I’d only change one thing about monster trucks: I’d add a cup holder for my cup of unsweet tea!
Do you remember that movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman called The Bucket List? It was about two terminally ill men who shared a hospital room. One of them (Freeman) was a retired auto mechanic, while the other (Nicholson) was the billionaire owner of the hospital. They didn’t have private rooms because Nicholson’s character had instituted a cost-saving policy of no single rooms with no exceptions—even for him.
Even though the men were completely different in every way, they eventually figured out they shared one common characteristic—a lot of regret about how they had lived their lives. The auto mechanic started compiling a bucket list, which was a catalog of things he wanted to do before he died. He wanted to go skydiving, drive a race car, visit the Pyramids, see the Great Wall of China, and go on a safari in Africa. He was bitter that he didn’t have the time or money to do any of them. Freeman’s circumstances inspired the hospital owner, and he decided that they would do the things together before they died.
Hey, I was about to turn sixty years old when The Bucket List was released in 2007. After seeing the movie, Christine told me that I should come up with a bucket list of my own. “A bucket list?” I asked her. “Are you ready for me to kick the bucket?”
“No,” she said. “Everybody should have a bucket list. It’s everything you want to do before you die.”
Well, I spent the next few days pondering what things should be on my bucket list. Hey, I know I have been very blessed. I have already experienced so much in my life that I never thought I would get a chance to do. The Good Lord has blessed my family and me with so many opportunities. For a poor country boy from Louisiana, I have already experienced so much. Among the things I’ve already done:
• I drove a monster truck.
• I wrote a New York Times No. 1 bestseller.
• I recorded a country-and-western album.
• I microwaved Ivory soap.
• I saw a black panther in the wild.
• I owned a racehorse.
• I ate bacon and eggs for dinner.
• I sang at the Grand Ole Opry.
• I caught a world-record crappie.
• I wore a Scottish kilt.
• I made a bomb out of Mentos and Coca-Cola.
• I appeared as an extra in a Hollywood movie.
• I airboated across an alligator-infested swamp.
• I went bungee-jumping in Panama City Beach, Florida.
• I ran with scissors.
I think everybody should have a bucket list. For whatever reason, when you write your list on paper, it seems to motivate you to actually do the things you’ve listed. Look, the only people who fear death are those who don’t have a relationship with the Lord and those who haven’t truly lived yet. We can’t be afraid to try new things and take chances. Hey, try a peanut butter and Tabasco sandwich every once in a while. You might be surprised by how good it tastes.
Make a list of the goals you want to achieve, the things you want to accomplish, dreams you want to fulfill, and the experiences you want to have before the Almighty decides your time on earth is up. Look at what you’re doing with your life on a day-to-day basis and decide if life is passing you by. What have you done today? What are you doing tomorrow? What are you going to do next week? Do the things you’re doing really mean much to you if you die next month?
Hey, don’t get me wrong. Your life shouldn’t be a race against time. Take time to stop and smell the roses and appreciate the people around you. Loving God, family, and friends is what’s most important. But you should decide the things you want to do to live life to the fullest and what you want to achieve while you’re on earth.
I had no idea there was still so much I wanted to do. Over the course of several days, I came up with a list of three hundred and thirteen things I want to do before I die. And then I started to whittle it down. Hey, there are still plenty of things I want to accomplish before I’m six feet under, including:
• Visit Stonehenge
• Learn to speak Swahili
• Wrestle on Monday Night Raw
• Throw tomatoes during La Tomatina
• Work as a Sherpa at Mount Kilimanjaro
• Fly in a hot-air balloon
• Compete in a triathlon
• Run with the bulls at Pamplona
• Be a member of the Jeopardy! studio audience
• Fly with the Blue Angels
• Make a hole-in-one in golf
• Create my own line of specialty pizzas called Uncle Si’s Pizza Pies
• Win the World Series of Poker and have a poker tournament dedicated to me. I even want to serve as the tourney’s TV commentator.
• Crowd-surf at an Eminem concert
• Sleep on a trampoline
• Go scuba diving and search for sunken treasure
• Solve Rubik’s Cube in world record time
• Ride 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
• Yell “Are you not entertained?” at the Roman Colosseum
Fortunately, I have already been able to do one of the things at the top of my list. Hey, driving a monster truck was El Numero Uno, Jack! There are several things I love about America: Uncle Sam, the Fourth of July, backyard barbecues, sweet tea, apple pie, fireworks, and monster trucks. Now, some of you might argue that monster trucks don’t exactly belong on that list. But hey, it’s my list.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why monster trucks get such a bad rap from some people. Have you ever attended a monster truck event? If you’ve been to one, you know that it just might be the most exciting event in American sports. Hey, you can have the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, and World Series. I’ll take Monster Jam any day of the week.
Where else can you find cars named the Big Kahuna, Bounty Hunter, El Toro Loco, Grave Digger, Ice Cream Man, Monster Mutt Rottweiler, Son-uva Digger, and Zombie Hunter flying thirty feet into the air and crushing old cars, vans, buses, motor homes, airplanes, and mobile homes? If that ain’t America, I don’t know what is. That’s a fact, Jack!
