Coal Miner's Daughter

by Coal Miner's Daughter (Expanded

  Later Doc helped me with my first two babies, but then I didn’t see him for a long time because we moved to Washington. After I started singing I came back to Paintsville and we got to be friends again. Nowadays whenever I get back to Johnson County I stay at his farm, along the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy. Doc’s second wife is named Gwen, and she likes to play country music herself. So Doc, just for fun, built this beautiful stage in his old airplane hangar. It’s got a nicer dressing room and backstage than half the places we play. Doc holds a music jubilee every Saturday night and we play there once in the spring and once in the fall.

  All my boys pile into Doc’s house, and Gwen feeds us sausages and biscuits and eggs until we can’t stand it. Doc and Doolittle like to drink and talk about that old blind mule until the two of them are about as blind as the mule.

  I’ll tell you, we hate to leave. People sit on haystacks and camp chairs, with swallows flying overhead and under the rafters, puffy clouds floating over the mountains, lightning bugs in the darkness. It’s a real beautiful time. I wish we could play more in the country instead of them smoky, dirty places we go to. We’re country musicians; I don’t think we could play our kind of music if we didn’t come from little places like Butcher Holler.

  Most of us got started on the old-fashioned songs or in church, like me. We used our same school building for church every Sunday. We had different preachers sometimes, maybe a miner from one of the coal camps who had a calling to preach on Sundays. Sometimes a preacher would be waving his hands during the sermon and you’d see he had fingers missing, from some mining accident. Our regular preacher was named Elzie Banks, and I still see him when I go back home. We never had to pass the hat for Elzie—he preached ’cause he loved it. He could make that old building rock when he’d preach—holding one hand over his ear and shaking his other hand at the devil. I wrote about the old building in one of my hymns, “Where I Learned to Pray.”

  They don’t hold school in that building anymore—the kids go down to Van Lear. But whenever I get home, I sneak through an open window and find my old blackboard. Then I take a piece of chalk and write:

  LORETTA LYNN WAS HERE.

  6

  The Pie Social

  I like my loving done country style,

  And this little girl would walk a country mile,

  To find me a good old slow-talking country boy…

  —“You’re Looking at Country,” by Loretta Lynn

  It was at that little school that I met my husband. I was just a little kid from Butcher Holler, didn’t know nothing, and he was a grown man who already fought in World War II and worked in coal mines and traveled across the country.

  That’s why I get mad when people make remarks about my husband. If it wasn’t for Doolittle, there would be no career. I wouldn’t have started singing in the first place, and I wouldn’t have had the inspiration for some of my best songs, in the second place. And I never could have run my business. So in a real sense, Doolittle is responsible for everything we’ve got. Let’s get that straight right away.

  Some people make jokes that he’s called “Doolittle” because they think he doesn’t do much. Actually, he got that nickname when he was just a baby around two years old. Nobody knows why—maybe because he was always a little feller. Today most people know him as “Mooney” because that’s the nickname he picked up in Washington, like I told you, when they found out he used to run moonshine. But back home in Johnson County, everybody calls him “Doolittle,” and I call him “Doo” for short.

  Some people in Nashville like to make fun of Mooney Lynn. They see him wearing his old cowboy hat to town, even when we go out to dinner. Somebody once looked inside his hat and saw he wrote, “Like hell it’s yours.” But that’s Doolittle: he fights for what’s his, and he’s smart.

  In most ways, Doo has been a good husband. He’s worked hard all his life to get things for me and the kids. I don’t want to say he’s never fooled around, or gotten drunk, or whipped me into line a little, because that ain’t the truth. There were plenty of bad moments in our marriage, but I’ve always respected my husband’s common sense. When he’s traveling with me, I know things are going to work more smoothly because Doo is there, supervising things. I feel safe when he’s around.

  There was a time in Boston a few years ago when three kids threw whiskey bottles at our bus, which was brand-new at the time. Jim Webb, who’s our driver, and some of the boys wanted to wipe them out. But Doolittle got up and said, “Boys, get back in the bus. We’ve got to stay overnight in this town tonight, and we don’t want a riot.” It was good he did that, or my boys might have really started something.

