Personally, I like to listen to soul music. I love Ray Charles. I listen to Aretha Franklin once in a while. In fact, I try to do a little soul on each of my albums. You listen to “Blueberry Hill” on my “One’s on the Way” album—I try to really let go. I’ll bet you I’ve got as many black fans as Charley Pride. Of course, I’m Charley’s biggest fan, so it balances out.
Still, I don’t listen much to the radio or other people’s records, because I don’t want to be influenced by ’em. That’s one thing I regret. People tell me about Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan or the Beatles, and I’ve got to admit I don’t know their work. I admire the good songwriters in country music—Kris Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall can tell a story better in one line than most of us can in five. And I think I’ve told a few stories in my songs, too. That song “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ ” got to be Number One in the nation, and it was also the first album ever made by a woman singer that sold a million dollars.
I got lots of help in my recording sessions from Owen Bradley. If he would make a suggestion, he usually had a good reason. In the past five years, I’ve gotten more experienced about what’s going to sell. So I don’t clear my songs with Owen anymore. I just show up and record ’em.
The last time he didn’t like a song was when I was singing “Wings upon Your Horns.” He turned off all the recording knobs and hollered, “Hey, this can’t go on the air like this. What’s the matter with you?” See, he thought there was something dirty with the lyrics. I was singing “You’re the only one to make me …” and then I’d take a long pause and sing, “fall in love and then not take me.…” Well, I didn’t know “make” was another word for having sex. I told you, I’m real backward. That’s just the way the words broke between the lines. I didn’t plan it that way. Then Owen got all upset about using the word “horns.” He thought it sounded dirty. And all I was trying to do was make a contrast between the devil’s horns and the angel’s wings. What’s dirty about that?
I just hollered right back, “Turn that doggone thing back on. I ain’t through yet.” And it got to be the Number One song of the year in Cashbox. We think pretty closely most of the time, though.
It was Owen that provided one of my big thrills in show business. Ernest Tubb, who recorded on Decca, was looking for a duet album, and he had his choice of women singers. Just on Decca alone he could have sung with Kitty Wells or Brenda Lee. But he chose me, after I’d had just a couple of hits. I remember Ernest chose me because, he said, I was an “honest country performer who sang with her heart and soul.” It was a thrill to work with him, and I love him for all he’s done for me. Ernest never tried to hog the songs. He’d just share the melody with me, without getting fancy, and I still think they’re some of the best songs I ever did.
Nowadays I sing my duets with Conway Twitty, but I usually arrange for Ernest to make one tour with me each year. His boys are crazier than my boys are, and they pull some awful stunts. But when I get out on stage with Ernest, I feel like I’m still that little girl huddled on the floor in front of the Philco radio on Saturday night.
21
We Bought the Whole Town
Flies are buzzin’ everywhere; balin’ hay or rockin’ chairs,
Supper’s on, I’m almost there; it’s back to the country life for me.…
—“Back to the Country,” by Tracey Lee
Before I knew it, we were making more money than we’d ever dreamed of. I went from twenty-five dollars a show up to fifty, to a hundred and above. But I still couldn’t believe we had any money.
I still did my own canning and put food away for the winter. I remember telling Grandpa Jones on the Opry one time that I had a bunch of meat and vegetables salted in my smokehouse because, “You never know when this show business is going to go kerflooie.” Once you’ve been poor, you always feel in the back of your mind that you’re going to be poor again.
And suddenly the records started to pay off. That meant Doo could give up his job as a mechanic and take more of an interest in my business.
We rented a little house in Madison, Tennessee, but Doo always wanted his own ranch. I think he would have chucked the whole thing and moved back to Washington if we couldn’t have a ranch. He must have spent six months looking before we finally found a forty-five-acre ranch out in Goodlettsville where he could start the rodeo he always wanted to run. We started to fix up the place for a family of four kids. Ha! We had a surprise coming.
After my first four children were born, the doctor fitted me with a diaphragm to stop having more. The RH thing scared me, too. I didn’t want to take a chance with another birth. But I guess you get careless when you’re on the road, traveling as much as we did. Anyway, late in 1963, I discovered I was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it at first, but the doctor told me it was true.
I suppose this sounds bad the way I say it, but I was unhappy at first. I was just starting to bring in some money, it was getting to be more fun all the time, and now it looked like my career was going to be interrupted or maybe even ended. Plus I was sure my next baby was going to be affected by the RH problem.
I remember bawling when I told the Johnson girls I was pregnant. They told me not to worry, that things would work out for the best. Doo seemed kind of pleased to see there was life in the old boy yet. I cried for nine months, worrying while they gave me shots to control the RH thing.