Hey, the only thing I know that’s more exciting than monster trucks is watching my nephew Jase trying to do Pilates! Let ’er rip, tater chip. Every time I’ve been to a monster truck event, I was on the edge of my seat for a couple of hours. In fact, the only thing that gets me more excited than monster trucks is walking into a new Bass Pro Shop.
I have always been fascinated by how the men and women behind the wheel of monster trucks can keep them from flipping over. I mean, it defies gravity! The trucks are about twelve feet tall and twelve feet wide. The trucks weigh a minimum of ten thousand pounds and have sixty-six-inch tires. How’s that for being jacked up, Jack? Keeping that thing balanced on four wheels is like my nephew Willie trying to stay on his feet when he gets up from the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day. No matter how hard Willie tries, he’s falling down like a rodeo clown!
Hey, driving monster trucks is a dangerous sport. The drivers are required to wear fire suits, safety harnesses, and helmets, as well as head and neck restraints. There are three “kill” switches to cut off the truck’s engine and electricity if anything goes wrong. Believe me, when there’s about 1,500 horsepower running on methanol under the hood, there’s plenty that can go wrong.
I have always wanted to drive a monster truck. In fact, it was the main thing I wanted to do before the Good Lord decided it was my time to go. Thankfully, my dream came true in March 2014. I was sitting in my house in West Monroe, when the phone rang. Ryan Rice, who owns a monster truck named Incinerator, was on the other end.
I’d only change one thing about monster trucks: I’d add a cup holder for my cup of unsweet tea!
“Hey, I’m down here at the Monroe Civic Center,” Ryan said. “We’re getting ready to do a monster truck show.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” I asked him.
“Do you want to drive one of these trucks?” he asked me.
Before Ryan could even hang up the phone, I was in my truck and driving to the arena. I met Ryan and his wife, Kari, and they introduced me to their crew chief. He spent an hour with me, showing me how to start the truck, kill the engine, and turn the wheel. Hey, I needed a ladder to climb into Incinerator. That’s how big it is. I also didn’t know monster-truck drivers sit in the middle of the cab so they can see out both sides. Talk about being in the captain’s chair!
Ryan told me the plan was for me to kick off the show by driving Incinerator out to the track—and no further. I was only supposed to drive from one end of the arena to the other, past the stack of cars and trucks they were getting ready to crush, and stop and cut off the engine. Then I was supposed to climb out of the truck and wave to the crowd. Hey, simple enough.
It was pretty clear to me that Ryan didn’t want a rookie driver like me wrecking his expensive truck. Hey, I couldn’t blame him. It costs a lot of money to build a monster truck. The fiberglass body and chassis alone cost about $60,000. The custom-built, supercharged, big-block V8 engine costs another $50,000, and monster trucks go through about five of those engines every year. It isn’t a cheap sport and it’s not child’s play, that’s for sure. I promised Ryan I would follow his instructions.
Well, you know how I am about following directions. While Ryan wanted me to do nothing more than to go for a Sunday drive, his crew chief had other ideas.
“Hey, what did the boss man tell you to do?” the crew chief asked me.
“He told me to drive by the line of old cars, climb out, take my helmet off, and wave to the fans,” I told him.
“Hey, you don’t need to do that,” the crew chief said. “You need to jump something.”
“Okay,” I told him. “Tell me how to jump something.”
The crew chief explained to me that I had to be sure I made a wide turn and that I lined up the truck’s tires with the dirt ramp I was going to jump. Once I felt the tires go up the ramp, it was time to put the pedal to the metal. Then I was fixing to go airborne. He told me the most critical thing was to take my foot off the gas once the truck was in the air. When the truck hit the ground, I was supposed to turn the steering wheel and hit the gas again.
“This truck does awesome doughnuts,” he said.
Well, I started the truck and pulled out onto the track. I gave a thumbs-up to Ryan and my buddy Phillip McMillan, whom Willie sent to the arena to make sure I didn’t do anything crazy. Once I reached the other end of the arena, I turned the truck around and headed for a dirt ramp—in a hurry! I wish you could have seen the look on Phillip’s face. He looked like a deer in headlights. He knew we were fixing to have a hootenanny like he hadn’t seen in his lifetime!
When Incinerator started climbing the dirt ramp, I floored the gas pedal. Of course, I remembered to take my foot off the gas once the truck was airborne. Unfortunately, the laws of physics wouldn’t allow me to do it. When Incinerator was in the air, I was looking straight up at the ceiling of the Civic Center. When the truck started its descent, I was looking straight down at the dirt track. The only thing on my mind was to take my foot off the gas pedal, but I couldn’t do it because all of my weight was on it!
Fortunately, Ryan had a remote kill switch for the engine. When he noticed I was in trouble, he cut off the truck’s power. After a somewhat rocky landing, I climbed out of the truck, took off my helmet, and waved to the crowd. The place went nuts when the fans realized I was the one driving the truck. But when I reached Ryan and Phillip, they weren’t smiling at all.
“What are you do doing?” Ryan asked me. “Are you nuts? Are you crazy? What were you thinking?”
