Breakfast began when Granny put a big pot of water on the stove to heat. We didn’t have a hot-water heater, so we bathed in cold water when I was young. Granny used the hot water for cooking and cleaning the dishes. Breakfast usually consisted of hot buttermilk biscuits, blindfolded fried eggs, butter, and fresh “sweet milk”: every morning, one of my brothers or I would take a pail of hot water to the barn to clean the cows’ udders after we milked them. There were always several jars of jams and jellies on our table. Pa and Granny canned them from wild fruits that grew in abundance in the Arklatex area. Pa liked to scold us for having too many jars open at once; he said we opened them just to hear the Ball jar lids pop. He may have been right.
Nearly everything we ate came from our land. The eggs came from our chickens, the milk and butter from our cows. Bacon and sausage came from the hogs we raised and butchered. We canned vegetables from our large garden, which spread over about eight acres in three different patches. Cucumbers were turned into jars and jars of sweet, sour, bread-and-butter, and dill pickles. Our pantry shelves were lined with canned tomatoes, peppers, beets, and just about anything else my family grew, including pears, peaches, plums, and grapes, as well as the abundant dewberries and blackberries of the area. Cut-up cabbage, green tomatoes, onions, and peppers were mixed together and canned to make what we called chow-chow, a relish that was a delicious accompaniment to just about anything—especially fish.
In addition to our garden, where we also grew such things as English peas, butter and pole beans, lettuce, turnips, mustard greens, onions, radishes, carrots, Irish and sweet potatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelons, my family grew several fields of peas, peanuts, and corn. We started many of the vegetables from seeds that were planted in a hotbed (called a cold frame by some) in early February. My brothers and I gathered cow and horse manure, which, as it decomposed, kept the bed warm and enriched the soil. After the plants sprouted and grew big enough, we transferred them to the garden.
One year Pa, figuring he would get a jump on the market for the early watermelons that brought the highest prices, had my brothers and I collect manure from the cow pens to put into two hundred holes. He directed us to dig the holes two feet square and two feet deep. In early February, Jimmy Frank and Harold laboriously filled washtub after washtub with manure and then transported them on a slide pulled by an old mule to the holes that were dug. After depositing the manure into the holes, we mixed the top of it with soil and planted the watermelon seeds.
To be perfectly honest, Tommy and I didn’t become too interested in the project until Jimmy Frank and Harold told us we should plant marbles—along with the watermelon seeds—in the holes. They promised us we would grow a big crop of marbles. Of course, we were young enough—and thus gullible enough—to believe them. We already had marbles running out our ears from ill-gotten gains at the schoolyard, where we played bull’s-eye, cat’s-eye, and hotbox for “keeps” (whoever shot best and won the others’ marbles got to keep them). We won regularly and often came home with pockets bulging with marbles, which we deposited in a five-gallon bucket just inside the back door. Tommy and I grabbed our bucket and, with high hopes, planted them in the manure just like our older brothers told us to do.
It didn’t take Tommy or me too long to realize we had been duped. We ended up sacrificing ammunition for our slingshots for a bumper crop that never came. There were always two things in my pocket when I was young—marbles and a slingshot. We made our slingshots from forked tree limbs and red real-rubber bands we cut from old inner tubes (the black synthetic inner tubes didn’t have the necessary snap to propel a marble or small rock). We used the slingshots to bring down small birds, but Granny and my grandmothers always admonished us not to shoot the mockingbirds or “redbirds,” as they called cardinals.
Our watermelons came up beautifully that year. The decaying manure heated the beds enough to sprout the seeds early, and the soil’s added richness gave the young watermelon plants a tremendous growth spurt that turned the hillside where they were growing into a couple of acres of lush, verdant green vines. Pa never followed up on selling them, so we wound up giving away what we didn’t eat to kinfolk and friends.
