My brother Herman stepped over it, but I bent down to look at it. Copperheads have these diamond-shaped blocks, but it was so dark I couldn’t see it. I yelled to Herman, “I don’t know what it is, but it sure smells like cucumbers.” At that, Mommy gave out a big yell from the other side of the house. I just fell backwards. She came running out with a double-bladed ax and started whacking. Daddy came out with a light. She cut that copperhead into six or seven pieces. The head was about eight inches long—and it jumped for fifteen minutes. Daddy was so upset, he kept yelling, “Get away from that head—it could still bite you.”
But Daddy had his own pet—a black snake that used to crawl up from the cracks in the floor. Every time we had dinner, Daddy would feed it. When Jay Lee was born, that black snake crawled right into the crib and curled up with Jay Lee. Daddy said that black snakes are harmless, which they are, but when he went to the mines, Mommy killed it with an ax because she just couldn’t stand the idea of a snake being in bed with Jay Lee. Daddy was mighty mad ’cause he missed his black snake.
We didn’t have much to celebrate during the Depression, but we tried: Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas. One of the biggest holidays for mountain people is called “May Meeting,” which is really “Decoration Day” at the end of May, when everybody comes back to honor the dead. Today, with people moved up North to work in the factories, you get terrible traffic jams on “Hillbilly Highway”—Interstate 75—before Decoration Day. In those days, poor and with no cars or nothing, we’d get fifteen or twenty families in Butcher Holler to the little graveyard on the hill.
We would spend days fixing up the grounds, cutting the grass, cleaning the markers, putting in spring flowers. We’re kind of sentimental about graveyards. We put them in high places, facing the eastern sun. Whenever I go back to Butcher Holler, Doolittle drives me up the steep hill to Daddy’s grave. Usually, I bring plastic yellow flowers, because Daddy was colorblind and yellow was the only color he could tell. The plastic is so Daddy will have something nice that won’t fade too fast.
The holidays were special times. Most of the time we just tried to stay alive and take care of the babies. That was my main job. I’d sit on the porch swing and rock them babies and sing at the top of my voice.
Daddy would say, “If you don’t shut up, everyone in the holler will hear you.” But I’d keep right on. I’d sing the old hymns like “Amazing Grace” or “This Little Light of Mine” or “We Read About an Old-Time Preacher Who Preached the Gospel Free,” and stuff like that, as loud as could be. I didn’t care. And I’m still like that. I love to get up and sing at the top of my lungs. Just a show-off, I suppose.
That’s how I got my first audience—singing on the porch. Daddy had two cousins who made moonshine up on the ridge, Willie Webb and Lee Dollarhide. Sometimes they got in trouble with the law and got themselves sent away, but they always went back to moonshining again. I remember one time they were hiding out, living in our attic. That’s when Mommy was about to have another baby. They heard the commotion and came down to see the new baby. When they saw it was a boy, they insisted we name it Willie Lee, one name for each of ’em. (He’s the one we call Jay Lee nowadays.) He was just a little booger, around three pounds and four ounces, and he probably should have gone into one of those incubators down at the hospital. But Daddy made a tiny crib and rocking chair out of wood and Mommy nursed that baby until it survived. When he got bigger, I used to rock him on the porch and sing to him until Daddy said, “You’re gonna ruin his ears if you sing so loud.” But I didn’t care.
One day I saw my Uncle Lee coming down off the hill. It was my thirteenth birthday—that’s how I remember it. He pointed to a rocky ledge where he had his still hidden, and he said, “Loretta, you’ve got a real nice voice. I listen to you while I’m working up on the hill. You’re gonna be a beautiful girl when you grow up.” That made me so proud.
Lee was kind of strange. He was full-grown but he was like an eight-year-old, always nervous and drumming his fingers and tapping his feet. Sometimes he got into trouble just for meanness. Like one time, he heard about a store that couldn’t be robbed because of a real vicious watchdog. Lee said, “That dog will be eating pork chops before this night is out.” And that night he robbed the store while the dog was eating the pork-chop supper my uncle gave him.
