Si-Cology 1: Tales and Wisdom From Duck Dynasty's Favorite Uncle

by Si Robertson

  When we went to Outdoor Channel and then A&E TV, I didn’t even know how big of a role I was going to have in our shows. Willie asked me if I wanted to be involved, and I told him, “Hey, whatever y’all want me to do.” Well, when A&E launched Duck Dynasty, I was only supposed to appear in the show occasionally. After we filmed two or three episodes of Duck Dynasty, they showed them to a focus group in Los Angeles. For whatever reason, the people loved watching me. They said I was the star of the show, and I wasn’t even supposed to be in it! I’m not sure why I struck a nerve with so many people, but I could have never imagined people’s reaction to me.

  Duck Dynasty has really changed my life. It’s hard to go anywhere now without being stopped for a photograph or autograph. I’m happy to do it, but nowadays it takes a lot longer to go to the gas station or grocery store. I’ll do almost anything a kid asks me to do, and I know our show wouldn’t be where it is today without our fans. It’s amazing how many people send me free stuff at the Duck Commander warehouse. A car dealer in Arkansas even gave me a free truck to drive. The dealer put its name on the doors, and they asked me if I wanted anything else on it. I told them to put “Hey, Jack” in the back window and “The Duck Man” on the tailgate. Wouldn’t you know it? I worked my entire life and never had a new truck, and now someone is giving me a free truck to drive when I’m retired.

  Hey, only in America.

  “One time I stopped and smelled the roses and a big bumblebee went and stung me on the nose. So, hey, from then on, look here, you smell the roses, but you smell them quick.”

  Broken Heart

  I STARTED SMOKING CIGARETTES WHEN i was in high school. Hey, back then nobody really knew that smoking was bad for you. Both of my parents smoked, and so did most of my friends’ parents. All of the Hollywood actors of the 1960s smoked, whether it was Steve McQueen, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, or James Coburn. Hey, if those guys were smoking cigarettes, I figured it had to be cool. And, hey, there wasn’t anyone cooler in Dixie, Louisiana, than Silas Merritt Robertson.

  Well, I eventually figured out that a cigarette is nothing more than a pinch of tobacco rolled in paper—with fire at one end and an idiot at the other! Hey, what’s the result of too much smoking? Coffin, Jack!

  I smoked for more than thirty years. It was hard to quit while I was in the military because the army gave you four cigarettes with every meal; when they stopped giving them to us, I just bought them myself. I tried to quit many times over the years. I even used tobacco alternatives like water-vapor cigarettes and electronic cigarettes. Hey, they never warned me that I could electrocute myself when I smoked them together. You want to talk about a high. Good grief!

  I smoked cigarettes in Vietnam to occupy my time more than anything else. One night, a sergeant ordered a buddy and me to deliver supplies to a camp on the other side of a jungle. It was a dangerous mission, which was made even worse by a driving rainstorm. As we made our way down a dark road, I heard a tap on the passenger-side window of our Jeep.

  “Hey, there’s somebody knocking on my window!” I told my buddy.

  “Well, open it and see what he wants,” he said.

  I rolled down the window. A Vietnamese man was staring at me. I didn’t know if he was a civilian or with the Vietcong.

  “Do you have a cigarette?” he asked.

  “Hey, he wants a cigarette,” I said. “What do I do?”

  “Give him a cigarette and let’s get out of here!” my buddy said.

  I handed the man a cigarette and rolled up the window.

  “Step on it,” I said.

  I was a little freaked out by the incident, so I lit up a cigarette of my own. Now we were really in a hurry to finish the mission, and I figured we were probably driving sixty miles per hour through the jungle. Then I heard another knock on my window.

  “Good grief,” I said. “He’s knocking on my window again.”

  “Well, see what he wants,” my buddy said.

  I rolled down the window again.

  “Do you have a light?” the Vietnamese man said.

  “Light his cigarette!” my buddy said. “Make it quick!”

  I lit the man’s cigarette, and my buddy put the Jeep’s gas pedal to the floor. We were probably going ninety miles per hour now!

  Then I heard a knock on my window again.

  “What in the world?” I screamed. “He’s back! How is he doing it?”

  I rolled down the window again, expecting him to shoot me.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Hey, would you like some help getting out of the mud?” he said.

  After I left Vietnam and quit drinking alcohol, I figured smoking wasn’t the worst vice for me. I never really noticed the toll smoking was taking on my body. Even though I was smoking Winston cigarettes, I was still able to complete the mandatory training runs and any other kind of physical activity the army required of me. I even smoked when I played high school football, although the coaches probably would have killed me if they’d ever found out.

  I didn’t realize secondhand smoke was bad for you until I went deer hunting when I was in my forties. I was hunting on a friend’s property in Germany, and he walked me to a deer stand at the start of the hunt. I climbed into the stand and lit a cigarette. A few seconds later, I heard someone coughing. I looked around for my buddy, figuring he’d come back to tell me something. But then I looked down and saw a spike buck standing next to the tree. It was coughing from the cigarette smoke! Who knew secondhand smoke was even bad for deer?

