I went back to work and things kept getting better for us. Doo opened his rodeo and ran it on the ranch. When I was around, I’d be an attraction in the rodeo.
I never had ridden a horse until we got out to Washington, though I rode a mule in Kentucky. When Doo started the rodeo, I wasn’t too crazy about the whole deal. One time Doo made me get up on the back of a horse and hold on to the saddle. But the horse reared, knocked me off, and tramped on me. I had to lie around in bed for a few days while the rodeo was going on at our farm. When the fans heard I was in bed, they trooped right into my room and started taking pictures. I was surprised some of ’em didn’t ask me to show where I got hurt.
After we were on that ranch for a year or two, Doo wanted a working ranch as a good investment for our money. We talked about maybe moving back to Washington. We were never really part of Nashville’s social scene like Minnie Pearl, the late Tex Ritter, and Roy Acuff, with big homes close to town and memberships in clubs and stuff. We were still just country people, and forty-five acres wasn’t enough land for us.
One day we were riding down in Humphreys County, about sixty-five miles southwest of Nashville. We were looking at another place but we got lost on this little back road. All of a sudden, I saw this huge old house built on a hill overlooking a tiny town. It had these huge white columns in front, and to me it looked like the house Tara in the movie Gone with the Wind. I never pictured myself as Scarlett O’Hara, not hardly, but I could picture myself in that house. We were just parked down on the road, a hundred yards below this home, but I got all excited, jumping up and down on the front seat and telling Doo, “That’s what I want! That’s what I want!”
Doo said, “Well, hell’s fire, Loretta, let’s see if it’s for sale before we go buying it.”
Doo found out nobody had been living in it for the past twenty years. It belonged to the Anderson family, who owned the red mill across the creek, but the house was falling apart since the Andersons had moved away. They actually owned the whole town—Hurricane Mills—a company town, where the workers got paid in scrip, just like the old coal towns. Anyway, the new owners were looking to sell it—the whole package of 1,450 acres, some cattle and equipment, and the house—for $220,000. That was a lot more expensive than we’d figured on. We’d just signed a lifetime contract with Decca, and we tried to use that to get us a loan. Doo put down $10,000 of earnest money, and just four days before the deal was up, one bank accepted our contract and gave us the loan.
I was so excited. I took a tour of the place. It had three floors with winding staircases, front and back, and all kinds of extra buildings around it. There were high ceilings and a huge kitchen area, and of course, the old red mill, the post office, and the general store with a filling station across the creek belonged to us. I started making plans to decorate the house, and I went back on the road again, not knowing anything about the condition of the house. That I left up to Doo.
He never told me until years later, but that house was in a terrible state. We didn’t really inspect it until we owned it, but when I went on the road, Doo started checking it out. He told me one day he crawled under the house and found it was almost completely eaten by rats and termites. The roof was bad. Doo once told a friend of ours, “I hate to admit it, but I laid under there for an hour, big tears in my eyes. I had a book of matches in my hand and I thought, ‘Boy, the best thing I could do would be to set this old house on fire and build a new one.’ But then I thought how much it meant to Loretta, how hard she worked on the road. So I thought, ‘I’ll just fix this son-of-a-gun up, even if it takes ten years and busts every bone in my body.’ I put many a long day in that house. I guess if I’d ever burned down that house, I’d have never forgiven myself. Loretta has given so much of herself that I’m glad I fixed this place up.”
That was our dream house. Doo used to drive out and work on the house while I was traveling with the Wilburns. Finally we moved in, early in 1967. Then we began discovering things.
First, somebody told us there used to be a slave pit on that land. That made me feel bad because, coming from the mountains, I never liked the idea of blacks being used for slaves. Second, somebody told us there was a Civil War battle at Fort Donelson, not too far away, and that there were nineteen Rebel soldiers killed and buried right on the property. We’ve since found Civil War bullets and little cannonballs. I’m real superstitious anyway, and I never liked the thought of them poor fellows lying under the ground.
