Happy, Happy, Happy (4 page)

By the time these kids are young adults, they’re going to have to go to Walmart to buy a personality.

When I was a very young boy, much of our food and sustenance came from the land around us. While living in Vivian, Louisiana, immediately following World War II and before we moved into the log cabin where I spent my formative years, Granny often told us, “If we have another depression, we could live off this acre.” The Great Depression was never far from my parents’ thoughts; they suffered through the worst economic depression to ever hit the United States when they were younger.

In those days, living off the land surrounding our house sounded feasible. Even on our limited acreage, we had a milk cow that was pastured on half the land and staked out alongside the road when grass was scarce. We had several fruit trees, which we’d
planted, along with a large truck garden (it was called a “truck garden” because the overflow of what we raised in it was put on a truck and taken to town to sell), that provided abundantly from spring to fall. The garden yielded such food as turnips and greens far into the mild Louisiana winters. My great-aunt Willie Mae Irvins, who lived next door to us, kept a flock of chickens, and we purchased eggs and occasional young fryers and roasting hens from her.

As a boy, living off the land influenced my outlook on life probably more than anything else, especially after I discovered an abundance of wild game and fish that was there for the taking in the area where we lived. I always had a conviction that I could survive off the land without being tied to a regular job. As I grew older, that belief influenced many of my decisions.

I always had a conviction that I could survive off the land without being tied to a regular job.

I killed my first duck—actually, two of them—when I was eleven years old. I was hunting on the bank of a small slough when three teal and a pintail flew close enough for me to shoot. I fired three times, bringing down the pintail and one teal. To this day, I can show you the exact spot where I shot those ducks. Remember what I said about being prepared? If I ever go back there, I’ll be sure to
take my dog or a boat, or at least some good waders. My first kill taught me a valuable lesson—sometimes shooting the ducks isn’t nearly as hard as retrieving them!

With no retriever and no boat, the only way I could recover the birds was to take off my blue jeans and tattered shirt and wade into the icy water. I returned home with them and proudly announced to my father, “I have struck!” (As you might have noticed, I sometimes speak in dramatic terms if the occasion warrants it.) It turned out the event was momentous: it shaped the rest of my life and absolutely convinced me I could live off the land.

My father always lived by that philosophy and passed it on to my brothers and me. The son of Judge Euan Robertson, longtime Vivian justice of the peace, Pa grew up a farm boy outside of town, with two brothers and four sisters. He gravitated early to a career in the oil industry, which was booming with the fabulous East Texas and Pine Island discoveries, both classified as giant oil fields, practically at his doorstep.

Pa served in the U.S. 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 federal
homeowner’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 one
she 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 the
dangerous 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 rented the house from her, and she put us in charge of tending to her seven cows and bull, an old mule named Jake, and an equally old (and
stubborn) horse named Dolly. She rented us the house and her four hundred acres of land for the kinfolk price of twenty dollars a month.

Moving to that log home enabled my father to recapture his youth, which in turn shaped the lives of my brothers and me. The old Waters place had about twenty acres of land, only ten of which, around the house, was cleared and tillable land. A creek that flowed year-round traversed the rest of the land, meandering across Aunt Myrtle’s four hundred acres and providing ample water for our stock. Our land, which included a mature growth of oak, hickory, pine, sweet gum, and a variety of other trees, adjoined Aunt Myrtle’s property. On her land were two cleared, cultivatable fields of about thirty acres each. Mature woods covered the rest of the property. A wide pipeline right-of-way cut across all the land, which, because of its maintenance and mowing, grew a lot of grass that provided pasturage for the animals. The right-of-way also accommodated electric and telephone lines. A barbed-wire fence enclosed the entire four hundred and twenty acres and was a constant chore for us to repair and maintain.