“Hey, it had fifteen hundred horsepower,” I said. “I had to see what it could do.”
We all laughed about it. I thanked Ryan for letting me drive his truck, and he thanked me for putting on a good show for the fans.
“Hey, Robertson,” he told me. “When Duck Dynasty goes south, you’ve got a job driving my truck. That was the best stunt of the night.”
I’m not going to lie: driving a monster truck was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Have you ever tried to keep a cup of tea from spilling while you’re driving one of those monsters? Those trucks need cupholders, Jack!
Hey, I have been enamored with fast cars and have been sort of a gearhead since I was a little kid. I have always had a need for speed. There’s nothing like the smell of burnt rubber on asphalt. It’s kind of like the smell of napalm in the morning. If I could bottle that smell, I’d sell it as a fragrance. What can I say? I love fast cars, Jack!
Now, you might know that my family never had much in terms of material possessions when I was a kid. In fact, I didn’t even own a car until after I joined the army. The first couple of cars I owned weren’t very fast. I can remember going to an auto parts store to get a gas cap for my Plymouth. “Hey, I’d like a gas cap for my Plymouth,” I told the man behind the counter. He looked at me for a couple of minutes and said, “Sounds like a fair trade.”
When I was in high school, a buddy of mine had a 1966 Pontiac GTO. That car was beautiful, and boy, was it fast. It had a circular speedometer that went from zero to 120 miles per hour. One day after football practice, my buddy offered to give me a ride home. It was about a five-mile walk back to my house, so I accepted his offer.
When we reached the winding country road that went to my house, my buddy said, “Hey, let me show you what this thing will do.” In an instant, we were going 100 miles per hour down the highway. I looked at the speedometer. The arrow reached 120 miles per hour and then it was back at zero. We must have been going 130 miles per hour! I don’t know what was under the hood of his GTO, but it had serious firepower.
All of the sudden, my buddy slowed down his car. “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. “My right front tire is bald.”
“Hey,” I told him, “shut it down.”
My friend pulled his car over to the side of the highway. I climbed out. “I’ll walk the rest of the way,” I said. What a knucklehead.
Riding in a NASCAR Sprint Cup stock car was also very high on my bucket list. It was right behind driving a monster truck. I was able to cross that achievement off my list in 2014, when Duck Commander became the title sponsor of the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. Justin Martin and I rode in the pace car with Sprint Cup driver Clint Bowyer at the start of the race. I was sitting in the passenger’s seat, and Martin was sitting in the backseat.
Once we really started going, I looked out my window and saw about two inches between our car and the wall! Talk about cutting it close! Clint could tell I was getting a little nervous. “I can’t go any faster,” he said. “It will blow the lights off the top of the car. They don’t like that.” I looked at the speedometer. We were going 140 miles per hour! I served as grand marshal of the race and got to deliver the most famous words in auto racing: “Gentlemen, start your engines!”
I’ll tell you one thing: Clint and the other Sprint Cup drivers were lucky I wasn’t in the field that day. I would have put them in the wall or in the infield. After my spin in Incinerator, I am the demolition king.
Hey, I’ve been able to do a lot of things because of Duck Dynasty. I’ve been able to visit a lot of places that I wouldn’t have gone to and meet a lot of people that I wouldn’t have met. I count my blessings every day.
Not everything on your bucket list needs to cost money. The most important items on your list might include reconnecting with old friends, learning to play chess, telling your honey every day that you love him or her, giving a surprise to someone special, or performing a kind deed for someone without expecting something in return.
Hey, use your bucket list to make a difference in someone else’s life. Volunteer for Habitat Humanity or another ministry. Mentor an at-risk child. Help feed and clothe the needy. Read the Bible every day or make a religious pilgrimage. Become more involved in your church. Make sure you’re spending enough time with your spouse and children. Basically, try to become a better person.
The thing I really liked about The Bucket List movie is that it was a story about redemption. While the two men were traveling around the world on a private jet, they realized how much their lives were changed by the relationship that developed between them along the journey. Hey, folks, the bottom line is love. We are redeemed by our love for God and each other. In the end, seeing the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids wasn’t what was important. It was the fact that the two guys became great friends and experienced their adventures together.
Hey, believe me, time does fly by when you get older. The days, weeks, months, and years seem so much shorter. In Psalm 39: 4–5, David asked God to remind him how brief his time would be on earth: “Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure.”
Our time on earth is short, especially in the grand scheme of eternity. Put together a bucket list. Decide what’s truly important to you, what you want to accomplish, what changes you want to make in your life, and what you can do to help others. Quit putting off things you want to achieve, and don’t be afraid to take chances. Remember that through Jesus Christ we have the power to tackle anything. As it says in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Get your relationship with the Almighty in order, and love your family and friends like you’ve never loved them before. Live your life for God. Ask Him what He wants you to do and not what you want to do. Do what Tim McGraw says to do in his “Live Like You Were Dying” song: love deeper, speak sweeter, and give forgiveness you’ve been denying. Hey, live like you were dying. Before you and I know it, there won’t be time left to do it.