My entire family took part in harvesting fruits and vegetables. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have had enough to eat. From the beginning of May, when the mayhaws and dewberries ripened, until the end of fall, with the gathering of muscadines and pears, my family and I could regularly be found in the area’s swamps, fields, forests, and abandoned home sites. With our buckets and tubs, from the youngest to the oldest, we would be stooped over or stretched upward gathering whatever fruit was in season.
The trick was to get there when the fruit was ripe—and before another family beat you to it!
Pa, who worked on drilling rigs usually located in the wilds, often discovered fruit trees and berry and grape vines as he moved about with the rigs. He also knew the locations of many old home sites with abandoned peach orchards, grapevines, and plum and pear trees. There was no shortage of places to harvest. The trick was to get there when the fruit was ripe—and before another family beat you to it!
I remember one particularly cold, wet spring when my family was wading ankle-deep (in our everyday shoes because we didn’t have rubber boots) to gather mayhaws in cottonmouth-infested waters near Myrtis, Louisiana, in a swampy area off Black Bayou. Clouds of mosquitoes covered our backs, biting through our thin shirts while we stooped to gather the floating fruit we shook from thickly clustered trees. Mayhaw jelly is still my favorite, and even today my wife, Kay, and I gather the bright reddish-orange berries from the swamps around our home each spring. We make plenty of the tart jelly for our needs, usually with enough left over for our children and other family members and friends. Mayhaw jelly has a unique, delicious flavor.
One year when I was young, the wild grapes were so abundant in the old Ruby Florence field that they filled all of our tubs and buckets with rich, purple-red fruit. We could barely fit our harvest into the car, which was already crowded with adults and children. In fact, the trunk was so crammed full of tubs and buckets of fruit piled on top of each other that the lid wouldn’t shut. Several large buckets and pans of grapes were jammed inside the car, on the floorboards, between our legs, and on our laps. The harvest was so great that Granny lit all four burners on the stove and had Pa and Jimmy Frank set an entire number three washtub full of grapes on top of them to render the juice.
As our luck would have it, this was also one of the years when the price of sugar was sky-high (always a consideration in canning as to whether it was worth the cost). After making a smaller amount of jelly than usual, my family simply sealed a number of gallons of surplus grape juice in quart jars without sugar and stored them in the cabinets alongside and beneath the sink—thinking we might make jelly later, after the price of sugar went down. But we eventually found that the stored juice was delicious, so my brothers and I drank a quart or more daily for breakfast and snacks. Before too long, the juice began to ferment. In only a short time, it turned into a very good wine. My parents and older relatives began to drink this, too, but couldn’t finish it before it turned into vinegar. Granny used the vinegar in her canning throughout the rest of the year.
Of course, man can’t survive on fruits and vegetables alone (at least not a real man), so we also raised and butchered our own beef, usually killing two steer calves annually that weighed about four hundred pounds each. The calves were the offspring of our milk cows, which were bred to my aunt Myrtle’s beef-type bull—a runty, mostly Black Angus mix, which still sired nice calves. Pa and my older brothers would kill the calf, gut and skin it, and wrap it in an old bedsheet, which they then put into the trunk of our car. We didn’t have a deep-freezer, so the meat was taken to Vivian, Louisiana, about two miles away, where it was hung to cool and age in a local icehouse. After about fourteen days, Pa brought the sides of beef home and cut them up on the dining table. Then Granny and Pa wrapped the meat in freezer paper and to
ok it to a rental storage locker in town, where it was frozen. Granny periodically retrieved packages of beef when she was in town and transferred them to the small freezing compartment in the refrigerator at home.
Homegrown chickens were another staple at my house when I was a boy. Pa bought two hundred baby chicks by mail order each year at a cost of about five dollars per hundred—one hundred early and another hundred later, so we always had young fryers running around the yard. It was a big day when the baby chicks were brought home from the post office in a ventilated cardboard box. They were immediately moved into a brooder Jimmy Frank built with four-by-eight-foot sheets of tin. The brooder was heated by using an old washtub—with vents on the sides—and a small burner that was fueled by the natural gas well that also heated the stove.
