Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [13]
Sometimes Daddy didn’t take a bath before he came home, and all you could see was the whites of his eyes. Well, if that coal dust could stick to his face like that, it must have gotten into his lungs, too. But it wasn’t until some time after Daddy died that the miners just plumb refused to work unless the government paid them benefits. And all the time, England and other European countries was paying off their miners with black lung. I’ve got relatives collecting black lung benefits today, but it came too late for Daddy. He got laid off when he couldn’t work fast anymore. They just said, “Take your shovel and go home.” No pension, no benefits, just “go home.” This was after I moved away, but Mommy wrote me a letter. They tried running a grocery store, but that didn’t work out because some people came down to get groceries but didn’t pay him. He left the world owing nobody anything, but a lot of people owed him.
A few years later, the company closed down the entire mine where Daddy worked: bricked it right over. But after I got into show business, I asked them to find my Daddy’s old mining equipment. They had cemented all the old equipment inside the old bath house, but they broke in just for me and found an old carbide lamp and my cousin’s safety helmet, which I’m going to put in the museum on my ranch. But they never found Daddy’s old miner’s cap or his identification tag. I’m pretty superstitious about things like that and curious about what could have happened to his stuff.
I remember after World War II, Daddy saving up enough money for a battery-operated Philco radio. I’ll never forget him pulling that radio up the holler on his sled and putting it in the corner of the living room, so proud of himself. It was the first radio we ever owned. I was eleven years old. Daddy didn’t let us run it all the time because he wanted to save the batteries for Saturday night, when he was off from work. He would sit there by the grate, where it was warm, and turn on Lowell Thomas and the news. I still hear that great deep voice of Lowell Thomas today, and it makes me think of Daddy. Then we’d get our favorite radio program of all—The Grand Ole Opry, direct from Nashville, Tennessee.
Music was always big in our family. My grandfather, Daddy’s father, played the banjo left-handed and we’d all sing. When he’d get drunk, he played it with his toes better than most people can with their fingers. But the Opry was something else. I’d sit on the floor and listen to Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, and Molly O’Day, who was the first woman singer I can remember. Mommy would do this little hoedown dance whenever Bill Monroe played his bluegrass music. I still do Mommy’s dance on my shows, kicking up my heels, hopping up and down like a squaw. I call it the “hillbilly hoedown.”
I can’t say that I had big dreams of being a star at the Opry. It was another world to me. All I knew was Butcher Holler—didn’t have no dreams that I knew about. But I’d curl up by Daddy and the radio and fall asleep, and on Sunday morning I’d find the radio still turned on, nothing playing, just some crackling noises. But inside my head I could still hear that music.
3
Mommy
Mommy scrubbed our clothes on a washboard every day.
Why I’ve seen her fingers bleed,
To complain, there was no need,
She’d smile in Mommy’s understanding way.…
—“Coal Miner’s Daughter,” by Loretta Lynn
The first time I sang “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in public, I couldn’t finish the song. I just broke down and cried because they sneaked my Mommy into the wings of the theater. Just seeing her tore me all to pieces, because I’ve always felt like a little kid compared to her.
To me, my mother always was the most beautiful woman in the world. A redheaded Irish girl was her mother and a half Cherokee was her father. So Mommy’s one-quarter Cherokee, with blue eyes and coal black hair that’s just now turning gray. Her skin gets dark if she just works in the garden for an hour. Her eyes look Irish, but her cheekbones look Indian. I always wanted to be as beautiful as Mommy, but I never