It wasn’t but a few years later that Ernest, my second son, woke up in the middle of the night and saw the ghost of a Rebel soldier standing at the foot of the bed. Ernest said he got so scared he just closed his eyes and didn’t look for a long time. When he opened his eyes, the soldier was gone.
That was enough for me. I made up my mind never to spend a minute alone in that house. Even today, I insist on Doo or Gloria being there whenever I’m home. It got worse a few years ago, when I got interested in holding séances to try to speak to people who’d died. We were holding one in the house one time, and we got the table to move clear across the room. Another time it would move a little to give answers to questions. We were trying to raise up a spirit and the table spelled out that we were reaching a man named Anderson. We tried to talk to him, but he got mad and started shaking the table. If you have ever sat in a dark room and watched a table jump right off the floor and then fall down, breaking its legs, then you know how scared we were. The next day I learned that the original owner of the house, James Anderson, was buried right near the house. We never tried talking to him again.
Doolittle never let any of that stuff worry him. He bought another thousand acres—the timber rights had already been sold to a big corporation that was messing up the land. He was busy setting up the thing as a working ranch named the Double L. He set out cornfields and cattle pastures for three hundred head, fixed up the soil, and patched fences. It was a dream come true. He’s put in around $150,000 more, but we’ve been offered a near million dollars for the property, so it was a good investment. Now we’ve sunk more money into the dude ranch we opened in 1975. It has space for around 180 trailers with a five-day minimum stay, including a Saturday tour of Nashville. We’ve got square dances, fishing, games, a recreation room, tennis court, laundry, bathrooms, and over 150 miles of horseback trails. Up to now it’s taken up a lot of time and money, but we think it will be worth it in the long run. The only bad thing is all that traffic is on the county road right below our ranch. We’ve hired a guard for our house, but it’s bound to be more crowded around Hurricane Mills than it was before we bought the town.
Doo really enjoys running the ranching end of it. He likes to work the land and restore things. The house was more my idea.
Me and Gloria started in the house by putting wallpaper up in the halls. We had some walls knocked down and the kitchen area opened up so that we have a large, country-style kitchen. The twins’ bedroom is right off the kitchen area. We had to close in windows and the door, so we’d have enough room for their two white canopied beds. There’s a back stairway from the twins’ room that goes upstairs, but we keep it locked because you can guess what they’d be up to if we didn’t. Doo recently had a large recreation room built near our pool, out in back of the house. It has a huge stone fireplace, and we keep the TV and stereo set out there. I bought Doo his own pool table for Christmas, and he keeps his gun collection locked up out there. Also, we put our old living room furniture out there. It’s rugged and sturdy and suits the room. That meant I could buy a new set for the living room. Actually, it isn’t new furniture at all. I found a beautiful old set of Victorian furniture, lamps and all. We don’t use the living room much, because I’m on the road all the time, but it does look nice with its gold carpet and all. We use our recreation room for entertaining.
We had an interior decorator come in to help with our bedroom in the front of the house. It’s a real fancy place, just like you see in magazines. It has a coral shag carpet, and the curtains
and bedspread are printed in a big floral design, the same coral as the rug. We have a king-sized bed and even the headboard is covered in the same material. The nicest thing is a beautiful crystal chandelier that hangs from the tall ceiling. When we were knocking out walls, we had a bathroom added right off our bedroom.
The one thing we don’t have in that fancy bedroom is a telephone. Doo has a thing about phones. He doesn’t like ’em around. Until 1975, he wouldn’t let us put an extension phone anywhere. Our only phone was right in the middle of the living room, so any calls we made were with everyone sitting around listening. It’s what you’d call open conversation. It would be kind of frustrating when you’d be upstairs or out in the recreation room and you’d have to come all the way to the living room to answer the phone. Doo did string up a kind of private line to his little office in one of the outbuildings near the house. The only trouble is every time he used that phone, the one in the house went dead. When I asked for extra phones, he said he just doesn’t like people talking on the phone. He wants me to rest, and I guess it’s true I’d just keep on talking. Finally, in 1975 we got a couple of extensions put in, with buzzers to call out to the recreation room. We’re getting real modern out at Hurricane Mills, folks.
