The Duck Commander Family (23 page)

After raising four kids, I think discipline has to start when they’re young. A lot of our friends will say, “Oh, he’s out of control,” and their son is ten years old. I’m always thinking, “He’s probably going to be out of control when he’s eighteen. You missed it.” By the time a kid is ten years old, his parents have missed their window of opportunity to really lay down the ground rules. I’m not saying it’s over, I’m just saying the sooner you start teaching your kids what is expected and being consistent with your discipline, the better. Kids respond better when the boundaries are clearly defined. All of our children are old enough now that spankings are pretty much a thing of the past. I know that they will continue to find ways
to test our boundaries, but disrespect is not tolerated, and if I see even an ounce of it, I promise, I can still think of some ways to make them regret it.

Of course, John Luke and Sadie always tell Will and Bella that they have it a lot easier. But I think the two younger kids saw how the two older kids acted, and they learned that’s what was expected of them. If the two older kids were terrors, then the two younger kids would have probably ended up being terrors, too.

Korie:
Willie commands respect from our kids because they know there is always going to be an immediate reaction if they misbehave. You have to discipline out of love, and there are lots of ways you can do that. We discipline them because we love them and we want to help them to grow into happy, healthy adults. Now that John Luke and Sadie are teenagers, they say that we are more relaxed than their friends’ parents. We don’t have to do much discipline anymore because we instilled that respect when they were young. And I have to say, we have really good kids. Of course, our kids aren’t perfect. We’ve been on trips where everything was great until the ride home. Will and Bella will start arguing over something ridiculous, and they turn into typical nine- and ten-year-old kids. They’ll have their struggles and their difficult times, but they know that we love them and will always be there for them, no matter if they’re “a policeman or a jail person.” They’re ours!

Sometimes people ask us if we’re worried how the fame will affect our kids. You know what? We’re all in the same boat. Everybody is trying to raise their kids to be compassionate, loving, and responsible adults. There are some famous people who have kids who have messed up, but there are people working at a mill whose kids have messed up. We’re all doing the best we can to raise our children. It’s not really about fame. It’s about spending time with your children, disciplining them when they need it, praising them when they need it, and letting them know they’re loved.

All right, enough about our awesome kids. I hope you don’t think we are saying we are the perfect parents or have the perfect family. Far from it! We do try to glorify God in the way we treat one another and the way we raise our children, and then we ask God to do the rest. Many of you reading this could certainly teach us a thing or two about marriage and child rearing, but these are just some things that we’ve done in our home, and if they help any of you, then it was worth writing it.

Korie:
You may have been wondering why we named this chapter “Fast Food.” Well, I hate to admit it, but I’ll just go ahead and throw it out there: I’m not the cook that Kay is. Okay, I’m not even half the cook Kay is. That’s why on
Duck Dynasty
you always see me chopping vegetables. It’s a joke around here
that in every scene I’m in with Kay, I’m always chopping vegetables. Willie says I put my apron on to toss the salad. I’m just not a good cook. I’m always rushed and have a hundred other things going on, so I burn the bread, or I’ll start cooking something and realize I don’t have the main ingredient!

Willie’s the cook in our house. He is incredible. He can just throw a bunch of stuff together along with something he caught or brought out of the woods and it turns into a gourmet meal. Am I ever thankful that I married a man who can cook! The problem is, when he is not around, I am helpless. The kids and I have to survive on breakfast for supper. I’m good at pancakes, bacon and eggs, or something easy like tacos, but that’s about the extent of it.

I promise I tried. When we got married, Kay gave me all of her recipes, along with a set of my own black skillets. I cooked for a while, but the more kids I had, the worse I seemed to get. I just couldn’t do it all, and I had to admit it just wasn’t my thing. Willie says he retired me from the kitchen when Will and Bella came along. It doesn’t bother me. I’m good at a lot of things. Cooking just doesn’t happen to be one of them. I’m good at being a mom; Willie’s good at cooking. It works for us.

So, having said all that, I have to tell you that sometimes—well, more often than I care to admit—we just eat fast food. There, I said it. The end of every episode of
Duck Dynasty
shows us all around the dinner table, and that’s real. It’s what we do. We love to get together and enjoy a big meal together
as a family. We do it often, but not every day. Sometimes we just go through the drive-through line and talk about our day in the car on the way to the next sporting event, and then we wait for Daddy to get home from his latest hunting or business trip so he can whip us up one of his gourmet meals!

13

W
HAT, THEN, SHALL WE SAY IN RESPONSE TO THESE THINGS
? I
F
G
OD IS FOR US, WHO CAN BE AGAINST US
?

—R
OMANS
8:31

I
f you’ve watched
Duck Dynasty,
you know all about Kay’s skills in the kitchen, but don’t overlook Phil when it comes to cooking. One of Phil’s specialties has always been good ol’ hamburgers. Of course, they’re not ordinary burgers. There is a very specific way that Phil cooks a burger. Most people put a patty of meat on the grill and just mash the heck out of it with a spatula, squeezing all the juice out of it as they try to cook it as fast as possible. But Phil’s philosophy is to never put a spatula on a burger. Phil’s famous burgers are not cooked on a grill—although he does grill burgers, but that’s a whole ’nother story. His famous burgers are cooked on a griddle or in a frying pan. They just taste better that way. While most people take about a quarter-pound of hamburger and make as big of a patty as they can, Phil prefers smaller, thinner patties. Phil never takes any shortcuts with his cooking, so he applies more pepper than needed, and the cooking
surface is a lot hotter than required. When Phil throws a patty on the griddle, he sears one side and then the other, locking in all the juices that give a burger its flavor. He browns his buns on the griddle and they soak up the grease, which makes them taste even better. Phil’s burgers are some of the best around.

When I got older and had my own place, I started cooking my version of Phil’s burgers. I cook them kind of like Phil does, but I’ve changed some things to make them my own. Phil taught me a long time ago that there’s no use in changing something if it works, so I still cook my burgers on a griddle or in a pan, use thin patties, and toast my buns in grease, just like he does. But to make them different, I’ve at times added jalapeños, bacon, onions, different seasonings, and even blue cheese to the meat. I’ve covered them with all kinds of different cheeses. We started calling my burgers “Willie burgers.” You know your burger is good when people start calling it by name. “Willie burgers” have become kind of famous among our family and friends, and there’s a big debate as to whether my burgers or Phil’s taste better.

Cooking burgers is pretty easy, which is probably why they’re so popular at barbecues or when you’re sitting by the swimming pool on the weekends. Not everyone can cook them well, but anyone can cook them. You fire up a grill or griddle and go to work. I feel like it’s kind of that way in business, too. From day one, Duck Commander wasn’t anything flashy. It started with a pretty common man with a very big dream. With the exception of Phil’s invention of the double-reed duck call, the things we’ve done with Duck Commander
over the years haven’t necessarily been revolutionary. We didn’t bring in a consultant from Harvard Business School to create a business model or strategic plan for us. In fact, very little of what we’ve done has been by the book, but I think we took some chances and risks over the years in our quest to make Duck Commander a success. Some of them worked out; some of them didn’t.