Lee wasn’t what you’d call a good robber. One time he robbed a clothing store to get himself new clothes, but he made one mistake. He changed clothes inside the store and left his old clothes behind. He even left his old hat—with his name inside of it. The sheriff was waiting for him the next morning.
Another time Lee stole a chicken and made tracks around the mines, to throw the police off his trail. But then he spilled chicken feed all the way to his own house. That’s how they caught him. I think Lee was in jail eight or nine times.
He was a great guy at heart, like a Jesse James. He’d come in with some candy at Christmastime, and we’d just know he took it from somewhere. Then he’d come in at night with a fresh chicken, and Mommy wouldn’t ask any questions—just fry her up, right away.
The law didn’t like to mess with Lee too often because he had a bad temper. He hid stolen goods in caves and stuff all over our holler, but the law didn’t come searching too often. When he met his end, it wasn’t from the law. It happened on a Fourth of July, after I turned thirteen in April. Lee must have sold all his moonshine down in the coal camp, and was going crazy knowing the miners wanted more. So Lee crossed the ridge behind us and went into the next holler, which was Greasy Creek.
I’m not too clear what happened next. Either Lee held a gun and robbed their moonshine, or else he just took it when they wasn’t looking. Either way, he sold that batch to the miners. Then he went back for more. That was one time too many.
Nobody knows how he got shot, because whoever shot him carried his body on horseback up on the ridge and just left him there, with one jug still full of stolen moonshine alongside the body. The police never made much of a fuss about it. I guess they were glad he wouldn’t be troubling them no more. My family never talked about getting revenge. This wasn’t one of those feuds like the Hatfields and McCoys. Years later, somebody said one of Lee’s kin fixed the man who killed Lee—but you never know what to believe.
All I can remember is Lee’s mother, my grandmother, walking a path between her house and ours, just wailing at the top of her lungs. My parents didn’t have a penny, but somehow they fixed up a coffin and a service for him. They sat up three nights with the body, praying and crying, like we do in the mountains. Lee had this old yellow dog named Charlie that used to sit with him while he was making the moonshine. Old Charlie sat outside for those three days, right under my window, howling and crying. It was pitiful.
After that, when I was minding the babies, I would still pretend my Uncle Lee was up on the ridge. And I would sing a little louder, just for him.
5
School Days
Our clothes were clean but faded, sometimes our feet were bare
But no one noticed anything except the Lord was there.
We’d come from all directions searchin’ for the way,
On my knees at school on Sunday, that’s where I learned to pray.…
—“That’s Where I Learned to Pray,” by Loretta Lynn
If you want to make Mommy mad sometime, try telling her I don’t have any education. She just might do an Indian war dance on you. One of the papers ran a story that made it sound like I never went to school, and Mommy promised to send ’em my old report cards, just to prove they were wrong.
The next time I saw Mommy at one of my performances, I called her up on stage in front of something like 14,000 fans and said, “This is that Indian lady that told off them newspaper people.”
Then I told her, “Sure, Mommy, my report cards have all A’s on them—but you forget something. Remember how I used to help the teacher in that one-room schoolhouse? Part of my job was making out the report cards. I never told you
this until just now—but I’m the one who used to give myself all them A’s.”
The audience laughed, but I don’t think Mommy saw the humor in it. She’s real touchy about her children being as good as the next family’s. And we are. She’s proud because she was one of the few mothers in Butcher Holler that chased her kids out to school every day. But you’ve got to be honest about yourself, and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have too much education.
For a long time, I never got my driver’s license because I was scared of taking reading tests. But one public official knew I could drive a car and read all the signs and stuff, so he helped get me a license. Since Doo got me that beautiful Jaguar sports car for Christmas of 1974, sometimes I drive around the ranch, but I’m too nervous to drive in all that Nashville traffic.
