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little town for over a hundred years just went out and fell in the creek. We were lucky, though, because this old mill, right on the river, across from the big house, survived. The ranch will be up and running again soon, which is great because so many people come here. They camp out, you know. It’s like it’s their home, too. They have a good time because we’re way out in the country and that’s what people want when they come to the ranch—they want real country. Everyone has a good time. They hike in the woods and pretty much do whatever they want. I like seeing everybody have a good time. It makes me happy, so come out and visit! My museum is here also, so you can come and visit that, too.

I want to thank you all again for your support over the years. I can’t believe I’ve been in the music industry for fifty years! It’s just amazing to me. I can count fifty-two top ten hits and sixteen number one hits, which is pretty nice. But you know what? It’s still my fans—my friends—that matter most of all. So if you’re coming to it for the first time or are reading it all over again, I hope you enjoy Coal Miner’s Daughter. It’s something to look back after more than thirty years, and it made me think about all my old friends and family, all the good times and not-so-good times. I’m lucky. Lucky to have my family all around me, lucky to be writing new songs, lucky to be touring and singing. It made me think, yet again, as I put it in “Story of My Life”: Not bad for this ol’ Kentucky girl, I guess.

—Loretta Lynn, Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, June 2010

About Me and This Book

Well, I look out the window and what do I see?

The breeze is a-blowin’ the leaves from the trees

Everything is free—everything but me.…

—“I Wanna Be Free,” by Loretta Lynn

I bloodied my husband’s nose the other night. I didn’t know I was doing it—I just woke up at three in the morning, and Doolittle was holding a towel to his nose. He told me I sat straight up, in my sleep, yelling, “Do you see this ring? Do you see this ring?” And I was a-throwing my hands around until my fingers dug into his nose.

“Loretta, what in the world were you talking about?” Doo asked me.

I said I was dreaming about some old guy that tried to make a date with me when I first started singing. I didn’t have no ring at the time—we were too poor for that kind of stuff—but now in my dream I was showing that old buzzard I had a ring.

What does it mean when you carry on in your sleep like that? Somebody said it means you’ve got something on your mind. I said, “I know that.” I ain’t got much education, but I got some sense.

To me, this talking is almost like I’ve got things inside me that never came out before. Usually, when something is bothering me, I write a song that tells my feelings, like: “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind).” That’s really about me and my marriage.

I’ve still got things inside me—sad things, happy things—that people don’t know about. I’ve had so many changes in my life, and I feel like there’s more to come. I’m superstitious; I believe in reincarnation and extrasensory perception; and I’ve got this feeling about more changes in my life. It’s like a girl feels when her body starts to grow up, or a woman feels when a baby starts to grow inside her. You know it’s there, you feel the stirrings, but it’s deeper than words.

People know the basic facts about me, how I was married when I wasn’t quite fourteen and had four babies by the time I was eighteen. Sometimes my husband tells me, “I raised you the way I wanted you to be.” And it’s true. I went from Daddy to Doo, and there’s always been a man telling me what to do.

I was just a kid—didn’t know nothing—picking strawberries in the fields with my babies on a blanket, under an umbrella. I’d change a few diapers, my fingers all rough and dirty, give ’em a few bottles, and go back to picking. So when I sing those country songs about women struggling to keep things going, you could say I’ve been there.

It’s like that hit record I had in 1975, “The Pill,” about this woman who’s