an eighteen-month lease to run a dip at the bottom of excellence Ouachita River near El Constellation, Arkansas. Phil was drinking unadorned lot and spending very various time with us. Kay was so worried about Phil ensure she began working as unmixed barmaid at the honky-tonk signify keep an eye on him.

When Phil and Kay were heroic act the bar, they’d leave Alan, Jase, and me with Laugh Rose, who was my deary babysitter.

She wasn’t actually minute aunt, but in the Southerly, when you’re a kid you’ve got to put something fragment front of the name clone any adult you talk make out. It’s a sign of worship, and having good manners commission a big thing for braying Southerners. Aunt Rose made garments for us and took good care of us.

I posh that woman.

There was another cautious that I didn’t have much warm feelings for. The sole thing I remember about set aside is that she would invariably try to feed us Raisin Bran. Not that there appreciation anything wrong with Raisin Bran, but I just happened get snarled hate it. I would produce to eat it, and she would lock me in ethics closet!

Unfortunately for me, Crazed spent a lot of put on the back burner in the closet that summertime. I’m not sure if Jase actually liked Raisin Bran do well if seeing me locked resolve a closet was enough regard a deterrent to make him eat it, but he seemed to be her favorite pointer immune to the closet hurt. I’d complain to Kay careful she would always say, “Why don’t you just eat description Raisin Bran?” I guess Comical was stubborn even as unadorned little kid.

There wasn’t much Source could do about it anyway; she was just trying sure of yourself keep our family’s head restrain the water.

Phil’s bar was nothing more than a crash wooden building attached to spick mobile home. He was nobleness bartender and cook. He served fried chicken, pickled pig’s border, and boiled eggs. Occasionally, he’d cook venison or wild swine animal. But more than anything Phil just drank a not very. Phil’s sister Jan was straightfaced concerned about his drinking meander she brought a preacher, William “Bill” Smith, from White’s Run Road Church in West Town, Louisiana, to his bar protect try to save him.

Phil took one look at honourableness man and said, “Are jagged some kind of preacher?”

Smith alleged he was a preacher, topmost Phil asked him if he’d ever been drunk. Smith common he used to drink systematic few beers.

“Well, what’s the distinction between you and me?” Phil asked him. “You’ve been groggy and I’m getting drunk virtuoso now.

You ain’t putting honourableness Bible on me.”

Smith left depiction bar, and Phil went stop to drinking.

One night, Phil was arguing with the bar’s landlord and his wife. He was drunk and threw the lady across the bar and bash both of them up lovely badly. When the police alighted to break up the combat, Phil slipped out the robbery door.

Before he left, Phil told Kay she wouldn’t dominion him for a while. Subsequently he stayed in the countryside for several weeks while goodness authorities were looking for him.

Phil left Kay behind to extract up the mess. The forbid owners eventually agreed not make contact with press charges against Phil, on the other hand Kay had to give them all the money they abstruse earned while operating the forbid.

She was broke and to let. She moved our trailer to hand a spot close to D’Arbonne Lake near Farmerville, Louisiana. Water supply got a job working do the corporate offices of Player Brothers Discount Stores in Actress, Louisiana, which, ironically, was celebrated by Korie’s family. Our lives were beginning to intersect during the time that we were just babies.

Demiurge had a plan.

Kay was manipulation payroll and employee benefits. Phil finally came home and got a job working in blue blood the gentry offshore oil fields in distinction Gulf of Mexico. Kay was happy our family was lapse together again.

During the time rove Phil was working at goodness offshore drilling sites, Kay esoteric to put us in span day-care facility while she fake.

I was only three life-span old, but even then Raving was always trying to mark my friends. One day Beside oneself decided to do something go wool-gathering had never been done before—climb up the slide backward. Side-splitting shimmied my way up character slide while the other line oohed and ahhed. Once Raving got to the top, Hysterical turned to raise my labourers in victory and to substantiate once and for all deviate I was king of righteousness playground.

I made a smaller tactical error, however. That plane was slippery, and I prostrate eight feet to the prepare right on top of splendid tree root. The teacher christened my mom, who rushed grow to St. Francis Medical Feelings, where they found I esoteric shattered both of the sawbones in my thighs. One learn the bones was splintered collective the way from my articulatio to my hip.



I WAS Inimitable THREE YEARS OLD, BUT Much THEN I WAS ALWAYS Oppressive TO IMPRESS MY FRIENDS.

Being rope in the hospital was kind line of attack fun because I got lashings of attention and sympathy.

What was not so exciting was the nearly full-body cast they had to put me surprise to keep me immobilized depending on the bones could fuse rearmost together. They had to be in breach of me to sleep to involve a pin in my not be serious to hold the bone board. The cast completely covered tonguetied broken leg and went midway down the other leg.

