But Doo has more sense than me. He says he catches me staring out the windows at all those pickers that wander into Nashville trying to get discovered. He swears I’d hire every one of ’em if he didn’t put a stop to it.
We visit hospitals whenever we can. The best way to do it is to try and not think of all the problems that the people have. I was in the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, and this young boy was in the cancer ward and he said, “I’ll bet you don’t remember me?” The boy said it like he was sure that I wouldn’t and he was all set to be disappointed. But I’ve got this memory for faces and it seemed like I knew him.
“Yes,” I said, “it was in London, England, two years ago at that big stadium. You said hello to me.”
And that boy got so excited, he started crying. The doctor told him he didn’t have long to live, but I told him, “Now, you just get better and then come and visit me at the ranch.” Just by the way he cheered up for a while, I felt I did something real good for somebody.
It’s the same way with charity. I would dig into my pocketbook and give away money all the time if they didn’t stop me. I’ve done it. Somebody tells me a story and I just say, “Here, take whatever I’ve got.” I know I can’t do that forever, so now they’ve worked it out where we give a certain amount to charities like United Way. Whenever some group talks to me, I tell ’em to see my manager. That sounds cold, but it’s the only way. And we give plenty. I know because we’ve helped build churches and given money to stop diseases, because I insist on it.
Doo keeps most of the letters away from me, but sometimes I get hold of one. We got a letter from a woman who said she had six kids and they were being evicted from their home and some had diseases. It was a real pitiful story. I was about to send ’em some money when Doo stopped me. Instead he called up the sheriff where that lady lives. The sheriff said that woman had six kids by six different men and that none of the kids had any diseases that he knew of. He also said they had a new car and a television on installments and that nobody was kicking them out. If it had been up to me, I’d have just sent the money.
I keep threatening to cut out all the extra appearances because I’m too tired. Pete Axthelm, who wrote such a nice story when I was on the cover of Newsweek magazine, remembers me saying, “No more benefits” until somebody reminded me that we had a benefit scheduled the following Monday.
“But that’s for kids,” I said. “That’s different.”
Which is true. How’re you gonna turn down some poor kids?
Sometimes you can’t help but get involved. At least I can’t. My manager, David Skepner, told my writer this story, and it’s true:
“Loretta had just returned to Nashville from a grueling six-week tour and, as usual, on her first day back, everybody within a hundred-mile radius was there to tell her their problems. She was scheduled to do a benefit performance that night and she could hardly keep her eyes open. She knew a number of the local ‘squirrels’ were trying to see her and she started to leave the bus to talk to them. We quietly tried to explain that she needed thirty minutes of rest rather than listening to everyone’s problems. She looked at me with tired eyes that seemed to hold compassion for the whole world and said: ‘Listen, when I die, I want God to put me in charge of all the people that nobody loves.’
“That is what makes Loretta Lynn, Loretta Lynn.”
Well, that’s mighty nice people feel that way about me. I did say it and I meant it. And they can even put it on my tombstone when I die.
Sometimes it seems, though, the more I try to do good the more problems I have. I got into more trouble than you can imagine over that coal-mine explosion at Hyden, Kentucky. There are still people down there that accuse me of lying, stealing, and cheating, when the truth is I put myself into the hospital because I just wore myself down with trying to make money to send their kids to college, to let ’em be somebody and stay away from the mines. But it didn’t work out too good.
Everybody’s told stories about me and Hyden, but I’ve never really told my side of it.
Hyden is a little town in Leslie County, Kentucky, about seventy-five miles from where I was born, but I never heard of it until December 30, 1970. Around noontime there was a terrific explosion at this mine on Hurricane Creek. That name caught my attention right away, because we live on Hurricane Creek down in Tennessee—but it’s a completely different creek.
This mine was what they call a drift mine—just like my Daddy used to work in—a tunnel straight back into the mountain. But it was one of those dog-holes, a cheap, nonunion mine, whereas Daddy always worked for big companies.
There were thirty-nine men working on the shift that day. One of them was just heading toward the outside when the explosion blew him clear across the road, but he was safe. The explosion blew dust and timber across the holler, like a tornado. And right away, the news went out over the radio. I heard about it even though I was in a different state. I said a prayer for those men because I’ve seen how mine disasters are, and I knew the picture was bad. Whenever there’s a disaster, the word gets out by telephone and radio, and by people yelling up their hollers. Within a few minutes, all the families of the miners were heading toward this narrow dirt road to the mine—women would just leave their cooking and their babies and start walking toward the mine to wait for the news. Nobody could go into the mine until the government inspectors got there, because there were all kinds of fumes. But even then, people knew it wasn’t going to be too good.
They waited all evening, while the holler was crowded with official cars and trucks. People built bonfires, and the Red Cross gave out baloney sandwiches and coffee. The families huddled together while the press and other outsiders stood and waited. Some women cried and others just stared. The governor of Kentucky said something cold about how mining is a rough business and you’ve got to expect things like this sometimes. … That was before they even found any bodies.
