Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter

by Loretta Lynn;George Vecsey

  I knew Doo wanted a boy, so we had the name already picked out—Jack. I was under gas and I didn’t know what the nurse was telling me. I kept saying it was a boy and she kept saying it was a girl. When I realized she knew better than me, I started crying. I always thought you got what you wanted. Doolittle came in and said he was glad it was a girl, but I knew he wasn’t. Finally, the nurses told me that since I wanted a boy, they would keep that little girl for themselves. I was so young, I almost believed them.

  We called her Betty Sue. She was only five pounds and sixteen inches, the shortest baby that hospital ever had, they told me. Her head was like an egg, all out of shape and bruised. They said I was lucky to have a nine-month baby.

  They kept me in the hospital for a week. I was trying to nurse Betty, but I never had any milk for my babies, so they put her on the bottle and let me go home. Having that first baby was like having a doll and playing house. I really loved bathing and diapering her. I never felt like it was a lifetime deal—not with one baby. That didn’t strike me until I had the second baby a year later. We went back home to have that one because we were homesick, and that’s where I had the boy.

  I remember that one because Doo’s mommy kept telling me there was a full moon and I was gonna have the baby that night. I told her I wasn’t ready yet. So that day I helped her do the wash for thirteen people, hanging it all over the holler. Then the clothesline broke, and we had to do it all over again. Took us all day, till dark. Then the moon came up and Angie said, “See, you’re gonna have the baby tonight.” But I didn’t believe her until the pains came.

  Then it started snowing and it got real cold and Doo had trouble starting up the car. Angie gave me a bath and made me comfortable. She was a real help to me. And we started down out of Butcher Holler, with me in such pain. The car stalled out down by the schoolhouse, and I said all I wanted to do was lay down in the schoolhouse and rest. The pains were getting closer together. But of course, if I’d a done that, I’d a froze to death. So Angie made me stay in the car and they got me to the hospital. It was Pearl Harbor Day, December 7—that’s how I remember my first son.

  We couldn’t afford to stay overnight in the hospital, so I went home five hours after having the baby. We drove back up the holler again, like I’d hardly been away. I rested for a while, then had to wash out diapers and draw water from the well, less than twenty-four hours after delivering the boy.

  We called him Jack Benny—not just because Jack Benny was my favorite comedian, but because we liked the two names. He doesn’t like for people to know his middle name, but you know how Southern people like to use two names instead of one. So when I want to get him mad, I call him “Jack Benny.”

  After I had that second baby, I had two miscarriages, both times after only a month or two being pregnant. Somebody told me if the baby isn’t going to be healthy, that’s how Mother Nature takes care of things. But I almost died of blood poisoning after the second miscarriage, which is not exactly the care I expected from Mother Nature. I didn’t go to the hospital after the second miscarriage because we didn’t have the money—and when they discovered I had blood poisoning, it was almost too late.

  I kept on getting pregnant, though. I carried a baby almost full term and the doctors said I needed a cesarian operation. But I was still a minor and I couldn’t sign my own consent, even though I already had two babies. They needed Doo’s signature, but he was off in the woods on a logging job. They put me in the hospital for three days and kept me under medicine. They’d wake me up and say, “Mrs. Lynn, isn’t there any way we can reach your husband?”

  And I’d say, “He’s in the woods.” We were back in Washington by this time. Then they’d put me back to sleep again. But finally I had the baby the regular way, and Doo called in from some logging camp and they kept teasing him. First they said it was a boy, then a girl, then a boy again. But it was a boy, and we named him Ernest Ray.

  That’s when the doctors told me I’ve got RH negative blood, which meant I would have trouble having more babies. But we didn’t do anything about not getting pregnant, so eleven months after the boy, I had my second girl, with no real problems.

  We didn’t name the girl until she was four years old; the nurses told Doolittle we had to give her a name before she left the hospital, and he got mad and took her home and didn’t name her Clara Marie for four years. That’s how stubborn he is. We called her “Cissy,” which is still what everybody calls her.

  By that time, I was eighteen years old and had four babies. After one miscarriage, I went to the doctor to ask how to stop having babies and he said, “Honey, you should be thinking about having your first baby, not your last.” Then he gave me a diaphragm, which I used for a while—when I remembered.

  Sometimes in my show I make a joke about how I stopped having babies every year: “I keep my legs crossed now instead of my fingers.” But it wasn’t funny back then. I was so ignorant, and women didn’t have what they do today. I love my kids, but I wish they had the pill when I was first married. I didn’t get to enjoy the first four kids, I had ’em so fast. I was too busy trying to feed ’em and put clothes on ’em.

  That’s why I was so proud of my song, “The Pill,” that was my biggest-selling record early in 1975. I really believe in those words. It’s all about how the man keeps the woman barefoot and pregnant over the years. I think it’s great that women have a way of protecting themselves now, without worrying about the man.