Then we had another surprise. There were twins in my Mommy’s family, but nobody ever told me that they skip a generation. It was time for twins to pop up again. We had a young doctor and he seemed more surprised than we were when he told us he suspected there might be two.
One morning in August, I canned thirty-eight quarts of green beans. That evening I went to the hospital to deliver two of the prettiest little twins you ever saw, early the next morning, August 6, 1964—one of the best days of my life.
The young doctor had never delivered twins before, and when it was over you couldn’t tell who was the father the way Doo and the Doc were shaking hands and congratulating each other.
I named one Patsy, after Patsy Cline, and the other one Peggy, after my oldest sister. They were as bright and happy as could be, and they’ve been a blessing on us ever since. They are my angels, my God-sent children. It’s been a whole second life for me and Doo. Our first kids came when we didn’t have any money, and no time to devote to them. I felt younger with the twins than I did when I was eighteen. Our two boys always said they wouldn’t accept a baby if it was a girl. But when they saw those twins, Jack claimed Patsy and Ernest claimed Peggy. It’s funny how their personalities matched just right.
We decided not to have any more kids after that, so Doolittle got his vasectomy. When they start coming in pairs it’s time to quit! But we were never sorry for a day after those babies were born. You know that record, “One’s on the Way,” where the mother is going crazy raising her babies? At the end of the song I say, “Gee, I hope it ain’t twins again.” Patsy and Peggy don’t like the song for that reason. I guess that’s why Dolly Parton is their favorite singer.
I knew I wanted to go back to singing again. Betty got married at this time, and the other kids were all busy in school. We had an older woman housekeeper, but she left when I had the twins because it was too much for her. Then we got fortunate and hired Gloria Land, who had two years of college. She’s a religious lady who took real responsibility for the babies, and now it’s almost like they’re hers. She’s not like a baby-sitter or a maid. She’s really like a mother to them. She yells at ’em, and they yell at her, but she runs the house, and we all love her like a member of the family.
In fact, when I go home, I’m more like some favorite aunt that’s visiting for a while, until the twins get used to me again. If I sit down next to Doolittle at the dinner table, they’ll give me dirty looks until I move. They’re closer to him because they see him all the time. They don’t like me moving in on their father.
The twins don’t believe I can cook, either. Gloria is
a good cook—good, old-fashioned roasts with plenty of fresh vegetables. We don’t eat real fancy, just put it on the table in the kitchen and everybody eats (after the twins say the blessing). But if I ask the twins if they want me to cook, you should see the panicked look on their faces. They won’t eat my cooking, not even a sandwich or a hamburger or anything. What do they think I was doing the first eleven years I was married?
But when they were little, I was on the road. Doolittle can remember trying to wash the two of ’em at once in soapy water and being scared one of ’em was gonna slip out of his hands onto the bathroom floor. Finally he rigged up a little tub on the floor and covered the floor in towels. Later the doctor told him he wasn’t supposed to use soap anyway but baby oil instead.
Another time, Peggy got a real high fever in the middle of the night, and over the telephone the doctor said to put her in ice water. Doo put her in a tub of cold water. But when the doctor got there, he yelled at Doolittle, “I meant ice water, dammit!” And he began tossing ice cubes in the water, so she wouldn’t get brain damage from the fever. Doo said he was so shook, he just jumped in his jeep and rode around the ranch until Doc said Peggy was all right. And meanwhile, I was on the road someplace.
I take them with me sometimes. They sleep in the back of the bus with me, when I open up the two queen-sized beds. They both talk in their sleep, just like me, and they’re both kickers, too. But I like having them around me. They’re both boy crazy. There’s one friend who promises he’s going to take them sight-seeing in New York City. All they want to know is, “Are there any boys in New York City?”
The babies are really funny. They have so much energy. Everybody says they see me in them. They’re real talkative, always have an answer. They’re identical twins, but you can tell ’em apart if you’re real careful. Peggy stands real straight, and Patsy tends to slouch a little. Usually I can tell, but if I make a mistake they’re horrified. Doolittle can always tell them apart because he’s around so much. It hurts me if I get it wrong. If I’m not sure, I’ll say, “Hey, Twin, get over here.” But that doesn’t fool them. They’ll pout on me. It’s the same with strangers. One fellow tried to make conversation with ’em by saying, “When do you think I’ll be able to tell you apart?” And one of ’em looked at him like he was really stupid and said in her Southern drawl, “Prob-ly never.”
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 lay 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 buried and killed right on the property. We’ve since found Civil War bullets and little cannon balls buried on the property. 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 t
hat stuff worry him. He bought another thousand acres—the timber rights had already been sold to a big corporation which 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 300 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.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter Page 16
