Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander

in his later years. He worked at a particularly well-paying job in Page, Arizona, in the 1970s, where a coal-fired electricity-generating plant was being built.
    Even after we left the log cabin where I grew up and the beautiful woods and swamps surrounding it, I was never far from nature. I always found a way to get back to God’s most beautiful creation. Since I was a little kid, I’ve had this profound connection with and love for deep, dark, unmolested woods. I’ve always had a longing to be in the deep woods or on the water. I want to be on the lakes, streams, and rivers and be surrounded by everything that comes with it—the ducks, birds, fish, and other wildlife. I guess it’s in my DNA, and I just love being out there. Even to this day, it’s where I want to be. I think part of it is that there’s no clutter out there—there are no computers or cell phones (at least not in my duck blind), and constantly updated information isn’t being thrown at you from all directions. You might hear a train in the distance every once in a while or see an airplane in the sky flying to New York or someplace else, but your sense of peace and serenity isn’t disturbed by clutter.

    I’ve always had a longing to be in the deep woods or on the water.

    I have a deep connection with what God created, and what I would love to see more than anything else is a pristine Earth, justlike the one He created. There would be no power lines, skyscrapers, or concrete, but there would still be a big ol’ kitchen for Miss Kay to make her home-cooked meals. Heaven to me is endless cypress swamps and hardwood forests loaded with game and ducks and not a game warden around! Now, that would be a sight!

STRANGE CREATURES
    Rule No. 4 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy
    Don’t Try to Figure Out Women (They’re Strange Creatures)
    I ’ve been on this earth for sixty-six years, and I’ve reached a conclusion and it’s a fact: women are strange creatures. One day I went into the bedroom to go to sleep and then woke up a couple of hours later with my wife, Kay, standing over me.
    “Phil, do you love me?” she asked.
    “Yeah, of course I do,” I said.
    “Well, write it down then,” she said.
    “What?” I asked her as I closed my eyes to go back to sleep.
    “Write it down,” she said.
    I turned over and went back to sleep. I woke up about four A.M . the next morning to go duck-hunting. When I looked at my chair in the living room, I saw a piece of paper with a felt pen sitting right in the middle of it. Then I remembered my conversation with Kay the night before.
    I took the sheet of paper and wrote the following: “Miss Kay: I love you. I always have, and I always will.”
    I told Kay I loved her when she asked me, but she wanted it in writing. You know what Kay did with that piece of paper? She taped it to the headboard of our bed, where it has been for the last few years. I guess she goes to bed every night with the comfort of knowing that I really do love her. Therefore I concluded that women are very strange creatures; there’s simply no other explanation for the way they sometimes act.
    Miss Kay was the perfect woman for me. I was sixteen and she was fifteen when we were married. Nowadays some people might frown on people getting married that young, but I knew that if you married a woman when she was fifteen, she would pluck your ducks. If you waited until she was twenty, she would only pick your pockets. Now, that’s a joke, and a lot of people seem to laugh at it, but there is a certain amount of truth in it. If you can find a nice, pretty country girl who can cook and carries her Bible, now, there’s a woman. She might even be ugly, but if she cooks squirrels and dumplings, then that’s the woman you go after.

    I was sixteen and Kay was fifteen when we were married.

    I counsel young men all the time, and I tell them to find a woman and eat six of her home-cooked meals before signing onthe dotted line. If you’re going to spend the rest of your life with her, you at least have to know what the grub is going to taste like. If her cooking passes the test, then she’s passed the first level. Even more important, she has to carry a Bible and live by it, because that means she’ll stay with you. She also needs to pick your ducks. Some of the young bucks call and ask me, “Hey, what about two out of three?” I tell them two out of three is better than nothing.
    As it says in 1 Peter 3:1–6:
    Wives, in the same way