  You know, we recorded that song three years ago, but we held it out, figuring people weren’t ready to accept it. When we released it, the people loved it. I mean the women loved it. But the men who run the radio stations were scared to death. It’s like a challenge to the man’s way of thinking. See, they’ll play a song about making love in a field because that’s sexy, from a man’s point of view. But something that’s really important to women, like birth control, they don’t want no part of, leastways not on the air. Well, my fans played the record, and bought so many copies they forced most of the radio stations to play it. Some preachers criticized it in church—but that just did me a favor by making the people more curious.

  But you know something funny? I never really took the pill for birth control in my life. The only time I took it was to regulate my periods. That was after Doo got himself clipped—what’s that they call it, a vasectomy?—after my twins came along.

  I’m glad I had six kids because I couldn’t imagine my life without ’em. But I think a woman needs control over her own life, and the pill is what helps her do it.

  That’s also why I won’t ever say anything against the abortion laws they made easier a few years ago. Personally, I think you should prevent unwanted pregnancy rather then get an abortion. I don’t think I could have an abortion. It would be wrong for me. But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. I believe they should be able to have an abortion. I told that to this Atlanta newspaper, The Great Speckled Bird, which is supposed to be for hippies and people like that. Some of my country friends got upset when I kept a copy of that newspaper in my office, but I said it was one of the best articles ever done about me because they printed exactly what I said.

  Somehow I managed to get through those years with all those babies. I don’t know how I did it. When you’re young, you think everything is exciting. When you get older you say, “How in the world did I do that?”

  I was learning something all the time in those days, back in Washington. A woman named Edna Brann taught me how to can meat and vegetables, and we never ate any store-canned food after that.

  Edna used to enter the Northwest Washington District Fair over in Lynden, the biggest town near us. The next year she talked me into entering the fair. We put our stuff in her pickup truck and drove it over. We were hoping that she’d win a first prize, which she’d never done. The next day we went
back to see the results and found blue ribbons hanging all over my stuff. I couldn’t believe it! I counted seventeen blue ribbons, thirteen seconds, and seven third prizes, plus a pair of dishes, a whole barrel of Crisco, all kinds of spices, ten dozen fruit jars, and twenty-five dollars in cash.

  Edna seemed as thrilled as me. I felt so good that I started jumping up and down, shaking the whole fair building. They took a picture of me, three feet off the ground, and the next day they enlarged it to life-size and hung it outside the fair grounds.

  They still have that picture. In 1974, me and my band played the Lynden Fair, and hundreds of my old friends came out that I hadn’t seen in years. They still remembered me jumping in the air and screaming when I won. Doolittle said I yelled so loud, I startled him in the quarter-horse contest and made him finish second. And all I could think about were those mean things he’d said about my cooking.

  Except for winning that contest, there wasn’t much excitement in those years. I worked hard around the ranch, me and Blanche, caring for thirty-six people during peak seasons. When the fruits and vegetables were ripe, they needed every hand they could get. My nails were always broken, and my hands were rough and chapped. The only clothes I owned, just about, were blue jeans and a checked shirt. I went barefoot most of the time.

  After a while, Doolittle went into the logging business with another man. He learned to climb those tall trees and chop ’em down to size. He was good enough to keep us going for five or six years. We had our own house on the Green ranch by this time, though it wasn’t nothing fancy. When we left, they just knocked it clear to the ground. But we were making it in Washington. I didn’t have any fancy dreams, but I knew the day would come when we’d have our own house, a real house, and I’d be able to buy things for the babies from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. That was the big thing in my dreams.

  We didn’t have much money for entertainment. I never went out much because we couldn’t afford a baby-sitter. Besides, Doo liked to go out with the boys and have a few beers. It was them days that gave me the idea for the song, “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” which I wrote with my sister Peggy Sue.

  My entertainment was staying home and singing along with the radio when I could find country music. It wasn’t too big out in Washington, but once in a while you could find Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams. Betty Sue says she can remember being a little girl and hearing me imitate all the Kitty Wells records and asking her, “How did that sound?”

  But that was my only fun. I was so far away from Mommy and Daddy, that I’d sing to myself for hours, more out of homesickness than anything else.

  11

  A Death in the Family

  Now Daddy talked with the Lord every day,

  And Daddy and God were real close.

  So let’s just say it seems that God

  Takes the ones He loves the most.…

  —“Mama, Why?” by Loretta Lynn

  When we lived in Washington, I only saw my family a few times. When it was time for my second baby to be born, we got just plain homesick, me and Doo, and went back to Kentucky, where Doc Turner delivered my first boy. But after I had the baby, we went back to Washington.

  The next thing I heard, Daddy had a stroke and was let out of his job at the mines. We weren’t in any position to send money. We hardly had enough to get by on. So Daddy went north to Indiana to try and find work. That’s what a lot of us mountain people do. You can see ’em in all the big cities up North—Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago. I’ll see ’em standing around, kind of bashful, the men more bashful than the women.

  So Daddy moved to Wabash, where we had some friends and relatives, and put in his application at the factory. But they wouldn’t take him because all he knew was mining, and because of his black lung and high blood pressure. He was still only in his forties, but he couldn’t find a job by himself. He was so bashful, it must have been hard looking for a job and hearing the boss say they wouldn’t hire him.

