Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [23]
In one respect, things got better when I was growing up, because we got a doctor that would stick by us. It used to be we’d have to doctor ourselves. But while I was in school, we got this young doctor, John Turner, who was right from Johnson County. Not too many doctors wanted to work in the mountains; they can make more money in the big cities. But old Doc, he’s got himself an airplane and a farm and a townhouse, so he hasn’t done too bad himself. Plus, he was always there when you needed him.
Doc knows what kind of people we are. You can’t fool him. He’s always telling me stories about the country people who come to the hospital. He insists he had a woman tell him, “Doc, I’m worried about my daughter. She hasn’t had her monthlies in about three months.” So Doc asked the woman if her daughter ever had sexual intercourse. And the woman says, “I don’t know, Doc, but if she needs it, give it to her, and put it on the medical card.” See, we didn’t know those big words in Butcher Holler.
Anyway, Doc was a good man for us. He’d go out and make house calls, even if he couldn’t get there in his car. One of his earliest buddies was a fellow named Doolittle Lynn, who had this old mule that used to take Doc around during snowstorms. Doc didn’t know it, but the mule was blind. One time Doolittle was taking Doc up to some sick family in a snowstorm, and Doc says, “The mule seems to be stumbling.”
Doolittle replied, “Doc, you got to lift up his bridle every time you see a rough spot, so he’ll know enough to raise his feet. Don’t you know the mule is blind?”
Doc jumped down off that mule and swore he wouldn’t ride no blind mule. But after a few feet in the snow, he got back on.
Doc used to come to school and give typhoid shots to all the kids. I used to volunteer to be the first and say, “See, it don’t hurt.” I didn’t mind the shot—I guess I liked the attention.
Doc probably saved my life when I was about twelve. I got a blood infection in my leg, and I swear they gave me ninety-nine shots before I got better. That was in the days before penicillin. One night while I was in the hospital, my cousin Marie came to visit because I was lonesome. She slept in the bed with me all night. Early in the morning, while we were both asleep, the nurse came in to give me my shot. She grabbed the first leg she saw, which was Marie’s, and she gave her the shot. Marie didn’t appreciate it much. I swear I can remember ’em talking about amputating my leg, but Doc says he doesn’t remember that.
Later Doc helped me with my first two babies, but then I didn’t see him for a long time because we moved to Washington. After I started singing I came back to Paintsville and we got to be friends again. Nowadays whenever I get back to Johnson County I stay at his farm, along the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy. Doc’s second wife is named Gwen, and she likes to play country music herself. So Doc, just for fun, built this beautiful stage in his old airplane hangar. It’s got a nicer dressing room and backstage than half the places we play. Doc holds a music jubilee every Saturday night and we play there once in the spring and once in the fall.
All my boys pile into Doc’s house, and Gwen feeds us sausages and biscuits and eggs until we can’t stand it. Doc and Doolittle like to drink and talk about that old blind mule until the two of them are about as blind as the mule.
I’ll tell you, we hate to leave. People sit on haystacks and camp chairs, with swallows flying overhead, under the rafters, puffy clouds floating over the mountains, lightning bugs in the darkness. It’s a real beautiful time. I wish we could play more in the country instead of them smoky, dirty places we go to. We’re country musicians; I don’t think we could play our kind of music if we didn’t come from little places like Butcher Holler.
Most of us got started on the old-fashioned songs or in church, like me. We used our same school building for church every Sunday. We had different preachers