Chapter 2 
Chapter 2 It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth.
—LAMENTATIONS 3:27
AL: With Dad hiding out in the woods, Mom moved the trailer and us boys to Farmerville, Louisiana, a little town about thirty miles from Junction City. The bar owners had specifically told her to leave the state of Arkansas, so we did, while still remaining fairly close to where we thought Dad was hiding out. From time to time, Mom would slip off to see Dad and bring him supplies and let him know how we were doing. But he never came out of the woods into town, and we kids didn’t see him at all during that time. I am sure my parents communicated in some way, but I was never aware of any interaction between them.
At that time, understandably, my mom grew extremely discouraged. I watched her grow sadder and sadder as her life became more and more difficult. She felt abandoned and alone, and she was under tremendous pressure to support and care for three growing boys. Now that I’m an adult, I can see that she was simply trying to keep our family together and that she desperately wanted to matter to my dad. She reached a point where she no longer wanted to live the life she was dealing with. Mom writes about a particular moment during this season of her life in The Women of Duck Commander:
In the midst of that low place, the darkest place I have ever been emotionally, with thoughts of sleep and rest filling my mind, through my sobs I heard the scurry of little feet headed toward the bathroom door. I could tell all three boys, in their house shoes, were coming to talk to me. Alan spoke first: “Mom, don’t cry. Don’t cry anymore. God will take care of us.” I was silent for a moment. Then I heard Jase ask, “Did she quit crying?” And I could hear Willie doing something he did often, making smacking noises while sucking on two of his fingers.
I spoke to my sons through the door. “I’m okay. I love y’all. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I then got on my knees and prayed, “God, help me. Just help me. I don’t want to leave these kids. I don’t know what to do or where to find You. Just lead me to somebody who can help me.”I
I remember that day vividly. And I remember telling my mother God would take care of us. Though that was a tragic, desperate moment, I can now talk about it lightheartedly and say it was my first sermon. When Mom said she was okay and came out of the bathroom, I knew my “sermon” had gotten a good response. Had I simply known to take up a collection, that moment could have been a sanctioned assembly!
Seriously, though, she now says that moment was her turnaround. That dark place was where she finally started searching for God. Over time God answered her prayers in amazing ways. Nothing remarkable or spectacular happened immediately, but our lives slowly began to change.
Nothing remarkable or spectacular happened immediately, but our lives slowly began to change.
But things didn’t get better right away; they only got worse. Dad eventually came out of the woods and joined us in the trailer in Farmerville. Dad had the skills to survive in the woods. He was great at living off the land. But once he came back to the trailer, he had to get a job, and that was a challenge for him. He finally went to work on an offshore oil platform—one week on and one week off. The job paid well, but it created an inconsistent family life because Dad was gone two weeks of every month. When he was home, he spent his time hunting, fishing, and drinking. He was in a full-blown downward spiral and none of us could do anything about it.
By this time, I was in about the fifth grade but still only eight or nine years old because I’d started school so early, and Jase was in kindergarten. Mom was working for Howard Brothers (Korie’s grandfather’s company) in West Monroe, about forty-five minutes from Farmerville. Every day, Jase and I rode the bus to and from school, and Willie, a toddler, stayed with a lady who ran a small day care.
I remember thinking, Dad is gone all the time. Sometimes he comes home from work, but even when he’s home he’s not there. We have no dad, and our mom doesn’t get home from work until six o’clock every night. I was young, but I perceived the problems in our family accurately. I not only perceived them, I felt responsible for dealing with them.
Some people find this hard to believe, but I really did understand responsibility at eight years old. Mom worked and Dad was gone—either working, hunting, or fishing—so that left me to take care of Jase and Willie when school was out and when Willie was not in day care. Back then, people didn’t worry about leaving children home alone the way they do today.
I had lots of chances to prove I was responsible, so my parents gave me a lot of freedom and trusted me with the younger boys. I fed them, bathed them, and made sure they were safe—including changing Willie’s diapers! When Mom got home from work, I had often completed everything that needed to be done for the boys and all the housework. I cannot explain how or why I knew to behave this way at such a young age; I just did. That was the way life had to work for us at that time, and it did work. I never took much time to play back then because something always needed to be done and because I would never have left my brothers alone. I was their big brother, and I was going to make sure they were taken care of.
While we were living in Farmerville, Dad’s lifestyle finally got so bad that he kicked Mom, my brothers, and me out of the trailer. He accused Mom of sneaking around with other men, which could not have been farther from the truth. She laughs about those accusations now and asks, “When in the world would I have had time to run around? I had a full-time job and three little boys!” In reality, Dad was the one running around, and his allegations against Mom were nothing more than projections of his own guilt. I think Mom understood that, but none of the rest of us did.
