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

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 federalhomeowner’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 from 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 oneshe 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 thedangerous 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.
    Granny wanted to buy the old Douglas Waters place, a log home that sat on about twenty acres between Vivian and Hosston, Louisiana. It was on the same road that ran in front of our old house, but the Waters home sat several hundred yards back, making it much safer for my siblings and me. But Pa wasn’t interested in buying it, so we instead moved into a rental home in the middle of the Pine Island oil field. It was located ten miles south of Vivian, and we had an oil well right in the middle of our front yard. The oil field ruined our water, which stained our commodes and sinks. The water smelled and tasted bad. Our drinking water came from a cistern made from an old oil field tank that collected water off the roof. It didn’t take Granny and Pa long to realize we had to find somewhere else to live.
    About a year later, we ended up moving into a log home that used to be owned by the Waters family—the log home Granny had wanted to purchase all along, which was where I would spend my formative years and was the house I told you about earlier. My great-aunt Myrtle Gauss bought the house because the place adjoined her four hundred acres of land. We