I used to write out all my letters to my disc jockeys. They used to tease me about my handwriting and my words—they said I was inventing a new language of my own. I’d use words like “rememberize.” But at least they got a letter from me. I get help on all my letters now. The lady who watches my children has two years of college, and she helps me type out the postcards to the disc jockeys and the fans.
I send out about six thousand postcards from Mexico every winter. There’s not too many singers in country music who do that. My twins even lick the stamps. But I believe you’ve got to thank the fans if they take the trouble to write to you. Somebody got the idea I couldn’t read one day on my bus because he saw some of my boys opening my mail for me. That’s not because I can’t read. That’s because they screen out all the threats and the requests for money and that stuff. I read my letters from my good fans, and I try to answer ’em, too.
I write down the words to my songs, and I can read the Bible pretty well. I’ve also read some history books about my Indians to find out what the white man did. I’ve got white history books and red history books—and let me tell you, friends, they tell different stories about the same events.
I ought to be able to read a little, because Mommy made sure all us kids walked two miles down the holler to the one-room schoolhouse. There’s a big difference between holler kids and coal-camp kids. The kids in Van Lear went to a regular school with one teacher for each grade, but we only had one teacher for all eight grades. Usually, we had six or seven different teachers a year. I guess they didn’t get paid too good—or else we scared off those teachers who didn’t know how to handle us.
One time the Social Security people said you could get more benefits if you had your kids enrolled in school. All over the hollers, there was fathers sending their fifteen-year-old sons back to school. Next thing you’d know, them big boys would be whipping the teacher. And then people would have to hire ’em a new teacher.
We were used to being out-of-doors, and we’d use any excuse to get out of the schoolhouse. Like going to the outhouse. There was a boys’ outhouse on one side of the school and a girls’ outhouse on the other side. Or, we’d say we needed a drink. Across the path was a spring that came down off the mountain. You’d bring your own cup and drink that water and it was delicious. One time my cousin Marie Castle and me went out for a drink and stayed a couple of hours. The teacher had to send her son to find us.
One time we got a new teacher that had only one arm, and we figured we’d test him out right away. But he made up for the arm he didn’t have with a red paddle, and he just about wore us out. I don’t know how he did it—but we never bothered him again.
Half the time I was fighting with my cousin Marie and other girls. The other half I was fighting with the boys. People are always saying that the reason I got married before I was fourteen was because kids in the mountains get started with boys at an early age. Well, that wasn’t true with me. I never had any boyfriends until Doolittle came along—I was too busy fighting with ’em to have boyfriends. One time I claimed a boyfriend, this little old boy named Granville Bolden. I used to sing out, “I love Granville Bolden,” but I just did that out of meanness.
Fighting was how I got nine whippings in one day. We were playing “may-hide” out behind the school. (Most people call it “hide-and-seek” but we called it “may-hide.” I told you—this is Webb’s Dictionary here.) Anyway, this little cousin of mine, he tagged me, and I got mad and I said, “Why, you little turd, you.”
The teacher heard it, and she gave me a whipping. I was a tough little kid. Mean? I’d die before I let on it hurt. Somebody asked me why I got whipped and I said, “Because I called my cousin a little turd.” Well, that teacher heard me again, and she marched me right back in and whipped me again. That went on until I got whipped nine times in one afternoon. Finally, me and Junior went out the window and ran home. We got a new teacher soon after that, so I was saved.
When I got bigger, I got the job of walking to school early and starting the fire in the potbellied stove. I’d get paid a dollar a month for that. I also cleaned erasers and did little jobs. I was real proud because I was earning money and helping the teacher. I could add four and four and I could read the primer—“There goes Alice. Here comes Spot.” So I’d start teaching the younger ones. We only had a few books and when we got new workbooks one year, we thought we were really something. I went to school clear through the eighth grade. I liked it so much I even repeated the eighth grade. Don’t forget, there wasn’t any ninth grade. But the way education used to be in one-room schoolhouses is about like fourth grade in a regular school.
Another reason I liked school was because we had this program on Friday where the kids performed. Mommy made me a ruffled, red, crepe-paper dress, and I wore it until it fell apart. And I’d get up in front of the class and sing for as long as they let me.