In the hallway next to the living room, we had cabinets built to hold all the little china dolls, antiques, salt and pepper shakers, and Indian relics that people give me. I keep everything because you can never tell when somebody will visit the house and look for their gift. Gloria says the hardest part of me coming home for a day is when I unload all the food and presents my fans give me.
On the wall going up the winding stairway, we’ve got all forty-five of my albums framed in the order that I did ’em. There’s some when I didn’t use any makeup, before Doo finally let me. You can see me changing, album after album. It’s really kind of weird to see.
I’ve got all kinds of souvenirs around the house—a bed Hank Williams owned, the cowboy hat Tex Ritter used to wear, my second rhythm guitar, some personal things Patsy Cline gave me. I have Roy Acuff’s yo-yo, a suit from Hank Snow, a coat from Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins’s golf hat, and a beautiful gown that my friend June Carter gave me. Someday I’m going to put ’em all into the museum I’m making out of the old red mill across our creek.
We left the high ceilings in the house, even a tin one in the family kitchen area, but they do make the house hard to heat. We’ve got modern heat and even air-conditioning, but because there’s not any insulation in the walls, it really gets cold in the winter. Every room has its own fireplace, and let me tell you, we need ’em.
As soon as you walk out the door, there’s liable to be three or four dogs and cats. I’ve got a pet ocelot in an outbuilding, and you can usually smell it. There’re flies and birds and sometimes skunks and a snake or two.
Like I told you—we’re country.
We don’t have much artwork around the house. We do have a painting of Jesus that Loretta Johnson did. I’m real proud of it. It shows him suffering on the cross, with a real intense look of pain, and his muscles straining and the sweat pouring off him. She said she wanted to show he was a real man, suffering real pain. It’s a real good painting.
We use the ranch for making our album covers and television specials. Mrs. Bobby Woods, who runs the general store across the creek, isn’t going to forget the time an assistant from The Dean Martin Show came in and ordered thirty-four dollars’ worth of baloney sandwiches. But she made ’em, spreading the bread all over the counters.
The problem is that I’m hardly at the ranch enough to enjoy it, and when I am home, I’m usually tired. My secretary does all my shopping and my manager sends me clothes when I need ’em on the road. So the only shopping I do is with the twins. I love to go to the five-and-ten-cent stores and the dollar stores, not the fancy stores. Me and my babies buy all kinds of junk. The only problem is, even in Waverly, folks follow me around the store, just staring at me. Maybe when I’m around more often, they’ll get used to me as just another little old country girl looking for bargains.
When I’m home, Doo likes me to do outdoor stuff with him, like riding and boating—except that I’m scared of the water. One time in 1971, me and Doo went out in a motorboat on the Buffalo River, near our ranch. I don’t know how, but the boat overturned and I went under.
I couldn’t swim, so I started going under—once, twice, then a third time. I knew I was drowning, but I wasn’t really awake. Sometimes you wonder what it’s like to know you’re dying. Well, I knew it, and I wasn’t scared. It was real peaceful, like floating away on a cloud. I remember thinking that Doo must have died, too, or else he would have gotten me.
But Doo wasn’t drowned. He was searching all over for me. Finally, he pushed up the edge of the boat and saw my hair floating in the water. He pulled me up and carried me over his head to shore. I was surprised to wake up and find him working over me. The water must have poured out of me for hours. I was just surprised to know I was still here.
I guess I should have been more nervous after it happened, but I wasn’t. I didn’t get nervous until Sunday night, when we were doing a show on the road. Suddenly, I had this horrible thought.
“Friends, this is Sunday, and I would have been buried today,” I told the audience. And I told ’em about how I almost drowned.
Well, my knees started to shake so bad I couldn’t remember my songs. My boys had to help me offstage.
I’ve stayed off the river since then, but last year we built this heated pool behind the house, and I made up my mind I would learn to swim. But one of the twins jumped on my back and pushed me into the deep end. They pulled me out, but I was more shook up that time than I was from the river. Now I stay in the shallow end of the pool.
