The Brady Bunch, The Brady Bunch, this is how they all became the Brady Bunch A distorted

view of what life was supposed to look like streamed through a rabbit-eared television set. Hopeful eyes watched as a fictional household portrayed a life he found to be nothing but just that--fictional--while crime shows were closer to nonfiction. I always watched the Brady Bunch and I was like look at how great that family is! and I would always ask myself, why can my family not be like this? Why are my parents in this life that we live so crazy and these people on tv have it so good? Jesse Richardson said. Id spend time with my friends and their families and Id be like this is what a good life looks like. His eyes dropped, And then it was always a nightmare to leave their house. Id start to go back to my house, and it was gloom and doom as I was going home. The Brady Bunch was far from reality in a house where The Dixieland Mafia operated. They ran body shops as a cover for organized crime, robbing fur factories and stealing cargo trucks full of stuff. The tie he had to the Mafia of Illinois wasnt a distant relationship, it was blood--and the tie was severed in the same blood that held him to it. At only two years old, his father, a member, was murdered for being on the wrong side of town, in the wrong persons business. Jesse Richardson wasnt a bad guy though. He was a guy born into a family of organized crime, where guns and drugs layed around as if they were decoration, and voices were hushed outside of home, but he had dreams to get out. My dad was I guess what you would consider a not-sosavory character. Growing up, thats kind of how my dad made a living. And without hesitation he concluded what he knew of his dad. Long story short, he ended up being murdered for that. Inside the house, screaming and violence were typical. Outside, Richardson didnt speak of what happened inside, but he knew something wasnt right when talk of a sleepover came about.

Following suit of his friends, he asked to have a sleepover, but the inquiry was immediately shot down. A fearful mother couldnt have little boys running around a house full of guns and drugs, but equally fear-inducing was the silence he was instructed to keep when he stayed with a friend. He was quick to explain the convoluted dynamic of home life. I learned at a really young age things that kids shouldnt learn...street sense...it was teaching you how to lie, without saying it was a lie, He elaborated, Id get a spanking for lying to my mom, but I was encouraged to go lie about something else. It was mixed messages. My mom was the most fair or diplomatic, my step dad was the more abusive, slap you out of nowhere. It was always walking on eggshells with that guy. At 16, Richardsons homelife plummeted to a new low, when his mother lost her job and step father gambled every bit of their money away, resulting in eviction from their small, rental house. His mother got a job offer in North Carolina, but he refused to be uprooted. A friends well-off family agreed to take him in for the second half of high school, where he learned more in the home than in school. Seeing a family talk rather than scream and communicate, rather than hit, was foreign territory when fighting was what he knew. There, Richardson finally got the first taste of a Brady Bunch life. I fought all the time, i was in jail a few times... I was just violent. The way that I would solve any kind of altercation or arguments was fighting to fix it. When I moved in with his family, I saw how they kind of talked through situations and was like huh this is different, this is how real people do it. Success Richardson dreamed big, but his reality became even bigger, and so did he. At 6 feet tall and roughly 240 pounds, athleticism was an outlet, and the wrestling team was a refuge. The mat

became a communion for a team of kids from broken homes, and his coach made it that way, reiterating the value of their wrestling family and telling them let your heart set your goals, dont let your mind set limitations. Although wrestling was a way into his mind, baseball was a way out of his home. I loved wrestling but unfortunately, he corrects himself, or fortunately, I was just better at baseball. He received half tuition to Northern Illinois University, and graduated with an english degree. From there, he was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers where he imagined he would remain, but reality had other plans. When I got there, it was the fulfillment of everything I had worked for. I kind of felt like I am a success now; I am a professional baseball player. A Whole New Ball Game His success in athletics was cut short by a knee injury, which he acquired going into his second season. What he didnt know was that he was only in the beginning stages of his true success. Through his injury, he found Christianity in a fellow teammate who was simultaneously suffering the same injury. There was a gradual shift in his life, his relationship with the former teammate, and his faith. What started out as some guy pestering him in the dugout about church became the blueprint for the life Richardson dreamt of as a kid. Desperate for a revival in his baseball career, and newly converted to God, he moved in with his brother who was also a Christian convert. He saw new light, trying out for teams local to Alabama, but it soon faded to blackness. The only teams willing to draft him were out of Korea and Germany, but that didnt appeal to him; the States were home. Needing income and wielding a college degree, he found work at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, where he remains, having been promoted as a Senior Manager of Enterprise Holdings. There, he