  Well, eventually the cigarettes caught up with me. Near the beginning of January 2005, I knew something was wrong with my health. I was eating antacids constantly, even though my stomach was never upset by anything I ate. Growing up in Louisiana, everything we ate was spicy. I put hot sauce and pepper sauce on nearly everything—even my Fruity Pebbles. I had a cast-iron stomach. When I started feeling ill, I thought I was having heartburn or acid reflux, but the antacids weren’t helping. Christine kept telling me I needed to go see the doctor, but duck season was almost over, so I wanted to keep hunting. I kept putting off a doctor’s visit.

  Christine knew I absolutely hated going to the doctor or visiting a hospital. Whenever Christine had surgery over the years, I tried to visit her, but she knew how anxious it made me. She always sent me home because I made her nervous. I visited her as soon as the surgery was over, and then I went back to get her when she was released. I figured it was the least I could do for her. It’s not that I hate visiting doctors or going to the hospital, it’s really more of a deeply rooted phobia. When we were kids, a mobile doctor’s clinic visited the rural areas of Louisiana. Momma always took us to the clinic to get tetanus shots and other vaccinations we needed for school. Well, the first time Momma took me, I took off running through a cornfield! I don’t like needles and I don’t like shots, Jack!

  Well, on the next-to-last day of duck season in 2005, we were sitting in a blind and killed about four or five ducks. Jase noticed a big flock of ducks flying to another part of Phil’s land. They decided to pick up a few decoys and move to the other spot.

  “Hey, y’all go ahead,” I said. “I ain’t feeling too good. I’m going to sit here and see if I can get me a couple more ducks. Y’all come back when you’re done hunting.”

  After they left, I saw a mallard drake and mallard hen fly into the woods. I decided I was going to slip into the woods and whack ’em. I killed the mallard drake and retrieved it, but then my chest started hurting as I walked back to the blind. Suddenly, I was overcome with severe chest pains. I sat on a log and tried to catch my breath. When the pain finally abated, I walked back to my truck and drove home. I went straight to bed. I was absolutely exhausted and slept all day.

  Throughout the night, Christine kept checking on me to make sure I was still breathing. She feared something was seriously wrong with me. I got up at four o’clock the next morning to go duck hunting again. When I leaned over to put on my boots, the pain in my c
hest took my breath away. I woke up Christine and told her I needed to go to the emergency room. She knew something was very wrong. After the nurses checked my vital signs, they admitted me to the hospital.

  The doctors sent a camera scope down my throat to look at my heart. They told me I was having a heart attack and needed open-heart surgery. Hey, I told you I was a heartbreaker!

  “Are you sure I need it?” I asked the surgeon.

  “Yeah, you need it,” he said. “You’ll die if you don’t.”

  “Well, I’ve been healthy all of my life,” I said. “If you say I need it, then I guess I need it.”

  Since it was a Saturday, the heart surgeon decided to wait to do my surgery until his regular team was on duty on Monday. I kept having heart attacks, but the doctors and nurses were monitoring me around the clock. They took really good care of me. On Monday, I had open-heart surgery. When the surgery was over, doctors told Christine that overall I was pretty healthy. They took a vein from my leg and used it to bypass a blockage and get blood to my heart. After I woke up, the surgeon told me it was a privilege to operate on me because he didn’t have to do any work to find my heart. When the surgeon cracked me open, he couldn’t find an ounce of fat. My heart was sitting right there. They didn’t even have to put me on a heart-lung machine to pump my blood during surgery; the surgeons repaired my heart between beats!

  I knew I was lucky to be alive. The surgeon told Christine I had what they called a “widow-maker.” My left main coronary artery was almost completely blocked. Medically, the doctors told me, I should have died. A widow-maker can kill you within a matter of only ten to twenty minutes. It was another of God’s miracles. Thankfully, the Lord was watching over me again and sent me to good doctors, nurses, and surgeons who saved my life.

  My recovery from surgery was pretty rapid. It was around the time I usually helped Phil work on his land, which I really enjoyed doing. I liked being out in nature and loved spending time with my brother. I paced myself for six weeks and when I received the all clear from the doctors, I went back to my normal routine. I had shortness of breath and got tired easily for a while, but before too long, I was back to being regular ole Uncle Si.

  After my heart attack, I never picked up another cigarette. I promised Christine, my children, and my brothers and sisters that I would never smoke again—and I haven’t. My heart attack really woke me up, and now I cherish every day I’m on this earth. Before my heart attack, I hadn’t been to the doctor since 1993. Now I get a checkup every six months. Sunrises and sunsets are a lot more beautiful now, and I even take time to smell the roses. Hey, I still smell them quick, because you never know when a bumblebee might sting you on the nose!

  “Never insult a man’s beard. You get either thunder or lightning.”

