They’ve also made a movie called Nashville that people tell me was one of the biggest movies of 1975. Well, I ain’t seen it, so I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not. I don’t follow the movies much, and I’d much rather see a Walt Disney movie if I do go.
But some of my friends told me there’s two characters in there that resemble me and Doolittle—at least somewhat. Well, I met that girl who played the top country singer in the movie. She came to Nashville and talked to me and watched me perform for a few weeks. If she tried to imitate me in the movie, that’s their problem. If they really wanted me, why didn’t they just ask me?
But I ain’t worrying about no movies. My records are still selling, and I get more offers for shows than I can handle. So if you’re wondering whether that character in the movie is me, it ain’t. This book is me. I’ve got my own life to lead.
And my life hasn’t been easy, not even now. I’ve had chest surgery (non-malignant, thank God) and blood poisoning and, sometimes, I pass out on stage from migraine headaches. You hear all kinds of rumors about my sick spells, and also some rumors about me having trouble with aspirin pills. It wasn’t what people thought—but I’ll get to that later.
Also, I’ve had a bunch of death threats that we managed to keep secret. For a while, there was one or two people following me around until the police got ’em. Now I’ve got people protecting me all the time. Growing up in eastern Kentucky like I did, I’m used to having a few guns around to protect me (not that I’m crazy about waking up in the morning and seeing Doolittle’s pistol right there on the dressing table).
You’ve heard my husband’s name is “Mooney,” right? Well, I call him “Doolittle” because that’s his old Kentucky nickname. Everybody else calls him “Mooney,” which is what they called him in Washington State when they found out he used to run moonshine.
You’ll hear a lot of stories about Doolittle if you hang around Nashville long enough. Some of ’em are true and some of ’em ain’t. Doo is a smart man in a lot of ways. We’ve been married for more than twenty-five years, but we’ve still got some problems that I don’t know if we’ll ever straighten out.
When we started on this book, me and Doolittle talked it over about how much we should tell about ourselves. Suppose I don’t like the way he acts when he’s drinking. Or suppose Doo thinks I’m meaner than a snake. Should we tell our troubles to other people in a book?
Well, Doo leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a minute. Then he said, “Hell’s fire, Loretta, just tell the story the way it happened. I’ve always said you should never try to cover up things. Look, we’re not perfect. Let’s not pretend we are.”
I agree with that. Nobody’s perfect. The only one that ever was, was crucified. And sometimes I think our problems are made worse by the kind of business we’re in.
Doo don’t really like to be cooped up. He’d rather be out on the ranch, training his bird dogs, and I don’t blame him. Heck, I don’t like being cooped up either, only it seems that’s what my life has become.
It’s a strange deal. I’m supposed to be a country singer, writing songs about marriage and family and the way normal folks live. But mostly I’m living in motel rooms and traveling on my special bus with my private bedroom in the back. I don’t even open the shades in my bus anymore. I’ve seen every highway in the United States by now, and they all look alike to me.
Playing these road shows is a weird experience. One minute I’m out on that stage, usually dressed in my long-sleeved, floor-length gowns, with my hair hanging down to my shoulders, smiling at my fans. There’s such a feeling of love between me and those people. I know it shows on my face. Being on stage is the best part of my career. I just say whatever comes into my head, and I joke with my band, and we all have a good time. It’s the only time when I really feel grown-up and in control of things.
As soon as that show is over, I sign autographs, if I’m not feeling sick, and then we pull away into the darkness and the fans just melt away. Then it’s just me and Doolittle and the boys in my band rolling down the highway.
It’s kind of lonely on the road. My first four kids are kind of grown-up now, but I still miss them and my eleven-year-old twins, who mostly stay home with the housekeeper. I’ve been trying to cut back on my road dates, but we still need the money because of some of the things we’d like to do. When you’ve got around fifty people on your payroll—heck, it used to be sixty-eight—the account books tell you to keep working.
It’s getting so bad I don’t even feel comfortable in my own house anymore. I get home for a day or two, and by the time I unpack my bags and see what’s changed since I left, it’s time to get moving again. Then all my family and fans come to visit, and I start getting so nervous in my own house that I sometimes even check into a motel in Nashville.
I was fighting with Doolittle one day about what kind of wallpaper we should put in our bedroom. We do the papering ourselves. When you’re poor folks from eastern Kentucky, you don’t lose the habit of doing things for yourself. Anyway, I wanted one color and Doo wanted another. Finally he said, “Hey, I spend more time in this house than you do.” That hurt me, but it was the truth.
Being alone so much, I often get to thinking about my younger days. Things I’d like to tell somebody, if I had somebody to talk to. I can remember how poor we were—waiting to get new shoes in the fall, walking across the first frost in my bare feet, sometimes sharing shoes until your feet got bunions on ’em.
It’s funny how most of the things I remember are about being poor. When I first started making money in Nashville, I was convinced I was gonna be poor again. Now I’ve sold millions of records, and my company tells me I’ve got a million dollars just sitting in the bank. But I could survive if we got poor again. In some ways, that was the best part of my life, learning how to survive.
