Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [29]
Doo told me once he couldn’t sleep at night just worrying about what was gonna happen to his family. One night he got an idea, and he was so afraid he’d forget it that he stayed up all night. The next morning he told his family to follow him down to the welfare office and nobody say a word, just obey his orders. So he lined up his family in the welfare office and asked for gas stamps. The man said it was impossible to give extra stamps. So Doolittle says, “All right, if we have to stay in Iowa City, there’s ten of us, and we’re gonna have to go on welfare. Let’s see, we’ll need food and clothing and welfare checks.…”
Doo says that man told him, “Don’t move. Don’t go away. I’ll see what I can do.” And in about five minutes, that man had a huge handful of stamps that he gave to Doolittle. That’s how they got back to Kentucky. Doo even had enough gas stamps left to sell for cash.
When he got his family settled, Doo tried to join the service. But he was underage and underweight. The army told him to join the navy. The marines told him to join the Coast Guard. Nobody wanted him. But finally the army took him in 1944, even though he was still too young. In sixteen weeks he was in Europe. Doo don’t talk too much about the war, not even to me. But he was in Germany, France, and Italy for the last year of the war. Sometimes when people talk about the bad things that went on in Vietnam, Doo will say, “Aw, that’s always happened in wars.” But he don’t tell too many details.
I know that when he got home after the war, he couldn’t adjust to being home again. He couldn’t sleep at night because he had nightmares about snakes and stuff. The only time he could sleep was during the day. That’s how he met me, actually. He was trying to sleep around the house, and his mother was talking to the schoolteacher about that pie social. The teacher was complaining to Angie that she couldn’t get no one to auction off the pies, and she started to cry. This woke Doo up and he said, “Lady, if you stop crying, I’ll auction off your damn pies for you.” Angie got mad at Doo because he talked rough to a schoolteacher, but he didn’t care. I think there were two little Banks girls he wanted to meet at the school anyway and play post office and spin-the-bottle with. But he says, “As soon as I saw Loretta, I knew I wanted to get ahold of her.”
Well, he did. He gave me that great big kiss on our first night that made me fall in love with him. Then he got that bloody nose from walking into that fence post. But that didn’t discourage him. The next evening our family was sitting on the porch after supper and we heard this terrible noise coming up the holler. We looked and there was this jeep blasting up the dirt path. You can ask Mommy. It was the first automobile that ever came up Butcher Holler in history. And Doolittle pulled into our yard as pleased as could be and said, “From now on, we’re gonna take my jeep.”
8
Hey, You Ain’t Supposed to Wear Clothes Under Your Nightgown
You can feel my body tremble
As I wonder what this moment holds in store.
And as you put your arms around me, you can tell,
I’ve never been this far before.…
—“I’ve Never Been This Far Before,” by Conway Twitty
I was glad to see Doo, but I was afraid my Daddy was going to say something. I knew they didn’t want me to see Doolittle, but you know how kids are—they’re going to do what they want anyhow.
I still wouldn’t go in that jeep with him, not at first, so we courted at my house. It was cold—we met on December 10—and we had to stay indoors. We would sit in the front room and talk, with all my sisters and brothers saying things about when he was gonna kiss me and stuff like that. And my Mommy walking in saying “Would you like a soda?” or talking about the weather. Just to keep an eye on us, you know.
We didn’t have much to talk about.