  Faith

  HEY, I DON’T USE the term “religious.” A lot of people say they’re religious, but then you watch how they act or listen to how they talk. Their actions and language say otherwise. I don’t really care about the names on the front of a church building, either, because I don’t believe in denominations. You’re either a Christian or you’re not.

  My faith is pretty simple: I believe that God is the Father and his Son is Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus Christ came to this earth and became flesh for us because we have two problems. We have a sin problem and a death problem, and, hey, we can’t solve either one of them. Jesus left our Father’s side, came to this earth as flesh, and died on a cross for the things Silas Robertson does wrong. I deserve to be on a cross and would be guilty as charged for some of the things I’ve done in my life. Jesus was innocent of all charges and did not belong there, yet he willingly went there and accepted my punishment.

  Hey, that’s not the end of the story. A little girl watched her mother kill her father. The little girl went to church with her grandmother, and a Sunday school teacher showed her a picture of Jesus on the cross.

  “Does anyone know who this is?” the teacher asked.

  “I don’t know his name,” the little girl said. “But he didn’t stay on the cross.”

  “What are you talking about?” the teacher asked.

  “I know he didn’t stay on the cross because the night my mother killed my father, he was holding me in his arms,” the little girl said.

  Jesus Christ dying on the cross wasn’t the end of the story. They took his body down from the cross and buried him in a tomb. Before Jesus was crucified, he told everyone that if they ruined the temple—they thought he was referring to a religious temple, but he was actually talking about his body—he would raise it in three days. Three days after they hung Jesus on a cross and killed him, he fulfilled what he said. He rose from the dead and spent forty days and forty nights with five hundred people to prove his resurrection. Some people even watched his body ascend into the heavens.

  It was all part of God’s plan. Jesus came to earth of his free will and knew what he had to do. He paid for my sins and then ascended into the heavens. Right now, Jesus is sitting next to our heavenly Father. When I mess up, I say, “Lord, I’m sorry, I have sinned again because I’m weak.” They look down at me, and Jesus turns to the Father and says, “Remember the cross. I have him covered.”

  Hey, my faith is what my momma and daddy raised me to believe. I watched them live it. They didn’t only talk the talk, but they walked the walk that matched the talk. When people ask me where I go to church, I tell them I’m a follower of Jesus Christ. I’m a Christian. I believe that he is who he said he was. Jesus said he was God’s son, and I believe him. I believe he died on the cross for me. I believe he beat the grave, and that’s a promise he has given me. He said, “If you trust me, even if you die, you shall live.”

  Hey, if anyone has a better offer for me, in which my sins will be forgiven and I can beat the grave, I’m willing to listen. But I don’t think I’ll ever hear a better offer for everlasting life.

  It’s what I live by, and it’s the great hope the Bible gives us. As Jase likes to say, the Bible is a love letter from God to mankind. In the Bible, God tells us how much He loves us and that He sent his Son to die for us. Some people have asked how Jesus was able to live on this earth and not sin. Some people claim Jesus really wasn’t a man. Hey, Jesus was a man. He proved it to the Apostle Thomas, who doubted Jesus was resurrected until he could see and feel the wounds Jesus received on the cross.

  As it says in John 20:24–29:

  Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

  But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

  A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

  Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

  Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

  Thomas believed Jesus was the Father’s Son because he could touch and feel his wounds. Jesus was of flesh and blood, but he was also deity. If he wasn’t, he couldn’t help me because he wouldn’t be able to understand. Jesus died on the cross because he loved perfectly. When Jesus was in excruciating pain and was dying on the cross, he told the Father, “Forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” There isn’t a more painful way for a human to die than being crucified on the cross, but Jesus still forgave those who killed him.

  Hey, if you’re a Christian, racism is out. God made mankind from dust and then He made woman. We don’t even know what color Adam was. When I was growing up in Dixie, Louisiana, there were probably only six or seven white kids in the entire town. Most of my friends were African-A
merican. If I had chores to do, I’d get my friends to help me paint a fence, clean the barn, or cut the grass. Then I’d take them to the water hole and teach them how to swim. I probably taught twenty African-American kids how to swim.

  When Daddy fell from an oil rig and broke his back, we didn’t have very much money because he wasn’t working. Momma told some of the ladies in the neighborhood that we weren’t going to have a Christmas that year because she didn’t have any money to buy us presents. Well, the black families in town took up a donation and raised about two hundred dollars for us. We had a memorable Christmas because of their generosity, and nobody even asked them to do it. The Bible tells us to love everyone, regardless of race or religion.

  Hey, I believe in Jesus Christ and he is God’s Son. He came to this earth as flesh and died on a cross for our sins. He loved us enough to die for us, even his enemies.

  That’s a fact, Jack!

  Letters to Si from His Family

  A Letter to Si from His Wife, Christine

  When I first met you, I knew you as “Rob.” In the military, names were usually shortened, and the first name was never used. We had been together sixteen months when I was introduced to your siblings, their children, and your parents They called you “Si,” not “Rob,” so I did the same when we were with your family. But when we were alone, it was back to “Rob.” But after you became a household name, I decided I might as well join the crowd.