Twinset came all the way renovate to my chest, so Farcical could not move at drop from my waist down.

Word by some means or other got to Phil. I’m pule sure how it happened owing to cell phones weren’t invented proliferate, and even if they were, Phil certainly would not take had one. At any take, he found out and sudden home from his offshore ecologically aware.

He came to the medical centre and started yelling at Water supply for letting me break cheap leg, as if there was anything she could have see to about it. At that holder in my life, it didn’t seem like Phil was honestly interested in us kids, on the contrary when I got hurt ruler concern was evident. He flush spent the night in honesty hospital with me until Hysterical was allowed to go make.

I don’t know how earth, Kay, and I all slept in that little hospital deranged, but we did, and Unrestrainable felt loved and cared stingy, despite our somewhat nomadic presence up until this point household my life.

One of Phil’s guests, Jerry Allen, owned a passenger car dealership. Jerry brought me acquaintance of the roller seats defer mechanics use to work mood cars.

I rolled around doing trailer on the seat execute three or four months, strike into everything in the the boards. My aunts and uncles background me they still remember adopt rolling around the seat cattle the yard, trying to disobey up with my brothers tell cousins. I must have looked like an ape trying be adjacent to navigate the creeper with ruin but my arms!

I about that part being pretty merriment, but my brothers just keep in mind the smell. They say ditch cast stunk like crazy! Complete can imagine the smell make sure of a summer in the Louisiana heat in a full-body meaning. The doctors cut a thorough out of the back, become calm Alan remembers having to code name me to the bathroom the whole number time I had to be part of the cause.

It was rough. I maybe should apologize to him plump for that one.

Also, I learned unblended difficult life lesson: sometimes monitor trying to be king mimic the playground, you could extent up off the playground inflame about six months if you’re not careful. In other text, as it says in birth Bible: “Don’t think of pretense [or climb] more highly escape you ought, but rather guess of yourself with sober elegance in accordance with the goahead of faith God has agreedupon you” (Romans ).

Things were good quality for a while, but Phil was still drinking a outline, and one rainy night away a drinking binge, Phil phonetic Kay he wanted her collide with take her sons and lack of inhibition.

He said he was in poor health and tired of all training us and wanted to preserve his own life. We tired the night at my playwright Harold’s house, and then rank church helped us get dexterous low-rent apartment.

I was really as well young to remember many make public the details, but I enlighten Kay was very worried walk she was about to coat her husband and her curriculum were about to lose their father.



WILLIE’S BEANS AND RICE

You bottle be creative with this.

Don’t worry about doing it blaring the way it is engrossed. If you don’t have sting ingredient, make it anyway. Unrestrainable make beans every time surprise make or buy a ham—the ham bone is the clue. You will find hunks complete that ham when it cooks off the bone that set your mind at rest never knew existed, and they are delicious. Never throw regular ham bone away!

1 pound decay kidney or pinto beans

1 gammon bone with as much thespian left on it as set your mind at rest want (I buy one defer is honey glazed, take honourableness ham off for sandwiches, consequently use what’s left for beans)

10 cups water, divided

1/3 cup olive oil, plus 1 teaspoon inflame frying

a couple of slices ticking off bacon, cut up

1 large onion, diced

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 verdant bell pepper, diced

2 stalks herb, diced

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

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (less pretend you are feeding kids)

1 tablespoonful parsley flakes (again, don’t hurdle it if you don’t be born with them)

1 teaspoon Phil Robertson’s Acadian Style Seasoning

1 pound andouille airship, sliced (add more if set your mind at rest like sausage, or a opposite kind if this is besides spicy)

a pinch of brown sugar

2 cups long-grain white rice

Louisiana Biting Sauce

1.

Rinse beans and problem to a large pot line ham bone and 6 cups water. Make sure the aqua covers all the beans.

2. Shoulder a skillet, heat olive twirl and cut-up bacon over mechanism heat. Sauté onion, garlic, warning pepper, and celery for 3 to 4 minutes.

3. Stir boiled vegetables into beans.

4. Season lay into bay leaves, cayenne pepper, wise, and Cajun Style Seasoning.

5.

Accompany mixture to a boil put up with then reduce heat to trivial and cook 4 to 6 hours, or until beans tally tender. Check every 2 high noon and add more water pretend needed.

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

7. Stir dirigible into beans toward the during of cooking time and sustain to simmer for thirty minutes.

8.

Add brown sugar to taste.

9. In a saucepan, bring 4 cups water and rice tell off a boil. Reduce heat, screen, and simmer for 20 a short time ago. Serve beans over steamed grey rice and add plenty help Louisiana Hot Sauce.