It started to snow around nine o’clock, and it got real miserable down in that holler. Then the rescue crews found some bodies and bundled ’em in pitiful canvas bags and brought them out by stretchers.
Well, it snowed all night, and all thirty-eight men were dead. In two feet of snow, they brought the bodies to the Hyden School and let the next of kin identify each man. This was right after Christmas—decorations were still up—and they were holding funerals. I saw pictures on television—houses all lit up, each with the casket in the front room and people praying. I’ve been to mountain funerals, and I could just hear the wailing. I saw one woman throw herself on the casket. She was about twenty-three years old and had a couple of babies. I remember my Mommy and all the years she worried about my Daddy. And I just sat in front of that television and bawled like a baby.
We followed that story for days. The mine officials held a hearing and said the men were killed because somebody was probably using an illegal explosive that sets off sparks and probably touched off some dust. They still haven’t settled it legally—the issue is still in the courts—but that’s what was in the papers.
For me the thing that mattered was that thirty-eight men left 101 children behind. The insurance companies and the government people were trying to get those poor widows to sign all kinds of legal papers. And those women couldn’t afford lawyers, so they were signing for payments that would get the company and the government off the hook. Meanwhile they had to bury their husbands and keep on living.
This just tore me up because these women were no different than my Mommy would have been—or me, when I first married Doo. Those women weren’t prepared for all this stuff because all that knowledge was in the heads of the men lawyers. So I decided I was gonna do something to help change things. The first thing was to visit Hyden. We went to the graveyards and I met the widows and I visited the mine. It was the saddest little mine, a little hole like a cave, no posts. All I kept saying was, “No wonder.…”
I heard how Leslie County was one of the poorest counties in the whole United
States, with a high birth rate and a high death rate. And the mines were the only way to make a living. Maybe the men did know what was going on in that mine, but if they or their wives had complained, they would have been out of a job and on welfare.
I decided I would help at a benefit show for the widows. But I didn’t want the money to go just to lawyers or to get spent right away. I wanted the money to help people to break that way of living that keeps them poor and uneducated, that forces men to work in dog-hole mines and women to have too many babies and not know how to deal with lawyers and slippery little government officials.
Well, we organized this benefit for March 1, 1971, and we held it in Freedom Hall in Louisville, which can hold over 15,000 people. We got more than forty performers from Nashville. Over forty radio stations carried it.
I went around for a month beforehand, publicizing the benefit. I’d talk about it during my show, then I’d fly to Hollywood or New York and go on a talk show just to plug my benefit. I’d try to get the hosts of these shows to talk seriously about the sad life of a miner. It ain’t easy being serious on these talk shows, if the hosts just want to make fun of your language or hear hillbilly stories. But I think I got my message across anyway.
People say I did it for publicity or something. Well, let me tell you, friends, I spent over $10,000 out of my own pocket just flying around between dates. And another thing, this was at the time when I was starting to break up with the Wilburns, and my health was starting to go on me.
Finally the night came. The Greyhound bus brought the families up from Hyden. Colonel Sanders, the real Colonel Sanders—he’s from Kentucky himself—gave out free dinners.
The show wasn’t organized as well as it should have been, because of Doyle Wilburn not being in good shape. The widows were seated off to the side somewhere. During the early part of the show, they actually threatened to walk out if they weren’t treated better. It was all a misunderstanding, but David Skepner, who was working for Music Corporation of America at the time, had to do some fast work to make everyone happy. There was a lot of tension, but Doolittle got the show done with a lot of good country music and speeches and appeals for donations.
We heard that money came in from as far away as Canada, Sweden, and the Bahamas. One joker in Macon, Georgia, fancied himself a big steel executive and pledged one million dollars. Before we could check it out, somebody announced it over the microphone, and everybody went crazy. They were all figuring out the good things they could buy with a million dollars. But later it turned out the guy was just being funny at our expense, and we tried to explain to the widows that it was just a bad joke.
We also thought we were getting things for free that we weren’t—for example, we had to pay to rent the hall. Then we found out there were unpaid funeral bills, and the attorneys figured they’d better clear them up first. Everyone thought we had over a million dollars, but our expenses ran higher than I would have liked. A few people charged us expenses for every phone call they made for months; meanwhile, I was paying for my own airplane trips. Anyway, when all the bills were paid, we still had around $91,000.
This money was in a trust fund to go for education for the widows and their children. But about a week later, we heard that some of the widows wanted their share of the money right away. Well, I could understand that: they had bills to pay and kids to feed. But that wasn’t what we gave that benefit for. We wanted to do something special. We held out and didn’t give ’em the money, but the widows kept asking for it. They’d call up my office or make a statement to the press that Loretta Lynn was taking their money. I know how they felt, they didn’t do it for meanness. It just tore me up. It was hard to believe they’d turn on me.
They kept after my lawyers until finally, in 1972, my lawyer advised me to split it up. You’re gonna be driven crazy, he told me. He said I’d have to put up with it for the rest of my life.
