Saying Thanks: Past, Present, and Future

Previously published The Brunswick News/Coastal Illustrated Nov. 19, 2009

 

                Volunteering in my daughter’s first grade class, I get to relearn some things I’ve had to toss out of my brain to make room for the more “important” stuff like my social security number and all my online passwords.  Just the other day, I was reminded that a long time ago, way before man created ESPN and Trivial Pursuit, the first Plymouth colonists gathered with their neighboring Indian friends to celebrate an ample harvest that has now become known as Thanksgiving.

                The main man around town, Governor William Bradford proclaimed to all “ye pilgrims, with your wives, and ye little ones do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29^th, the year of the lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock….”

                Trying embossing that place and date on a piece of Crane card stock these days and I can guarantee you won’t be able to afford the 10 pound turkey  or premium liquor.  But if we look on the bright side, we can always say thank goodness for the fruits of technology and the little ole thing called “ye” Evite.  This way we might be able to procure the 47 cups of peanut oil needed to fry the little sucker in the first place, as well as the 5 Brandy Alexanders needed to get through Aunt Shirley’s slide show of Eastern Europe.

                All of this got me thinking; how much have things really changed since that November 400 years ago?

                First, there’s the obvious: when the pilgrims headed up that hill to the meeting place, I’m certain when they arrived there wasn’t a single autumn checked tablecloth from the Martha Stewart Home Collection or a tissue paper turkey accordion in sight.  There was no Scattergories game to cause fighting between family members so vicious that it sends somebody packing for a premature departure.  There weren’t yet the airline tickets to buy that cost as much as college.  No one had the enjoyment of kicked seats and “Are we there, yet?”s for hours on end.  Last, but not least, there wasn’t one single, dirty Pyrex dish to soak and scour.

                We have made positive strides like having Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Ritz Cracker crumbs that we can pour all over our vegetables to our heart’s content.  We can gorge on sweet pecan pies with Tennessee bourbon and chocolate chips while ingesting, like my daughter does, Reddi-Wip straight from the can.  We may have to worry about cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes, but we don’t have to worry about diseases like small pox, polio, or that nasty gangrene.  And not only do we not have to shoot, pluck, and dress our own turkey; we can call the Fourth of May and pick one up the same day.

                There are however, some things that have stayed exactly the same.  Women still do most, if not all of the cooking.  And although we finally have forks, there are plenty of people around our table that still eat with their fingers.  But most importantly, Thanksgiving reminds us, like our predecessors, to focus not on the stuff we don’t have, but on the stuff we do.

                I always say that if you want to see simplicity and goodness, all you have to do is look at the world through the eyes of “ye little ones,” as Governor Bradford liked to call them.  I learned a lot while helping the first grade students write their own Thanksgiving Proclamations.  Here are some of the gems they shared.

Cason, Age 6:

                “I am thankful for my Dad because he takes the time to play with me and build Legos; and my Mom because she gives good hugs and is always nice to me.  I am thankful for my friends because they help me with things I can’t do and are fun to be with.”

 

Mary Ryals, Age 6:

                “I am thankful for my house because if we did not have a house we would have to live on the side of the road.  I am thankful for God because He is my father in Heaven.”

 

Malcolm, Age 7:

“I am thankful for the ocean because it has cool stuff in it.  I am thankful for my brother, Henry, and my sister, Emmie, because they annoy me but keep my life interesting.”

               

Maybe today in our fast paced, recession riddled, panicked world, we can, for a day at least, celebrate like the pilgrims before us the simple things like warmth, good food, health and love.  And as our wise Malcolm, in all the infinite wisdom of his seven years, reminds us: rejoice in family even if they do drive you crazy because, if nothing else, they’ll keep us entertained long after the leftovers (and Brandy Alexanders) are gone.

                Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

A Redneck Review

previously published in Coastal Illustrated on Oct. 31, 2012

 

Words of Wisdom from the Robertson Clan

            I’m tired; tired of fashion conscious vampires, relentless zombies, underage binge drinking Manhattanites, and Nancy Grace.

Pop-culture these days has left me scratching my head, covering my ears, and, for the first time in a decade, going to bed without turning on the TV after chewing on 4 ounces of dark chocolate with a pot of my peppermint tea.

             That was until I met the Robertson’s. For those of you who’ve had no introduction, I will attempt to fill you in. Phil, the Robertson patriarch, a former college quarterback from Monroe, Louisiana, left a coaching job to get back to the swamp and to his roots….making duck calls out of cedar trees and hunting birds in the bayou. With the help of his sons, Willie (CEO), Jase, and Jep, and his brother Si, Phil turned his passion into a thriving, multi-million dollar family business.

Enter the cable channel A&E, the title “Duck Dynasty”, two generations of rednecks, and a steady stream of no nonsense advice, and you’ll witness the deep South has it’s never quite been portrayed: stripped down and naked as a jay bird- no sappy caricatures or overly sugary accented diatribes…just an honest, beard wearin’, boot peddlin’, mud lovin’, squirrel eatin’, and fun stompin’ insider look at a serious money makin’ merry band of family centric country folk.

And I’ll admit it. Fried bullfrog licking, skinned squirrels, beaver pelts, fish gut pullin’, and dynamite explosions aside, oh what I’d do to be one of them.

Week after week for two seasons now, I have turned off, tuned in, and fell in love with this quirky family as they’ve given more priceless advice (served with a hefty side of knee slappin’ humor) than Oprah, the ladies from “The View”, Anderson Cooper, Mr. Clean and Martha combined.

And to think they never travel North of Shreveport.