We left the trailer, sad and scared, and went to Dad’s brother’s house. He was afraid of Dad, so he only allowed us to stay one night in his home. We soon moved to West Monroe, Louisiana, to be closer to Mom’s job.
Before we left Farmerville, Mom had started going to church and taking us boys with her. She knew she needed spiritual help, so once we were in West Monroe, she quickly turned to White’s Ferry Road Church for assistance. Several people she knew from work, including her boss, Mr. Howard, attended that church, so looking to them for assistance made sense.
The church was amazing. Mom received the help, support, and guidance she needed—spiritually and on a practical level. People from the church even helped us get an apartment and extended generosity to us in many ways. We had nothing but our clothes and a suitcase at that point—no furniture, no dishes, no linens, nothing. The first time we knew Dad was offshore, we snuck back to the trailer in Farmerville to get some things we needed, but generally speaking, we had to leave almost everything behind and did not have much at all.
By that time, about 1975, Mom had decided she did not want Dad to know where we were because she was afraid of him. As months went by, we slowly built a new life without him. Mom had a good job, we were going to a great church, and people from the church were helping to meet our needs. I still took care of Willie and Jase and felt a lot of responsibility, but I was also very happy. Jase and I rode a big pink bus to church each week, not because Mom wouldn’t take us, but because the bus—with its puppets and other activities for children—was so much fun. Even though we basically had nothing and our dad was not with us, life was going well for us.
Then Dad came back.
Dad showed up in the parking lot of Mom’s workplace one afternoon. She was afraid to approach him, not knowing what his condition might be. But when she walked up to his truck, she realized he was crying. “I want my family back,” he told her, “and I am never going to drink again.”
Mom told Dad that he could not stop drinking and change his life all by himself. He finally admitted that he knew he needed God, and she believed he was telling the truth. Mom arranged for him to meet with a preacher that evening, and within a week, Dad had committed to following God and was baptized.
My brothers and I were excited to have our family back together. Dad did stop drinking very soon after he came home. He also began attending church with us and continued to study the Bible and grow in his faith. Even though he had lived a wayward lifestyle for a long time, several people in the church recognized his potential and realized that if he ever got his act together, he would be a powerful influence in God’s Kingdom.
Dad finally admitted that he knew he needed God, and Mom believed he was telling the truth.
A Christian school met in our church, and that’s where I started sixth grade, after Christmas break, even though I was barely ten years old. Who was my homeroom teacher? My dad. Some of the leaders of the school were also part of our church, and they arranged a teaching and coaching job for Dad. I could not have been happier. I was in a good school getting a good education, but even better, I got to spend time with my dad every day.
In 1976, my parents moved to a piece of property on the Ouachita River, where they still live. I was in seventh grade, still riding to school each morning with Dad, and Jase rode with us. That’s when my dad and I really began to build the relationship we still enjoy to this day. I listened to everything he had to say and watched his every move. I can still see his fingers tapping out the beat of his favorite songs on the radio, from Lynyrd Skynyrd to the Eagles.
By then Dad had reached a point where he wanted to share his faith with anyone who would listen, especially high school students. He practiced a lot on me, and that helped me grow and reconnect with the spiritual roots I had developed years earlier in Junction City. Whenever he taught people the Bible, I listened, when possible—I learned a lot from this man whose life was being totally transformed right before my eyes. That time in our lives was a tremendous bonding experience with him for me.
Dad was a great teacher and coach, but those things were not his life’s passion. The only thing that did not change when he committed his life to Christ was his love for hunting and fishing. Prior to the summer of 1977, Dad had done some commercial fishing part-time, as his school schedule allowed, and had been making and selling duck calls. After school was out in 1977, he resigned his teaching and coaching job and dedicated himself full-time to commercial fishing and trying to get his duck call business off the ground. This was the end of my time at the Christian school and the end of spending so much of each school day with Dad, but I knew he would be happy with his new work.
I would have to go to public school the next year, having no idea I would meet a girl named Lisa there. We did not become friends immediately, but I will let her tell that part of the story. For now, I’ll just say that I would have missed the greatest blessings of my life had Dad’s job change not necessitated my move to a new school.
I. Kay, Korie, Missy, Jessica, and Lisa Robertson, The Women of Duck Commander (Nashville, TN: Howard Books, 2014), 99.