We didn’t wait too long to start eating the chickens—even if it took eight of them to make a meal! We usually kept twenty or so hens every year to lay eggs, and we dined on the older ones from previous years during the winter. Of course we cooked and prepared them the old-fashioned way: wringing their necks, plucking the feathers, and singeing them over a stove burner. Our Sunday meals in the spring and summer typically consisted of fried chicken and homemade ice cream, which was made with the rich cream of our Jersey cows. On the way home from church, we’d pick up a twenty-five-pound block of ice, and my brothers and I would make the ice cream outside. Jimmy Frank or Harold cranked the freezer, while Tommy or I sat on it to keep it steady.
The story of the Robertson family is a pretty good picture of an early American family. We didn’t have much, but we loved each other and found ways to keep each other entertained. We didn’t have cell phones or computers, but somehow we managed to survive. As far as I know, none of my brothers or sisters has ever owned a cell phone, and Jimmy Frank is the only one who owns a computer, because he’s a newspaperman and needs one to write his stories. I’ve never owned a cell phone and don’t plan on ever having one. I’ve never owned a computer, and I’m still trying to figure out what the fuss over social media is all about. I can promise you one thing: you’ll never find me on Twitter or Skype. If anyone needs to talk to me, they know where I live.
GREAT OUTDOORS
Rule No. 2 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy
Don’t Let Your Grandkids Grow Up to Be Nerds
The Boy Scouts might have the motto “Be Prepared,” but where I grew up, you practically went straight from diapers to manhood. You had to be prepared for anything. I learned to hunt and fish shortly after I learned to walk. If you couldn’t shoot and kill something, chances were you weren’t going to eat. If a hurricane had hit my boyhood home and wiped out everything, I would have found a way to survive—even when I was only five years old! I’m trying to teach those same lessons of survival to my grandchildren, because the last thing I want is for them to grow up to be nerds.
Let me tell you one thing: I don’t see the inherent value in the video games that kids are playing today. But that’s all these kids seem to want to do. Kids in America today are overweight and lazy, and it’s their parents’ fault for letting it happen. Kids sit around playing video games and eating junk food all day, and when they’re not doing that, they’re texting on their cell phones. It’s only their fingers that are moving; they’re not getting out and about. Have you ever seen a macho man walking around with a cell phone, mashing it with his fingers and yakking on it all day? That’s too much talking. By the time these kids are young adults, they’re going to have to go to Walmart to buy a personality. Kids need to be out with nature, learning what it takes to survive in this world.
By the time these kids are young adults, they’re going to have to go to Walmart to buy a personality.
When I was a very young boy, much of our food and sustenance came from the land around us. While living in Vivian, Louisiana, immediately following World War II and before we moved into the log cabin where I spent my formative years, Granny often told us, “If we have another depression, we could live off this acre.” The Great Depression was never far from my parents’ thoughts; they suffered through the worst economic depression to ever hit the United States when they were younger.
In those days, living off the land surrounding our house sounded feasible. Even on our limited acreage, we had a milk cow that was pastured on half the land and staked out alongside the road when grass was scarce. We had several fruit trees, which we’d planted, along with a large truck garden (it was called a “truck garden” because the overflow of what we raised in it was put on a truck and taken to town to sell), that provided abundantly from spring to fall. The garden yielded such food as turnips and greens far into the mild Louisiana winters. My great-aunt Willie Mae Irvins, who lived next door to us, kept a flock of chickens, and we purchased eggs and occasional young fryers and roasting hens from her.
As a boy, living off the land influenced my outlook on life probably more than anything else, especially after I discovered an abundance of wild game and fish that was there for the taking in the area where we lived. I always had a conviction that I could survive off the land without being tied to a regular job. As I grew older, that belief influenced many of my decisions.