Only one of those children received any education from the money. We split the money into thirty-eight equal shares of around $2,400, and that was it. I don’t know what they did with the money. Since then I’ve heard some of ’em remarried, which is good, because nobody should be alone; and I’ve heard some of them ran into trouble in their little towns. They got to be known as the “rich widows” because of the insurance and benefits.
Anyway, I tried to do something at Hyden and I’m sorry we didn’t succeed. But if any of these people from Hyden read this book, I hope you’ll know I was on your side. I never thought I was better than you, I just wish we could have done better.
24
The Truth about My Health
The way I let you treat me,
It’s enough to make me sick.…
—“What Makes Me Tick,” by Loretta Lynn
The deal with the Hyden show broke my health because it came at the time of the separation from the Wilburns. My health got so bad, there were all kinds of rumors going about me.
One of the rumors was I was drinking too much, another rumor was I was having a nervous breakdown, another that I had cancer, and another that I was taking some kind of pills or dope. That’s a pretty exciting combination for a girl to have, ain’t it? The truth ain’t as exciting, but at least it’s the truth, and this is where I set the story straight.
The breakup with the Wilburns caused me to lose my appetite. I couldn’t eat or sleep right. I started to lose weight during 1971 and people said I looked different. The Johnson girls were so afraid of me losing my spunk that they’d say anything just to get me riled up. Loretta Johnson would just tease me until I started rassling with her. Then she’d laugh like a maniac, because I was getting back to the mean old country girl she knew. But in truth, I was getting worn down.
I remember one time at the Disc Jockey Convention in 1971, when I stayed up all night giving interviews until I couldn’t sit up straight. Around midnight, I was supposed to go to a club to get some kind of award. But I was so tired, and then some guy I knew reminded me it was time to go, and I started yelling at him in words I’m not about to repeat. I didn’t realize I knew those words. But this guy wasn’t aware of how bad I was feeling, and he started shouting back at me. I kept getting louder and louder, saying those words over and over again. They tell me that everybody was staring at me, I hardly knew what was coming off.
Now I don’t know what you’d call this feeling. Some people would say I was “overwrought” or “overtired.” Some people would say I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t good. And I suspect my health was the cause of most of it.
With my periods, always irregular, I’d get such bad cramps that it would be difficult for me to perform for three or four days. The older I got, the worse they became.
I’ve also had migraine headaches since I was around seventeen, but they got even worse around this time. Some people believe migraines are caused by tensions in your job or in your marriage. But I feel like mine are just a family weakness. I remember my Daddy had ’em. He’d pace the floor just holding his head and sobbing. Now it was starting to catch up with me. I could feel this ache coming on, and unless I’d lie down and sleep, it would turn into this headache that would make me just pass out. Then I started passing out on stage.
Now, friends, if you really want to try something unusual, try passing out in front of 5,000 people. Fortunately, the boys in my band have learned to tell when it’s coming. They just take me by the elbow and help me sit until it passes, or else they help me off the stage. One time I was off the stage about forty-five minutes and when I came back, Don Ballinger and the boys had done such a good job playing and joking that nobody cared whether I came back or not.
But what bothered me was hearing some fans afterward. “She must have been drunk,” some fans said.
I couldn’t believe it. I hardly ever drink, and there’s a good reason. Have you ever known an Indian who could drink? My Daddy, who was part Indian, couldn’t drink either. Give him one sip and he’d be just about
drunk. My Mommy had some homemade brandy once and went right to sleep. It’s just a curse we Indians have. The most I can take is a sloe gin fizz once in a while, and never near a performance. I don’t even take coffee, much less alcohol. None of it’s good for you. I feel sorry for people who drink.
But can you believe it? They thought I was drunk. Now when I don’t feel good I make an announcement that I’ve got a migraine, but there’re people who still don’t believe it.
When I feel a migraine coming on, I just go crazy. I start crying or talking or banging my head against the wall or I cut my hair. A few months ago I just cut and cut and couldn’t get it right and I got madder and madder until I finally gave up. If I hadn’t stopped, I would have been as bald as a rock.
These migraines kept getting worse. I passed out in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada. Then backstage I said, “Let me go back to the hotel so I can die in peace.” The doctor said he had migraines himself and sent me to the hospital. He gave me a shot to make me stop vomiting (that’s one of the sure signs of migraine—nausea always either comes with it or follows it). After lying there twenty-five minutes, I was fine, but as soon as I stood up the whole room started turning on me. I lay down again and stayed for three hours. They let me out of the hospital and gave me medicine which helped for a while. But it got to be a regular problem.
When me and the Wilburns got into a lawsuit over me leaving them, I couldn’t sleep, even at home. One time my right index finger was all swollen, and I went to see a doctor in Nashville. I keeled over, right in his office. The doctor said I should go to the hospital but I told him I had to go on the road. Doo figured if I had to go to a hospital, it might as well be at home, so they put me in the hospital in Nashville and fed me through my veins for a week. When I left they gave me nerve pills, but they didn’t do me much good. I ended up in another hospital soon afterwards. The reporters, the patients, and the nurses managed to find me anyway, even though I used another name.
Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner's Daughter Page 18