Somebody said I should write all these memories down. But it ain’t like writing a song. I mean, when I get a title for a song, I scribble it down on a napkin or an old paper bag, anything that’s handy. Then when I get back to my room, I just start singing those words until I’ve got me a song.
People say I can’t read or write because I’ve only got about a fourth-grade education. But I can read and write some. I’m not pretending I know how to write a book—not even a book about me. I’m too nervous to even sit in front of a tape recorder for long. I’ve always been full of nervous energy, and I’ve gotten used to clowning around onstage, and offstage, too.
But I’m not really as happy as I seem. I’ve known a lot of sad times in my life that don’t square with that lady you see clowning up on the stage. You get used to sadness, growing up in the mountains, I guess. I was given up to die when I was a baby. I came close to drowning near my ranch a few years ago—I never told nobody about that until now. And the doctors told me my heart stopped on the operating table when I had chest surgery in 1972. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to tell my life story.
The way I did it was this: the writers have always been really nice to me, and I’ve always enjoyed sitting and talking to ’em. But we finally got together with this one writer who used to live in Kentucky, name of George. He knows my part of the country real well; he’s visited the coal mines, and he’s been up to the hollers, so he speaks my language. Now for the past year he’s been traveling with me and Doolittle. I’ve taken him to Butcher Holler and introduced him to my Uncle Corman. I’ve taken him to the ranch and shown him all my scrapbooks. He’s met my best friends, like the Johnson sisters. Him and his family took me to that itty-bitty Plymouth Rock up in Massachusetts. I couldn’t believe how small it was. I got bigger rocks in my driveway.
Anyway, I told George, “We’re gonna have us a hardback book. Doggone right, it’s gonna be a good book. Anything I go at, I go at it hard, because I only do what I want. It’s gonna be the best book about country music, because I don’t take no seconds.”
The only problem is, how are we gonna spice this book up? I’ve heard
about movie stars who had all kinds of marriages and adventures to reveal. But I’ve been married to the same man for all this time. The way we fight sometimes, you can tell. I’m trying to lead a good Christian life, especially since I got baptized two years ago. So there ain’t too much spicy to tell about me—just the truth.
So I’m gonna start at the beginning and keep going, from Butcher Holler, where I was born, to Hurricane Mills, where I live now. By the time I get done, you’re gonna know about the good times and the bad times in my life.
You can bet your last scrip penny I checked out every word before they sent it to the book company. And if I didn’t think it was true, out it went.
The first thing I insisted was that it sound like me. When all those city folks try to fix up my talking, all they do is mess me up. Like the way I pronounce the word “holler.” That’s our word for the low space between two mountains. City people pronounce it “hollow” but that ain’t the way I pronounce it. This is my book. Instead of using Webster’s Dictionary, we’re using Webb’s Dictionary—Webb was my maiden name.
So when you’re reading this book, just try to picture me up on stage, singing my songs and clowning around, and try to hear me saying “Butcher Holler.” Then you’ll know it’s me.
1
Butcher Holler
Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter,
In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler,
We were poor but we had love.…
—“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” by Loretta Lynn
Most people know that much about me, because those are the first words of my biggest song. I open my show with it because I know people are gonna request it until I sing it. I wrote it myself, nine verses, and it broke my heart when I had to cut three verses out because it was too long. I could have written a thousand more verses, I’ve got so many memories of Butcher Holler.
To me, that place is the most important part of my life. My fans and writers are always making a big deal about me acting natural, right from the country. That’s because I come from Butcher Holler, Kentucky, and I ain’t never forgot it.
I’m always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States—and I think maybe it is. I’ve traveled all over this country, down South and out West, and I ain’t never seen anything like it. And I ain’t making fun of it, because I’m the most backward person you ever saw. I never knew where babies came from until it happened to me.
This might give you an idea of how backward we are, but first, to appreciate this story, you’ve got to know that in eastern Kentucky we say the word “press” instead of “closet.” Anyway, one of my best friends is Dr. John Turner, who took care of me when I was younger.
Doc swears he saw this patient standing in front of the hospital elevator, looking confused. Doc asked him what was the matter, and the patient said, “Doc, I just seen a nurse get into that press—and when the door opened she was gone!” See, that patient lived in a holler all his life and never saw an elevator before. Myself, I never rode in an automobile until I was twelve.
Holler people are just different from anybody else. They live high up in the hills, one day at a time. There’s probably a few who don’t know who the president is, and there have been times when they were better off that way. Maybe things are changing now, with television and better roads and stuff, but I’ve got relatives living up in Butcher Holler who have never been further than Paintsville, ten miles away, in their lives. They’re really beautiful people in their own way. Everybody else is worrying about the energy crisis, and talking about getting back to the simple things. My people are already there. If we run out of energy, my relatives know how to patch their houses and grow gardens, so they’re gonna have the last laugh on everybody.
Let me explain where Butcher Holler is. You take any place in the United States today, and they’ve got an interstate highway, right? Well, you get on one of them interstates and drive to Huntington, West Virginia, which is already in pretty hilly country—but you ain’t seen nothing yet. You get off Interstate 64 and head south along Highway 23 into Kentucky. That’s a good three-lane highway going past some nice farms and factories and mobile homes. You drive for about an hour and a half until you get to Paintsville, which has around 4,000 people.
