Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [104]
After our first five songs, I stop the show and introduce Chuck Flynn, who replaced John Thornhill on the bass. Chuck walks to the microphone and says in that slow, country style of his:
“I come from Mount Vernon, Ohio, just up the road a piece. My fan club was gonna give me a parade, but one got sick, and the other had to work.”
About fifty people cheer for Chuck. He’s real popular up here. That makes Don Ballinger start pouting like a baby, wanting his attention. I remember I saw his wife, Nancy, offstage somewhere. She’s a pretty gal who’s raised four kids and has a regular job and puts up with Don. I figure, what the heck, it’s family night, so I call Nancy out on stage.
Can you believe this? Here’s this pretty woman walking out on stage and you know what Don calls her? “The Tank.” He looks her up and down as she walks toward us.
“It’s sad how much she’s aged since the last time I saw her,” Don says.
I give Don a shove and tell him to stop smarting off. Now you see why I’m on the women’s side. We get on with the music and finish up good. Afterwards, I decide I feel well enough to sign autographs. I sit at a table and sign, while the fans line up. Some of ’em just stare when they get close while others ask questions.
“Do you know so-and-so from Paintsville?” somebody asks.
“How are the twins?”
“Is that your real hair?”
While I’m signing, I catch a glimpse of an old friend of mine from Van Lear—Audrey Blevins Honaker. She was one of the coal-camp girls who works in a supermarket in Columbus now. When I got started in show business, she used to have me over to her house and she’d fix chicken and dumplings and corn bread and pinto beans, my favorite meal. But lately it seems like my schedule is too tight and we never see each other.
“Did you get the food?” Audrey asks.
I don’t remember any food.
“The pie and cookies I put on the bus,” Audrey says.
I never saw ’em, but I tell her I did.
“They were terrific,” I say. Hmmm. My boys must have eaten ’em.
“Next time, you come out to the house,” Audrey says.
I promise I will, and keep signing. Seven hundred autographs later, I go back to the bus and I find the boys have saved me half of Audrey’s strawberry pie and a few peanut butter cookies. Me and Marie eat and talk in the back of the bus until the boys have loaded their equipment. I give Marie another big hug—her starting to tremble again, me not knowing what I can do or say that will really help my cousin. We hold hands for a minute, and then she leaves the bus.
The bus goes back to the motel. All the boys are invited out to Frontier Ranch, where they used to play. I just go up to my room and try to find a Gregory Peck movie on television, then stay awake until three o’clock, just tossing and talking to myself, and thinking about my babies and Marie and my headaches. And finally I fall asleep.
Sunday, May 5: It’s raining ugly out. Just a mean, gray day, and I don’t feel like getting up for nothing. But Jim Webb knocks on my door and tells me we’ve got to leave by nine. You mean it ain’t nine yet? I stumble around, throw my clothes on, grab my little red overnight bag, and we take the elevator down. There’re some of my fans in the lobby—take a good look, fans, now you’re seeing the real Loretta Lynn. Ain’t she something?
I climb right back in my bed in the bus and sleep until eleven o’clock. Then I freshen myself up and visit the front of the bus. Somebody tells me we’re playing a four o’clock show in Toledo, Ohio. That’s fine with me. Nothing I can do about it anyway. Just go up there and sing.
I enjoy sitting up front with my boys. We talk about our problems and I’ll give ’em advice. I’ve even lent ’em money when they need it, though Doo says I shouldn’t get so close to the boys. But I can’t help it. When you’re living in the same bus with people you like, you can’t help but get interested in them.