  After Daddy got home to Kentucky again, Mommy said she’d give it a try. See, the men are supposed to be the head of the household in the country. But the women lots of times find it easier to get along with office work and stores. Mommy went back to Wabash and found a job at the Penguin Point Drive-In Restaurant for sixty-five cents an hour. But after a while they gave her a raise because she was so good. Mommy already had eight kids by this time. Brenda—Crystal, she’s called now—was just a baby. But Mommy was so beautiful and young-looking that her boss didn’t know that she had any kids. One day Mommy told him that her family was coming up to live in Wabash. The man couldn’t believe it. He said, “I didn’t even know you were married.” She was even paying taxes as a single person. But Mommy didn’t think it was anybody’s business. She still kept a job after the family came up. Most of the kids went right into public schools in Wabash and Daddy got a job at Spencer-Karnel, the only factory that didn’t give medical examinations. They settled down and became more like Indiana people than Kentucky. I think about 25 percent of Wabash is from the mountains. Some of Doo’s family settled there, too.

  After Mommy and Daddy settled in Indiana, we visited ’em twice. One time there I got a job in a restaurant, sometimes waiting on tables, but mostly washing dishes. I wasn’t any good at it because I was so clumsy. I was always dropping something. Doolittle worked in a General Electric factory, but he was itchy to get back to the West Coast, so after about six months we left.

  Four years later we spent two months in Indiana, and that was the last time I seen Daddy alive. He sent me cards on my birthdays, with presents when they could afford it—fake pearls on my nineteenth birthday, a shirt on my twentieth or twenty-first.

  I would think about Daddy a lot, out in Washington, and later I even began to dream about him. One night in 1959 I dreamed, as clear as anything, I saw him wearing a blue suit and lying in a wine-colored coffin. I was terribly upset by the dream, so I woke Doolittle up and told him about it. He said I shouldn’t pay no attention to it. Yet when I went back to sleep, I had the exact same dream all over again, only this time I could see myself wringing my hands.

  I was still dreaming when Clyde Green knocked on the door and said there was a phone call for me. People didn’t usually call me that early. Sure enough, it was Mommy, telling me Daddy was gone. That was February 22, 1959, on George Washington’s Birthday.

  Later I learned how pitiful Daddy’s last days were. They just had this big flood in Wabash, the worst they ever had. The river went right through their home, putting them without food or beds for a while. Daddy went down to the Red Cross to ask for help, but everybody was pushing their way to the front of the line, even people that wasn’t in the flood. So Daddy just turned and went out. That night he got a migraine headache and was walking the floor all night, Mommy said. That was about the time I was having my dreams, you see? Do you think that I could have been feeling Daddy’s pain more than two thousand miles away? That morning he got a lift to the factory, where he just fell over around eight-thirty and died a little later. When I got the call, I wasn’t surprised. They said he died of a stroke but I figure the coal mines done it.

  Me and Doolittle just got in the car and headed east for the funeral. They held it in the big brick church in Van Lear—mountain people may move away to find work, but we get buried in our mountains. I always wished it had been held in the little white church in Butcher Holler. That was more natural to Daddy.

  They had this big, fat undertaker from Wabash bring the body down from Indiana to Kentucky. That man couldn’t believe how steep the hills were in Kentucky, him trying to move that coffin. We put Daddy up at Mommy’s sister’s house, where we sat up three nights a-praying.

  When me and Doo got there, we saw Daddy dressed in a blue suit and lying in a wine-colored coffin—just like I dreamed it!

  We buried Daddy in the family plot on the high ridge over Butcher Holler, and I left yellow flowers. For six months afterward, I’d have these nightmares of
trying to get to Daddy to tell him I loved him, of being caught in huckleberry vines, or climbing the mountain, afraid I’d get home too late.…

  Later I wrote the song called “Mama, Why?” It asks the question, “Why did God take my Daddy?” I know we’re not supposed to question God, but I just felt that he died so young—only fifty-one years old. Daddy never did know what success was like in his life. His times were hard, and he never had anything nice. I wish I could have been a singer when he was alive, so I could have helped him. But he never did know me when I was singing—though I feel like Daddy has helped me.

  See, I still feel like Daddy is with me. I can feel his presence. Whenever I go back to Johnson County, I know he’s there. There’s this old bridge from Paintsville to Van Lear that goes over the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy. When I was little, I always hated to walk that bridge because it was so shaky and high. Now whenever we drive over that bridge I know that Daddy is watching over me.

  When we go back to our house in Butcher Holler, I can see the grate where Daddy used to sit and rock me in his arms, him spitting in the fire. I can still feel his arms around me.

  And I’m not the only one who feels this way. My writer, George, told me that the first minute he visited my house in Butcher Holler, he could sense Daddy on the porch, just like the night when I said I was getting married, and Daddy just paced back and forth on that porch, purely busting with emotion. I really believe that people take different forms, and death doesn’t end things.

  That’s the way we mountain people are. Daddy’s younger brother Corman still lives in an old cabin up the holler. Corman was a real quiet boy, about twelve years younger than Daddy was. He’s real shy. He’s one of us who never could adjust to live outside Butcher Holler.