also found his wife, and a new turn in his life toward the right direction. A defining moment was in the works. If theres one moment Id say, besides becoming a Christian, where I knew I was on the right track, it was getting married. I was selfish growing up--I had to be--and that was a sign of growing up because I had to think of someone more than myself, he admitted. Once I got married, it was a whole new ball game; a lot more on the line. The next step in the process was kids. The idea was daunting to someone who had grown up with no dad, and an incessantly violent step dad, but those experiences werent going to waste. They paved him a path of what not to do. Richardson attended a Bible study, where he was told that part of a healing journey was unpacking wounds once lashed into his mind, and in his case, body. To unload the baggage, he went through an exercise with forgiveness at its focus, whether or not the protagonist in his life accepted responsibility. I called him [his step dad] up and said hey I just wanna let you know that I forgive you. He said for what? I said well ya know, for my childhood and he said what do you mean? I said well ya know for the way things went growing up. And he said well what do you mean? I said okay, for the times you used to slap me, kick me, hit me. For those times, you remember those specifics? I was trying to let you off easy, he confronted him. From his mistakes, I learned value on what things not to do. The life he wanted for his own growing family was the polar opposite of the life he experienced as a child. His goal was for his own children to feel a comfort he never felt as a child: security. He emphasized a desire for his kids to always feel safe in his home, and to look up to him. His litmus test as a father was still, none other than the the Brady Bunch. Sons of a Gun

Firearms made their way back into Richardsons life, but in a positive light. Hunting deer had always been a passion of his; however, when he was introduced to waterfowl, a new spark ignited. Initially unwilling to go duck hunting, he tried, only to fall in love with the sport. His interest became so involved that he started his own business, Kingdom Calls, in the name of his Lord. From watching videos on Youtube and researching the craft on the internet, he learned to make his own duck calls, and customproduces them for a variety of customers and causes. I went to the wood store and I got a wood lathe and got some tools and got some wood and started messing around, His eyes lit up, I made one that sounded like a duck and I was like oh my gosh! I cant believe I did that all by myself! The craft was a segue into a deeper, outdoors relationship with his two sons, six and seven. The hobby wasnt about the profit, but rather the exuberance he felt in the workshop, amongst his young sons. My boys come down and they play in all the wood chips that I make. They scoop em into piles and they play with their tractors like they got bulldozers and theyre like make more wood daddy! so i gotta keep making duck calls so they can keep playing. They are learning about guns as he did at a young age, but in an entirely different respect. Firearms are a big part of life for a man who spends his spare time making duck calls. The difference in the past and present was the context. The association he had with guns as a child was fear. They were there in the event that someone came through the door, after all, drugs were part of the business. His own business was built with a play on words, holding dual meaning. One, a quote that holds true to the dramatic shift in his life, which is boasted in his marketing: When the King calls, will you be ready? And two, a reference to the product, a duck call.

Kingdom Calls is, to Richardson, a way to glorify God and fulfill his simple desire to make something. Kingdom calls is his venue, his invitation, an extended hand that allows people to talk about something they would typically be averse to, and its message is clearer than the quack of the call. It opens the door to talk about something that people would consider this is personal, this is intimate, I dont talk about this. Hopefully through that, if I could just reach one person, it would all be worth it. Richardson Bunch A once impossible dream became a reality from the ashes, when no one expected it to. A door was closed behind him, not to the experiences, but to the weight they carried. I dont carry any of the luggage from my childhood. I feel like its over and done with. You make of it what you will. Its over and done, that chapters been written, he said absently. To me theyre just distant memories and Ive got a whole new life in front of me. There was a chain of events that occurred that helped me move on as I became older and realized that I wanted to live my life more like this, more Brady Bunch-like.