"What"s your plan?" he asked.
"What"s my plan?" I said to him.
HE WAS SO MAD, I THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO LEAP OFF THE COUCH AND HIT ME.
"What exactly is your plan?" he said. "Where are you going to work? Where are you going to live?"
"Well, I reckon I"ll just buy a trailer and put it on the back property at Phil"s house," I told him.
That threw Johnny over the top. He and Chrys stormed out of Alan and Lisa"s house, and I was convinced there was no way they were going to give us their blessing to get married. I called Korie to tell her how the meeting went.
"It went terrible," I told her. "We were yelling at each other. It was pretty ugly."
Then Korie had to hang up because her parents were calling her phone. She called me back a few minutes later.
Much to my surprise, her parents told her, "Okay, if you"re determined to do this, we"re going to support you."
Johnny didn"t say much to me for the next few months, during the planning of the wedding, and I knew Korie"s parents still didn"t like the idea of her getting married so young. I told Phil that Korie"s parents didn"t want us getting married and asked him what I should do.
"Here"s what I"d do," Phil said, while sitting back in his recliner. "I"d call them up and say, "Y"all missed that. The wedding was last week when we went to the justice of the peace and got married. Y"all missed the whole thing." "
AS SOON AS MY PARENTS DECIDED TO SUPPORT US, THAT WAS IT. THEY WERE COMPLETELY BEHIND US AND WANTED TO MAKE SURE WILLIE AND I WOULD BE HAPPY.
Korie: I had never heard my dad yell like he did that night at Willie before that time, nor have I heard it since, but you know daddies and their daughters. I think Willie understands this a little more after having daughters of his own. Thinking back, it makes me laugh to imagine Willie and my dad in that room squaring off. My daddy has since said he didn"t have a problem with Willie"s marrying me, it just scared him for me to do it at only eighteen. Which was the same age my mom was when they got married, as I kindly pointed out. I had a scholarship to Harding University, which is where both my parents went to school, and that was kind of the plan for my life-to graduate from Harding University and then get married and raise a family. My parents were worried I was going to get married, quit school, and start having babies. But as soon as they decided to support us, that was it. They were completely behind us and wanted to make sure Willie and I would be happy. They never said another word about not wanting me to get married so young. Willie and my father rode together to the church before our wedding, and Daddy told him he would never say another word about it, and he hasn"t.
We had the biggest, most beautiful wedding on January 11, 1992. It was like a winter wonderland, complete with ice sculptures and white trees. There were probably about eight hundred people at our wedding, and it was a big mix of both of our families. Phil wore corduroy pants and a b.u.t.ton-down shirt-he refused to wear a suit or tuxedo-but I didn"t care. It was a wonderful wedding. My parents took us to Hawaii the next summer, which was kind of like our honeymoon because we didn"t have a chance to take one after we got married.
The day after Willie and I were married, we took another big step in our lives-we moved to Searcy, Arkansas, where Willie started cla.s.ses with me at Harding University.
CRAWFISH OMELETS
I love crawfish! I have cooked them every way you can. If you don"t live someplace where you can catch crawfish in the wild, you can usually get them in the freezer section of the grocery store. If you can"t find them there, consider buying them online and having them shipped to you. Crawfish are so delicious, I promise, it will be worth it! 4 large egg whites
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon Louisiana hot sauce
1 tablespoon water
1 tablespoon fresh chives, chopped
1/4 cup cooked crawfish tail meat, chopped
1 tablespoon Phil Robertson"s Cajun Style Seasoning
1 teaspoon sour cream
2 tablespoons b.u.t.ter
1/4 cup ham, chopped
1/3 cup mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese 1. Combine egg whites, eggs, hot sauce, water, and chives in a small bowl and whisk for 2 minutes.
2. Combine crawfish, Cajun Style Seasoning, and sour cream in a small bowl.
3. In a small skillet melt b.u.t.ter; add ham and mushrooms. Saute for 3 minutes.
4. Pour egg mixture into skillet. Let it set slightly and cook for 3 minutes.
5. Flip omelet and add crawfish mix onto half of the omelet and cook for 2 minutes.
6. Top with cheddar and cook long enough to melt cheese.
CHAPTER 8
CHICKEN STRIPS
BY WISDOM A HOUSE IS BUILT, AND THROUGH UNDERSTANDING IT IS ESTABLISHED; THROUGH KNOWLEDGE ITS ROOMS ARE FILLED WITH RARE AND BEAUTIFUL TREASURES.
-PROVERBS 24:34 Korie: Willie and I lived in an apartment at Harding University right after we were married. It was just a little one-bedroom apartment, but we loved it. We had the best time decorating it with all of our wedding gifts. After living in the apartment for a semester, we decided that we were wasting money by paying rent every month. We really thought we should buy a house, so we started to look around. Of course, Willie and I were both still taking cla.s.ses, so we didn"t have the money to buy a house by ourselves. Fortunately, my father agreed to help us with the down payment and cosigned the loan for a house. He helped us get our first house, which really meant a lot to us.
