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 out-buildings 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. Some day 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 out-building, 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 bologna 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-tencent 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 motor boat 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 toget
her. You hear a lot of gossip in Nashville about me and Doolittle—heck, like I said before, you hear humors 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 girl friend 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.
When we moved to Nashville, Doo let me know he wouldn’t stand for me changing my values. I know that sounds like a double standard, but that’s the way it is. I wasn’t going to change anyway. All I know is there’s no double standard in the eyes of God. It’s just as bad for any man as it is for any woman.
My problem is that I’m too friendly. I adopt people. Whoever is singing with me at the time becomes a good friend of mine. Like Conway Twitty, my duet partner. Doo knows me and Conway are friends. I love people and I love to give a hug or a kiss now and then. I’m affectionate. But I don’t get that excited over being around other men. It’s mostly in their minds. I just mind my own business and stay out of trouble that way.
Still, once in a while some guy would get the wrong idea just because I’d call him at three in the morning. I thought he was my friend so I’d call him. Heck, I call the Johnson girls at three in the morning, or I’ll wake Lorene Allen, my secretary, at eight o’clock on Sunday morning, just to ask a question. So I don’t mean nothing by it. But a few singers have gotten the idea that I was falling in love with ’em. And in Nashville, it isn’t long before somebody will carry the rumor to your husband.
One time my tour was in Knoxville, and Doo heard some gossip about me and a singer. He drove all the way to Knoxville in a rage, but when he got to the hotel, he said, “I already felt like the damn fool I was.” So he waited in my room until I got back from the show—alone, I might add. The next day he went home again. Really, he knows better. That’s happened a few times.
Now jealousy works two ways. I know that Doo gets lonely if his woman’s not around. So if I’m on the road, I get all these visions of him having girl friends back home. I’ll get all worked up and call home at night—and find out that Doo fell asleep at eight o’clock, exhausted from working on the ranch all day. He barely had enough strength to take off his boots, the twins will tell me. So 90 percent of the stuff you hear about Doo ain’t true, either.
Whatever you want to say about him, he’s an outdoor man and a family man. He’s not thinking up ways to get off to Las Vegas to play the card tables and drink champagne with showgirls. He couldn’t care less. He’d rather be out setting feeders for his quail, or driving a bulldozer, or playing with his babies, than living it up.
In fact, I wished he liked the travel better than he does. Since we quit the Wilburns, Doo has had to travel more with me. He’s all right for a while, being cooped up in a motel room. And things run better when he’s around. The schedule is better, the shows are better, everyone does their job. But after a few days, Doo gets this panicked look on his face. He can’t let his feelings out the way I do, and he gets to feeling trapped on the road. He’ll take a long walk from the motel, try to find some country road, and just enjoy the sound of the birds and the wind and the farm machines. But usually we’re staying in one of those modern motels, surrounded by interstate highways and shopping centers, and there’s no place to walk. I know it’s hell on Doolittle.
And all those fans coming around. He’s polite to them, he’ll do favors for them, talk to them. But it’s like a car engine overheating. It’s painful to watch. The bad thing is, Doo handles it by drinking. He don’t like the boys to drink on the bus, but he’ll have a cup of bourbon and just try to relax himself, or he’ll hit the bottle in the afternoon just out of boredom, I think. And then we’ll get into an argument, which maybe I’ll start by criticizing him. Or he’ll tell me I did something stupid in the show, which I don’t like because I’m the performer. I’ve learned to live with it, but it hurts me when Doo drinks too much.
More than once, I’ve been up on a stage giving a show, or getting some award in Nashville, knowing that Doo was out sleeping in the bus. He knows it just tears me up inside and he says he’s going to lick it by himself. I know if we could just slow down our pace a little, he’d be better, because Doo is a very capable, intelligent man.
Really, we’re so entirely different, it’s a wonder we have stayed together. I think I need love and affection more than I need people telling me what to do. I just get all torn up by harsh words and violence. Like one time Doo got mad at a dog that was barking too much. So right in front of me, he just hit it once with a club and killed it. I just went to bed and stared at the ceiling for twenty-four hours, I felt so bad. I don’t believe in force, unless you’re really pushed. I think you can do things with kindness.
I don’t like to be told what to do. I like to be asked. I don’t think a man has the right to tell a woman what to do. He should say, “What do you think about this?” If somebody tells me what to do, I’ll do just the opposite, just because I’m meaner than a snake in some ways. You ask Owen Bradley. I’m like that at a recording session. Tell me one thing, I’ll do another. I never felt that one person owned another person. I think Doo feels the opposite. He feels he has the right to tell his wife what to do.
People who meet us get all nervous when they see us argue. Really, sometimes it looks bad. I’ll get some notion in my head and maybe I won’t even listen to him. Then he’ll get annoyed and start talking to me like I’m stupid. Sometimes that leads to one of my headaches, and I’ll just sleep for twelve or eighteen hours.
People who don’t know me too well get all nervous about that. They worry about me “escaping” into sleeping too much, or getting too nervous. But I usually bounce back the next morning. I’ll wake up and hear a redbird singing, or I’ll have a funny line in my head, and I’ll s
tart joking around with Doolittle, and he’ll see that I’m happy again, and he’ll relax and take charge of the day’s doings. Then the same people who got so worried the day before will tiptoe past our motel room, and there we’ll be sitting around laughing like it never happened … until the next time.
People say, “You can’t live like that forever.” I say, look, we’ve stayed married this long, we must be doing something right. Sometimes people ask if we’ve ever gone for marriage counseling or guidance. Heck no. They don’t know as much as I do about marriage. They weren’t married as young as I was, I bet. I just believe you do the best you can with yourself and hope for the best.
23
The Hyden Widows
We talked about the pretty lady from the Grand Ole Opry.
We talked about the money she was raising for the kids.…
—“Trip to Hyden,” by Tom T. Hall
If there’s one way me and Doolittle are alike, it’s that both of us are soft touches for a sad story. And believe me, you hear a lot of them when you’re on the top in country music. Everybody expects you to do favors for them, and it’s hard to say no.
When we first got to the top in Nashville, me and Doo would agree to almost any benefit for a good cause. We were worn out until we hired David Skepner to be our manager, because he knew his job was to say no and protect us from ourselves.
You wouldn’t believe some of the requests we get. Like, we’ll be driving down the highway in the bus and some car will cut in front of us and make us stop. The people say they’ve got a sick relative dying in some cabin five miles off the road—and can we pay a visit? I’ve said yes a few times, and Doolittle hides his face when his tears start to show.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter Page 17