  Of course, Doolittle ain’t afraid of a fight himself. One time we were in Holland, in Europe, doing a show, and he walked out to get something to eat. There was this restaurant way down at the end of a long pier. Doo got sandwiches in a sack and was carrying them back. He was wearing his cowboy hat, which he always wears—it wouldn’t be him without it—and there was this German guy walking right behind him saying, “Hey, cowboy.” Maybe they were the only words he knew in English. Now Doo didn’t bother with him for a long time, but the guy kept saying, “Hey, cowboy,” real irritating-like, and brushing up against Doo. Well, Doo told him to stop but he didn’t. Doo had enough of talking, so he transferred that sack to his left hand and came up with one punch right to the guy’s chin. He hit the guy so hard the guy fell backward over the guardrail and down—about thirty feet into the ocean. This scared Doolittle because he was afraid the guy was knocked unconscious and would drown. But the salt water must have woke him up, because when Doo looked over the rail, he saw the guy swimming to shore. He decided to get out of there in a hurry. That night his hand was all swollen up, and when we asked him why, he told us what happened. Now whenever one of us wants to get Doo mad, we come up behind him and say, “Hey, cowboy.” But I wouldn’t advise any stranger doing it!

  Everybody knows who’s in charge when Doolittle is around. Like last summer, when we were playing in Ontelaunee Park, in Pennsylvania, and one of the fans wanted to buy a tape right in the middle of the show. Now, ordinarily we don’t do this. We sell albums and tapes after the show is over but not during the performance. But Ken Riley, the drummer who’s in charge of our sales, sold a tape during the show to a guy who walked up to the edge of the stage. He did it just for a joke, only Doolittle didn’t think it was too funny. After the show he announced, “That won’t happen again.” He didn’t say it real loud—but he made his point. Of course, we aim to do it again, just as soon as he’s off the tour for a while. You can just bet I’ll say to my boys, “Boys, get your tapes ready to sell. Doolittle ain’t with us tonight.” And we’ll sell one—just to be mean.

  But on important matters, we listen to my husband. That’s why it drives me crazy when I hear somebody say, “Gee, Mooney, it must be great to be married to a rich singer so you don’t have to work.” That’s the kind of person who doesn’t know that Doo spends half a year running our ranch and the other half running our road show. He is always working. When someone says something like that, I can see the muscles get tight in Doo’s neck, and I know he’d like to take a punch at that person.

  Doolittle would like to be John Wayne, rough and tough, but really he’s a softie. You should see him with our babies, the twins, and you’d know he’s a good father. It’s just that he doesn’t like to show that part of himself to strangers. I guess that’s the way men are supposed to behave. I don’t know why. Me, I’m affectionate. I like to touch people and tell ’em I love ’em. I guess it isn’t as easy for a man. Maybe that’s why we’ve stayed married so long. They say opposites attract.

  When I’m upset, I let loose with my tongue and everyone knows it. Or, when I’m nervous, which I am a lot of times, you can see me shaking a mile away. But when Doo is nervous, he holds it inside. He gets stomachaches and pains from not knowing how to let his feelings out. But bad or good, Doo is always the life of the party. Sometimes h
e pretends he’s drunk so that everyone will loosen up and have a good time. That embarrasses me a lot, but he don’t care. And when it comes to me, he won’t allow me to embarrass him. He puts me down and I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. We started off with almost a father-daughter relationship, and in some ways we’ve still got one.

  In a lot of ways, it was good for me to marry someone older than me, because I could learn from him. But, in another way, it wasn’t so good because I went directly from Daddy to Doolittle without ever being on my own. Even today, men are telling me what to do. My husband, my lawyer, my accountant, my personal manager. In a sense, I still don’t have complete control over myself. Maybe I never will. But if it wasn’t for Doo, we wouldn’t have what we have today. People ask if we would still be poor. My answer is no. Doo would have made sure that we had a good house and enough to eat, even if he had to work twenty-four hours a day.