Other things I like to do around the ranch? Plant flowers, go for a ride in Doo’s jeep, maybe ride a horse. Or I just like to sit and talk with my kids. Or visit with company. There’s always somebody visiting the house.
Like I said before, fans are all over the place when I’m home. They think nothing of walking right up to the door. If I play with the kids in the yard, there are fans coming up to take pictures or to talk. Somehow, my home doesn’t seem like home anymore. I try to avoid going home for just a day if I’ve got time off between trips. It seems like the whole time is spent unpacking, getting laundry done, catching up on what’s been done at the ranch. My kids come in and stay all day, and I’m glad to see ’em, but it gets hectic all squeezed into one day. It just don’t seem like what we planned when we bought it. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. It’s kind of silly for me to have business in Nashville and have to stay in a motel, but that’s what I do. That’s what I mean when I say being a success don’t guarantee you happiness.
22
Me and Doo
I guess you think I’m crazy,
But it keeps him here with me,
And I only see the things I wanna see…
—“I Only See the Things I Wanna See,” by Loretta Lynn and Loudilla Johnson
Buying that ranch was a good deal for us, but it also set up some problems for me and Doo.
First of all, the ranch has cost us so much money that I had to keep up a busy schedule. In country music, the only way people will keep buying your records is if you keep going back to their towns on personal tours. And while I was on the road all the time, wrecking my own health, Doolittle was pushing hard to fix up that ranch and watch the kids. That means we’ve got to be separated a lot of the time. You remember how our marriage got started, with us moving out to Washington State? Well, I still believe that was the best thing for us. If we’d stayed home, around our family and neighbors, we might never have stayed together. But being alone in Washington was good for us. Even though Doo and I both had our faults, we grew closer together. You hear a lot of gossip in Nashville about me and Doolittle—heck, like I said before, you hear rumors about everybody in Nashville. This one is fooling around, that one likes both men and women, that one uses
padded bras, that one’s a drunk, that one lies about her age. I’d say the rumors flow more regular than the bourbon or the Cumberland River. But I’d like to put a stop to all the rumors and just talk about me and Doo for a minute.
I think it’s honest to say I went into my marriage as a baby, didn’t know nothing about getting along with a man. But I think I gave Doolittle my full love because that’s the way I am—whatever I do, I plunge into it 100 percent.
In our scrapbook we’ve saved letters—all in my poor Kentucky handwriting—from me when I first went on the road, with me mighty lonely in some motel room, homesick and writing to Doolittle who was back working three jobs and watching four babies in Custer. I’d write, “Darling you no [that’s how I spelled ‘know’] I love you.” Every other word in my letters was “darling” or “love.” And that’s how I felt. When you love a man, you love him all the way.
But I guess I always felt Doo was in charge of me, just like my daddy, because he knew better and was older. Maybe then I believed that a wife was her husband’s property.
If we had stayed in Washington, we probably would have been too dog-tired to make new problems. Also, nobody would have cared about us, and we could have settled things in private. There’s no privacy in country music, friends—I can tell you that. When you’re having a little argument, it’s all over town faster than you can say “Fist City.”
Lots of times friends cause problems. Or people you think are your friends. Sure, Doolittle had himself a girlfriend or two in his day. I ain’t saying he didn’t—even if the truth hurts. But there were nights when he’d take a second shift at the welding shop, putting in six hours under the hood of a car, getting a hot welding torch in his face, and this friend of his would come to visit at our house and say to me, “Where’s Mooney tonight? I didn’t see him down at the shop.” And all the time that “friend” was trying to get me to bed with him. That was the way he talked, trying to make me suspicious of my husband so I’d cheat, too. That stuff never worked with me, because frankly I just wasn’t that interested. But it did get me mad at Doolittle. So he’d come home at midnight all worn down from welding and I’d be sitting in the kitchen ready to jump on him. He’d look at me and say, “What did I do now?” And when he explained it, I’d know he was right. I’m a very jealous person because I believe in being faithful.
Coal Miner's Daughter Page 16