I always had a conviction that I could survive off the land without being tied to a regular job.
I killed my first duck—actually, two of them—when I was eleven years old. I was hunting on the bank of a small slough when three teal and a pintail flew close enough for me to shoot. I fired three times, bringing down the pintail and one teal. To this day, I can show you the exact spot where I shot those ducks. Remember what I said about being prepared? If I ever go back there, I’ll be sure to take my dog or a boat, or at least some good waders. My first kill taught me a valuable lesson—sometimes shooting the ducks isn’t nearly as hard as retrieving them!
With no retriever and no boat, the only way I could recover the birds was to take off my blue jeans and tattered shirt and wade into the icy water. I returned home with them and proudly announced to my father, “I have struck!” (As you might have noticed, I sometimes speak in dramatic terms if the occasion warrants it.) It turned out the event was momentous: it shaped the rest of my life and absolutely convinced me I could live off the land.
My father always lived by that philosophy and passed it on to my brothers and me. The son of Judge Euan Robertson, longtime Vivian justice of the peace, Pa grew up a farm boy outside of town, with two brothers and four sisters. He gravitated early to a career in the oil industry, which was booming with the fabulous East Texas and Pine Island discoveries, both classified as giant oil fields, practically at his doorstep.
Pa served in the U.S. Navy at San Diego during World War II, achieving the rank of fireman first class. His familiarity with heavy pumps, which he gained in the oil fields, pointed him toward the repair base, where he fixed even bigger pumps used in warships. After returning home from the war, Pa bought a house on an acre of land just outside of Vivian with a federal homeowner’s loan. It was a small A-frame house, with two bedrooms, located close to town and Highway 2. I was born at a clinic in Vivian on April 24, 1946. I was named after Granny’s first cousin Phil Shores, who was killed in World War II, and my great-grandfather Lemuel Alexander Shores (my middle name is Alexander).
I think much of my independent attitude was fostered by the fine example of Aunt Willie Mae next door. She was part of the original Robertson clan that moved to northwest Louisiana from Tennessee in a covered wagon in the late 1800s. (In fact, there’s a street in Nashville—James Robertson Parkway—that is named after one of my early ancestors. He was an explorer and companion of Daniel Boone and cofounded the city of Nashville.) Willie Mae was eleven years old at the time and lived long enough to tell her grandchildren and numerous great-nieces and -nephews about making the trip.
Willie Mae’s husband had been dead for many years before we moved next to her, but he left her with a few acres of land and a little money, which she used to build cabins she then rented out. With that income and more fro
m boarders in two of the rooms in her home, and with a garden, chickens, and a milk cow, she made out pretty well. She often hired my siblings and me to weed her garden, mow her yard, and complete any other chores she could think up. We were paid with a shiny dime (she saved every one she acquired and had a considerable hoard), which just so happened to be the price of admission to the picture show.
Saturday afternoon trips to the double features at the local movie theater were about our only form of entertainment. We didn’t have a TV, so we crowded around a radio near the fireplace to listen to Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. I’ll never forget the opening monologue of Gunsmoke, when the announcer would introduce “the story of the violence that moved west with young America, and the story of a man who moved with it.” Then Marshal Matt Dillon, with his deep, resonant voice, would proclaim, “I’m that man, Matt Dillon, United States marshal, the first man they look for and the last they want to meet.” I used to love hearing those words.
We were paid with a shiny dime, which just so happened to be the price of admission to the picture show.
After a few years of living next door to Aunt Willie Mae, my mother began urging my father to move to a larger place outside of town. Granny grew up in the country and thought it would be easier to raise her family there. There were six kids in our family after my youngest brother, Si, was born, so we needed more space in the house, too. Her biggest concern was there was a busy paved highway that ran in front of our house, and my mama always worried one of her children would wander into traffic, with the dangerous speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour. After one of my brothers was nearly hit by a speeding car, she ordered Pa to find us another place to live.
Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander Page 2