We ended up finding a little starter home in Searcy that was still being built, so we were able to pick out the flooring, carpet, and paint color for the walls. The house was only about nine hundred square feet, but we were thrilled to own our first home. We paid about $47,500 for the house and sold it for $60,000 when we moved back to Monroe, so it ended up being a pretty good investment. We had a few other married friends in college, and they would come to our house on the weekends because we were the only ones who owned a house. Willie would cook for everybody, and it was a lot of fun.
I was a year ahead of Willie in college, and I was able to concentrate on school while he worked and took cla.s.ses. Willie had lots of jobs while we were in college, including working at a bowling alley for a while. If you know Willie, whenever he gets into something, he doesn"t ever just do it halfway. He immediately thinks he"s going to become a professional at it. So for a while, he wanted to be a professional bowler. Then, after college, he took up golf and was convinced for a while he was going to be a professional golfer. After I started playing golf pretty regularly, I paid for a lesson from an instructor. The guy had been a professional golfer and even won the Arkansas Open.
"I"m thinking about being a pro golfer," I told him.
He just looked at me and said, "No."
The guy hadn"t even seen me swing yet and he was already telling me no.
"You haven"t even seen me swing," I told him.
"You ain"t got it," he said.
Eventually, I was able to get my handicap down to four, but that was about as close as I ever got to the PGA Tour. Korie: Willie and I worked together for a little while as telemarketers, and it was the worst job ever. We were in this crowded room with a lot of other people on phones, making cold calls to raise money for leukemia research. At the end of every night, they would show you how much money you had raised. Willie would always raise a ton of money, but I could never get anyone to donate. I was stuck with calling people in New York, while Willie was calling people in Alabama. Nothing against Northerners, but I don"t think they are as nice to telemarketers as people in the South. Either that or Willie was just better at it than I was! I think we had that job for about two weeks. It was so horrible. WILLIE WOULD ALWAYS RAISE A TON OF MONEY, BUT I COULD NEVER GET ANYONE TO DONATE.
Willie also worked as a janitor-he likes to say he was a maintenance supervisor-for a real estate agency, and he went around fixing broken windows, trash disposals, and things like that at the company"s rental properties. Willie also worked at an ice cream plant and had to spend most of the day in the freezer. He hated it. He never has liked to be cold. When I was working at the ice cream plant, Phil came through Arkansas on his way to a speaking engagement. It was the first time Phil had been to Harding University, so he hadn"t even seen our new house. I was really pumped that my dad was coming to town because I had a club basketball game that night, and Phil had never seen me play while I was in high school. I went and asked my supervisor at the ice cream plant if I could have the night off since Phil was coming to town. He told me no. I was like, "Screw it. I quit." I hated that job anyway.
It was the only time Phil ever saw me play basketball, and I scored thirty points in the game. It was worth losing the job over. I had a lot of fun playing in the intramural leagues at Harding University. I was the athletic director of my fraternity, so I was allowed to play on every one of our teams if we didn"t have enough players. I always played on the A team, but I could play on the lower teams, too. Once I scored seventy-four points on the D team because no one else on the team could really play, so I took just about every shot in the game. I kept begging the coach at Harding University to put me on the school"s basketball team. The coach was in his first season, and he was also my badminton teacher. I made a deal with him: If I beat him in a badminton match, he had to put me on the basketball team. I beat him like a drum, but he still didn"t put me on the team. I"m still mad at the guy for not holding up his end of the bargain. Korie: Of course, Willie and I never had any money as married college students. At one point we had to borrow some friends of ours" washer and dryer to do our laundry. To thank them for letting us use their washer and dryer, we took them out to Shoney"s one night for dinner. Willie and I cooked in every night; we rarely went out to dinner because we were on such a tight budget. The waiter brought us our bill that night and it was like forty dollars. I didn"t even know you could spend forty dollars at Shoney"s! Daddy had worked with Willie and me on keeping a budget. He taught us to write down all of our expenses so we could see how we were spending our money. If we ever had to borrow any money from Dad, he always wanted to see a plan for how we were going to pay him back. Daddy really taught us some valuable lessons about money. We budgeted about sixty dollars a week for food. After paying the bill at Shoney"s, we had about twenty dollars left for the entire week!
Whenever Willie and I went to the grocery store to buy food for the week, there was always a big argument at the checkout lane. If we had any money left in our budget, Willie would want to buy baseball cards or a Star Trek book. He has always been a big collector. I wanted to buy a magazine like People or Entertainment Weekly, and we never had enough money to buy both. We"d fight over who was going to get to spend our disposable income, which ended up being about three or four dollars a week. These are some of the things you fight over when you get married at eighteen and nineteen!
When we were newlyweds, our favorite meal was chicken strips and macaroni and cheese. We would buy a big bag of frozen Tyson chicken strips and fry them in a Fry Daddy. When they came out we would season them, then dip them in b.u.t.ter. Willie would make these special sauces for the chicken strips and we"d always have a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese with them. We rotated the chicken strips with chili dogs and, of course, fried bologna sandwiches, and that would be our meals for the week. Sometimes we would even splurge on thick-cut bologna. Willie tried to get me to eat fish sticks, but I"d never eaten them in my life. I just couldn"t stomach eating frozen fish out of a box.