Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [25]
Everybody knows who’s in charge when Doolittle is around. Like last summer, when we were playing in Ontelaunee Park, in Pennsylvania, and one of the fans wanted to buy a tape right in the middle of the show. Now ordinarily we don’t do this. We sell albums and tapes after the show is over but not during the performance. But Ken Riley, the drummer who’s in charge of our sales, sold a tape during the show to a guy who walked up to the edge of the stage. He did it just for a joke, only Doolittle didn’t think it was too funny. After the show he announced, “That won’t happen again.” He didn’t say it real loud—but he made his point. Of course, we aim to do it again, just as soon as he’s off the tour for a while. You can just bet I’ll say to my boys, “Boys, get your tapes ready to sell. Doolittle ain’t with us tonight.” And we’ll sell one—just to be mean.
But on important matters, we listen to my husband. That’s why it drives me crazy when I hear somebody say, “Gee, Mooney, it must be great to be married to a rich singer so you don’t have to work.” That’s the kind of person who doesn’t know that Doo spends half a year running our ranch and the other half running our road show. He is always working. When someone says something like that, I can see the muscles get tight in Doo’s neck, and I know he’d like to take a punch at that person.
Doolittle would like to be John Wayne, rough and tough, but really he’s a softie. You should see him with our babies, the twins, and you’d know he’s a good father. It’s just that he doesn’t like to show that part of himself to strangers. I guess that’s the way men are supposed to behave. I don’t know why. Me, I’m affectionate. I like to touch people and tell ’em I love ’em. I guess it isn’t as easy for a man. Maybe that’s why we’ve stayed married so long. They say opposites attract.
When I’m upset I let loose with my tongue and everyone knows it. Or, when I’m nervous, which I am a lot of times, you can see me shaking a mile away. But when Doo is nervous, he holds it inside. He gets stomachaches and pains from not knowing how to let his feelings out. But bad or good, Doo is always the life of the party. Sometimes he pretends he’s drunk so that everyone will loosen up and have a good time. That embarrasses me a lot, but he don’t care. And when it comes to me, he won’t allow me to embarrass him. He puts me down and I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. We started off with almost a father-daughter relationship, and in some ways we’ve still got one.
In a lot of ways, it was good for me to marry someone older than me, because I could learn from him. But, in another way, it wasn’t so good because I went directly from Daddy to Doolittle without ever being on my own. Even today, men are telling me what to do. My husband, my lawyer, my accountant, my personal manager. In a sense, I still don’t have complete control over myself. Maybe I never will. But if it wasn’t for Doo, we wouldn’t have what we have today. People ask if we would still be poor. My answer is no. Doo would have made sure that we had a good house and enough to eat, even if he had to work twenty-four hours a day.
I guess a lot of my fans have heard parts of how me and Doolittle met, but there’s still a lot that I never told before. For example: it’s true that I never met Doolittle until that night at the pie social. But I did see him during the war in his uniform—I remember shouting to my cousin, “Look at that boy! He looks like a little