So here are a few lessons I have learned from “Duck Dynasty”-TV’s most entertaining, lovable, scruffy, sweet tea drinking- from abnormally large Mason jar, I might add- clan:

First up, of course… since it’s the South, food:

As grumpy, ponytailed wearing, Tupperware tea cup toting, ‘Nam veteran, and Phil’s brother Si likes to say, “when the grub runs out. That’s when things get tough around the house.” And no one knows this more than Miss Kay, Phil’s wife, who believes way deep down beneath her apron covered bosoms that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But said man’s stomach has to be mighty tough since all sorts of chopped up, bone-in, and fresh killed critters will be going straight into it.

Not only does she believe squirrel brains make you smarter and that gator balls are even tastier when not in season, she swears that food can keep the young one’s mind off that dreaded hormonally induced idea of “only sex, sex, sex, sex.” She explains this to her 18 year old grandson’s girlfriend in the kitchen over a pot of freshly whisked roux….stirred with what appears to be a shovel straight from the garden.

“Nowadays it’s all about sex. That’s all that’s important. I’m about to bestow a little knowledge on these kids. There’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, special snack night, popcorn night, chip and dip night. That’s what you need to think about. It never hurts to have a good pan of cornbread around, either.”

No wonder her husband Phil always says it doesn’t matter if a woman “may be ugly but if she cooks squirrels and dumplin’s, that’s the women you go after.”

Trust me, I have written all of this down in order to scare the living daylights out of my children. Fear is a rational deterrent and as Phil told his grandson one day in the boat: “better a good day of fishin’ than a lifetime of crabs.”

But Miss Kay is not the only Robertson to know her way around the kitchen, or in Si’s case, around a hot pad on a camouflaged, airbrushed, Duck Commander RV.

“I am the MacGyver of cooking. If you bring me a piece of bread, cabbage and a coconut, mustard greens, pig feet, pinecones- hey, it’s good for the colon-and a woodpecker; I will make you a good chicken pot pie.” That’s great and all but after serving the boys his ‘Nam Surprise (pork & Beans, Spam, and hot sauce), even Si had to admit it “literally, back fired on me” if you know what he means. So after berating the guys about not knowing how to handle their beans and complaining about an intestinal horror show, Si ends up riding shot gun solo with a hermitically sealed helmet on an ATV behind the RV.

He’s also the one who claims to have never been in an auto accident.

“You’ve never even hit a deer,” asks his nephew, Jase.

“That ain’t a wreck. It’s food on the table, Jack.”

Next up in life lessons- how to love, work, and be somewhat civil with your family- because you can’t pick them off, one by one, from a duck blind, anyway…no matter how high you’re up in the sky with a free flowing Keurig and central heating and AC.

            My favorite “character” without a doubt is Phil’s son, Jase, the Duck Commander’s chief duck call expert and second-in-command to his brother Willie, a redneck who ”married a yuppie, lives in the suburbs” and is now scared of flying opossums, rigged-up racing lawn mowers, and manual labor.

            Jase, on the other hand, has never met a rodent he didn’t like. After hearing the “pitter, patter of little feet” at the Duck Commander Warehouse, he takes a hand saw to the ceiling.

            “That’s a U.V.,” he tells his co-workers, all motors running. “An Unidentified Varmint. Is this varmint domesticated? Is this varmint a nuisance? Is this varmint something I can eat for lunch?”

            But he is also the voice of steady reason:

“Having your brother as your boss is a lot like dating your cousin….a little weird.”

“I hate lawn mowers (as well as parallel parking and four-way stops.) Let’s get rid of them all. If you combine the time you waste cutting the grass with the time spent shaving your face, we’d have gotten to Venus….or we could be doin’…. whatever.’

Referring to his brother’s love of Ninja’s:  “Willie doesn’t have the body type to wear a leotard. When he takes off runnin’, he looks like two opossums fighting over a dead squirrel in a toe sack.”

“I’ve got a great filing system. It’s my retrieval system that sucks.”

And my absolute favorite: “When you don’t know what you are doing, it’s best to do it quickly.”

             Yes, words to live by my friends and when you are at a loss for words, never fret, here is a quick Robertson Glossary that may come somewhat close to saying exactly what you mean:

A Terrible Situation: “It’s like hide the puppies bad.”

Things are Looking Up: “Now we’re cooking with peanut oil.”

A Lazy Co-Worker: “He’s like a blister who shows up when the works all gone.”

A Good Time: “Funner than chunckin’ rocks at a sign.”

Too Fancy: “It’s got more sparkles than most Las Vegas showgirls.”

Fighting Words: “Ready to scratch some gravel with him.”

The God’s Honest Truth: “You never insult a man’s beard. You get thunder or lightening, either one.”

            I can’t help it, but I love the Robertson clan. They remind me, in Willie’s own words, that friends and family are like “having a great pit crew. They make you feel like you’ve won even though you lost…and they’re better than a trophy any day.” So, maybe what’s so delicious about this Louisiana Bayou family is they speak the truth straight from their camouflaged hunting vested hearts.

And yes, maybe we take the people we are closest with for granted, but in the end we always come back together…whether on a duck blind, over supper, or at a family yard sale with a bucket of gumbo and half a dozen mounted squirrels on a piece of scrap wood.

            As Phil reminds us, “we don’t need a world full of straight A students...I’m an ole C average man myself. Si, he’s probably a C minus.” But they are all A plus in my book on sound advice and common sense, not every Wednesday at 10 pm, but every single day of the week.

            Bite that bullet, y’all. See you at the beaver dam. Ka-pow.