Paintsville may not look too big to outsiders, but in Johnson County it’s the biggest thing going. That’s the first place I ever saw a toilet with running water, just before I got married. I went into the bus station to go to the bathroom, but when I sat down on the seat, the toilet flushed automatically. I got so scared I was gonna get flushed down, I ran out of there and waited until we found a good old outhouse.
When I was a little girl, my big city was Van Lear, which was five miles away, a coal camp for the Consolidated Coal Company, with rows of wooden houses they rented to the miners. There must have been 10,000 people living around Van Lear in the good times. The company had a post office and company stores where you paid for your things in scrip. If you went into debt, you owed your soul to the company store, just like the song says. The company also had a recreation hall where they showed movies. People make coal camps sound like slavery, but in a lot of ways it was the best thing ever happened to people—as long as the coal kept running.
Before I was born, Van Lear was a boom town. The company kept their houses painted. The foremen had nice homes up on Silk Stocking row, and the bosses had real beautiful homes. Off to one side was a row of houses called Nigger Holler where the black miners lived. They worked in the mines with the whites, but they had to live off by themselves. I’m sure there was prejudice in the coal camps, but my family grew up so high in the hollers, we never knew about it.
My Daddy was colorblind in two ways. About the only color he could see real good was yellow, and I have trouble telling red from orange myself. But we were also colorblind about people. It’s like in 1972, when I was up for the award for Best Female Singer on national television, and Charley Pride was going to present the award. People warned me not to kiss Charley in case I won, because it would hurt my popularity with country fans. I heard that one girl singer got canceled out Down South after giving a little peck to a black friend on television. Well, Charley Pride is one of my favorite people in country music, and I got so mad that when I won I made sure I gave him a big old hug and a kiss right on camera. You know what? Nobody canceled on me. If they had, fine, I’d have gone home to my babies and canned some string beans and the heck with them all.
But we didn’t know about prejudice in Butcher Holler. We didn’t know much about anything. Even Van Lear was another world to us. We would go down there about once a month, and sometimes see a Tarzan movie or one of the Roy Rogers serials. We always went in the daytime, because coming back there weren’t any cars, or roads, or electricity for lights in Butcher Holler. I remember going into Van Lear before Christmas when I was around twelve. It was at night, and their decorations were all lit up. It was the first time I really remember seeing electric lights. I sure was impressed.
My home was maybe four miles further up the mountains from Van Lear. The road was paved up to the mines, then it was topped with just coal slag—“red dog,” we called it. That ran from the upper company store to the one-room schoolhouse. Then there was just a dirt path leading alongside the creek, in the narrow space between two ridges.
As you walked up the holler, the path got steeper and steeper, with trees growing on both sides of you. You had this feeling of being all wrapped up in the trees and hills, real secure-like. If you’d stop walking and just listen, you could hear a couple of kids playing outside, or maybe some birds in the trees. I used to love going out-of-doors at night and listening to the whippoorwills. Maybe it was the Cherokee in me, but I loved being outside. In the summertime, we’d hold lightning bugs (that’s our word for fireflies) on our fingers and pretend they were diamond rings. Or we’d just sit there in the holler, and it would be perfectly quiet.
Holler kids were so bashful tha
t they’d run and hide if they had company coming. I was still bashful after I was married and didn’t make friends easily. The only way my husband could get me out of it was to tell me I was ignorant. See, he’d traveled outside the mountains. He’d been around.
We weren’t really ignorant, just shy. If we’d see a stranger coming up the holler, somebody in the bottom house would shout up the hill, “Stranger coming up.” If the stranger asked you questions, you’d just clam up until you knew his business. Lots of times they’d send revenue officers looking for a moonshine still up in the mountains. Us kids would look at him dumb-like and say, “Ain’t nothing up here, mister.” And all the time our uncles were making moonshine right up on the ridge.
Most of the people were Irish—not the Catholic kind, the other kind—from families that kept moving west until they finally settled in the hills. There wasn’t nobody to take taxes from ’em or make ’em go to church if they didn’t want to. So they grew into their own independent ways. They raised chickens and hogs, corn and berries. They didn’t have no papers or listen to the news.
The biggest thing that ever happened in Butcher Holler was after World War II when a pilot bailed out of his army plane and it crashed up on the ridge. You could hear bullets going off in the fire for days. The first time a car ever came up the path was when Doolittle came a-courting in his jeep. Now they’ve got the dirt path widened so two-wheel-drive cars can get up. But it’s about the same as ever. A few men work in the mines, and the women go into Paintsville for their food stamps and stuff. But it’s still country.
I was up there last year, and my Uncle Corman was telling me about the big shoot-out they just had. Seems one of his cousins fired at a hawk. Another cousin down the holler heard the shot and, just for meanness, he answered the shot. Suddenly there were two grown men, cousins to each other, shooting at their sounds. They were both behind trees, a-firing away, until they got tired of it and quit. Didn’t hurt nothing, but they could have. That’s just the way we are.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter Page 2