  I guess a lot of my fans have heard parts of how me and Doolittle met, but there’s still a lot that I never told before. For example: it’s true that I never met Doolittle until that night at the pie social. But I did see him during the war in his uniform—I remember shouting to my cousin, “Look at that boy! He looks like a little toy soldier.” Doolittle says he saw me before he went into the service—I was only eleven at the time. When he came back from the army, I was getting close to fourteen. And things were different by then.

  Since I was thirteen years old, the teacher let me help arrange the programs for the pie supper. I lined up all the talent, and I sang in the talent show. I was also in the beauty contest and in the cakewalk. I guess I was just about in everything because there weren’t that many kids in the school.

  One of the biggest events was the pie bidding. Whoever bought a girl’s pie got to take her home. Well, I didn’t know how to bake anything and I was sure nobody would buy my pie.

  When it came to the beauty contest, there was only me and four other girls. It was a small school. The way it was judged was that the audience would bid money on the girl they thought was the prettiest. One of the bidders was this boy I thought was a little toy soldier. He looked young because he was only about five feet eight inches tall and weighed about 145 at the most, and he had this small face, like a cute boy. But actually, like I said, he’d already been in the war and everything. Well, he started bidding on me, and even though there was another girl I thought was prettier, I won the beauty contest.

  Then it came to the pie bidding. I sat by my pie I’d somehow managed to bake. The fellow running this contest was the same little boy who helped me win the beauty contest. I knew I couldn’t bake too good, but this old boy started bidding on my pie and this other boy named Flop Murphy started topping him. They were bidding against each other pretty heavy. Old Flop would bid three dollars, and this other boy would bid three and a quarter, and so on, like that. Finally Flop Murphy got to four fifty, and this other boy raps his hammer down real fast and says, “Five dollars and sold!” He bought it himself.

  Well, the contest was over, and he won my pie. Now he had to try a piece of it. He should have known better because I got the salt can confused with the sugar can when I was baking it. Lord knows those cans looked alike. I cut the pie and took a piece for myself. My aunt was standing there and she was gonna try some, too. Well, the boy took a bite and looked like he was gonna start foundering. Then my aunt took a taste and said, “Loretta, you’ve used salt instead of sugar.” That was all the pie we ate for five dollars, which was a heck of a lot of money in those days and in that town, even for a good pie.

  Then it was time for everybody to go home. The way we usually went home at night was to light pieces of pine wood or pine roots and hold them in front of us like a torch so we wouldn’t trip on the dirt path. But this boy, Doolittle, had this jeep he’d brought home from the army. He wanted me to ride in it, but I was scared to. I had ridden in the back of a pickup truck. But the jeep looked like something from Mars! So I said, “No, I ain’t getting into that thing.” He had to walk me up that path, holding one of those pine cones the way everybody did.

  When we got to my house, he said, “Hey, come here, I’m gonna kiss you good night.”

  I was scared to death because I didn’t know how to kiss. I never kissed a boy before. Should my lips be wet or dry? What if we bumped noses? That’s the kind of thing that was going through my head. He kissed me right on the lips, and it was nice. The truth is I fell in love right there. I can’t explain it, but it felt so nice to be kissed by this boy that I fell in love.

  Well, he turned down the holler and said he’d see me soon. I didn’t know it, but as soon as he got below the yard, he bumped his head on a big fence post and bloodied his nose. He forgot his pine torch and he had to crawl on his hands and knees until he got to the schoolhouse. I always thought it was my kiss that knocked him down. But he said it was the fence post.

  Anyway, I saw him leave and I went into the house singing away. Mommy asked me how the social went, so I told her I won the beauty contest and my pie brought five dollars at the bidding. She said, “Well, who bid for your pie?”

  And I said, “Doolittle Lynn.”

  She gave a kind of gasp and said, “Oooh, he’s too old for you; and not only that, he’s got a bad reputation. He’s the wildest thing around here. You can’t go with him.”