Sometimes people ask me what kind of music we sang back in eastern Kentucky in those days. Well, it was our own music. I know there’s some kind of history to mountain music—like it came from Ireland or England or Scotland and we kept up the tradition, hidden off in the mountains. I know there are folk musicians who come down to the mountains to make tape recordings of the old people singing the old hymns and stuff. But I couldn’t honestly say if we had that kind of music.
Some people even say we talk like people from England or Ireland. Like how I say H in front of some of my words. Like “hain’t” instead of “ain’t.” Well, I just talk how I feel. And singing was the same way. If it was from the other side of the ocean, then that’s the way it was. We didn’t know, nor care very much.
Most of our songs told a story. You could tell me that’s the old-fashioned way people had of telling the news, before newspapers and radio. All I know is, most country songs are ballads. Like we’d sing true songs about somebody getting killed. Mommy taught me a song called “The Great Titanic,” and she taught me how to make motions with my hands to help in telling the story. Like when the ship went down, I’d curve my hands downward.
Another song I sang in my class was about a woman named Luly Barrs who got pregnant by this man, but he wouldn’t marry her. He tied a piece of railroad steel around her neck and threw her into the Ohio River, and they found her three months later. You go back to Kentucky, and I’ll bet you there’s lots of old people still know the song about Luly Barrs.
Most of our songs we learned from our friends and our family. We didn’t sing too much stuff from the radio when I was little because, like I said before, we didn’t have a radio until I was eleven. The first song I remember on the radio was “I’m Walking the Floor over You,” with Ernest Tubb singing. Nowadays, I can stand right on the stage and watch my friend Ernest Tubb singing that same song. Thrilled? That ain’t the word for it.
Nowadays, people learn their songs from the radio or records. You go up to the mountains and the kids all know the top country songs, even rock ’n’ roll. But they don’t know the old songs anymore.
When we weren’t in school, we were still mean. We used to go around tipping outhouses over, or turning over corn shocks on Halloween. Anything to be mean.
Marie Castle was my cousin
and my closest friend. She used to stay with us a lot, and we’d fight one minute and play together the next, but we always knew how the other one felt. Even today, when she pops into my bus in Columbus, Ohio, I know exactly what Marie is feeling. Well just hug each other and start laughing and crying and telling stories about Butcher Holler. Ain’t neither of us changed one bit. We’re still mean.
The last time I was in Columbus, Marie reminded me about the Halloween when we saw a vision. We were rubbing soap on the windows of Tillie Dollarhide, who lived just up the holler. I could see her working in the kitchen. Suddenly I looked down in the yard and saw that same woman walking by some rocks in her garden. Marie saw her, too. We just ran away and never went back to bother her. Doolittle says I’m crazy to believe in “haints”—that’s our word for ghosts. But I’ve seen some things I can’t explain at some séances we’ve held in the last couple of years. I’ll get into that later.
Marie used to chew tobacco—Day’s Work, Beech-Nut, any brand she could find. Sometimes we both smoked rabbit tobacco, which grows wild in the hollers. That’s the plant Mommy calls “Life Everlasting” and uses for tea.
Like I said before, Mommy smoked but she didn’t want us to. She saw smoke coming out of the barn one time and accused Marie of smoking. Marie said I was smoking, too, so we both got whipped. The next day I whipped Marie on the way to school. She was heavier than me, but I was meaner.
One time me and Marie were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen but we got into some home-brewed beer my brother left around. We got dog drunk before we remembered we were supposed to be cleaning up. Well, we poured a whole can of lye into the tub of water. We put our brushes on the wet floor and went skating around, having a great time. I said, “Marie, this floor must really be dirty. Look at the dirt come up.” But it wasn’t dirt. It was the paint we were a-taking up. Mommy whipped us good when she got home. We were just lucky our skin was already used to the lye from doing the wash on Mondays. If it wasn’t, we could have gotten burned bad, the more I think about it.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter Page 5