  I nodded my head. But meanwhile, all the time I was wondering when he’d come round again.

  7

  Doolittle

  Where I’ve been or where I’m goin’ didn’t take a lot of knowin’

  But I take a lot of pride in what I am…

  —“I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am,” by Merle Haggard

  Mommy didn’t want me to have anything to do with Doolittle Lynn, but actually we had a lot in common. The Webbs and the Lynns had been living around Van Lear for a long time, and our ways were a lot the same. Besides, I was next-to-oldest of eight children and Doo was the oldest of ten, and we’d done our share of helping to raise kids. And both of us were familiar with coal mining.

  Doo’s father was a coal boss for a long time. If you think Doolittle is tough, you should see his old man. He must be over seventy now, but he’s still got that cocky walk about him, like a bantam rooster. He’s got these wild eyes—untamed, you know? And his hair is still red. His name is Oliver, but we call him “Red.” I’ve always felt real close to Red. He helped me write one of my songs called “New Rainbow.”

  Red used to drink now and then, and there was no telling what he’d do. We used to see Red and Angie, that’s Doo’s mother, fussing sometimes. One time Doolittle had to tie Red up so he could come sparking—that’s our way of saying “courting”—at my house without worrying about what Red was up to.

  One night Doo’s brother came running to my house saying that Angie had untied Red, and Red was chasing everybody around the yard. Doo had to rush home and wrestle his daddy to the ground. Even though Red had only about four teeth, he bit Doo until he was bleeding.

  Everybody likes Red, but still, he does do some strange things. Doo says the worst thing his daddy ever did was on a Thanksgiving. Angie fixed up a beautiful turkey dinner with all the fixings and all ten kids were sitting around the table ready to eat. Red had this rule that none of the kids could eat until he himself was served—and one of the kids broke the rule. This made Red so mad that he picked up the table and dumped the whole dinner out the window. Luckily, most of the dinner slid right onto the tablecloth and didn’t get ruined. The kids sneaked the food under the porch and had their Thanksgiving dinner in peace while Red raced around the house.

  There’s only one way to get along with Red—you can’t pick on him. You just let him have a beer or two and don’t nag him. But if he gets rough with you, get rough right back. He respects me and Doolittle, I think, because we’re as mean as he is.

  When we first got married, Red came out to live with us in Washington. Me and Red got along great. He taught me how to play pinochle while I was waiting
for my third baby. I was too far along to pick vegetables, so me and Red would play pinochle all day. About ten minutes before Doo would be getting home, we’d rush around and straighten up the house. Red would sweep all the dirt under the rug, and I’d fix some supper. Then Doo would see all the pinochle scores written on a brown shopping bag and say, “I see you’ve been playing pinochle again.”

  And Red would say, “Just a few games.”

  Red never has been one to stay in one place for long. When Doo was just a boy in Kentucky, they heard rumors that coal was selling for twenty dollars a ton in Washington State. Red took off one day and nobody heard from him for a long time. That was rough on Doo’s mommy. I’ve always loved Angie. Even today, she’ll make me a big angel food cake whenever I visit. And she had her hands full in those days.

  Meanwhile, Doo had to support his family by hoeing corn for fifty cents a day. Sometimes the grown men would help him finish his row so the boss wouldn’t fire him. Even then, Doolittle wasn’t satisfied with one job; he was always working. His aunt sold milk in the coal camp, so Doo delivered the milk on that old blind mule of his. They figured as long as he was hauling milk that way, maybe he could haul moonshine in the same jugs and the federal people wouldn’t know the difference. They would pay him a nickel a gallon. He never actually made moonshine, but he hauled about an ocean of it.

  Finally, Red came back from Washington and said he was prospecting for minerals. They packed up the family in an old 1933 Dodge and put their belongings in a two-wheel trailer they made. Every night, Angie would find a creek and cook dinner. Around St. Louis, the motor bearings tore loose. That meant they had to drive slowly one day, then spend the next day fixing the bearings. They did this all the way to Washington.