Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [30]
He kept hanging around my house. Just a-hanging around. At Christmastime he bought me a doll and said we were gonna get married and that next Christmas we’d have a real live doll. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I never thought about getting married and having babies. And all the time my Mommy and my Daddy were telling me it was just puppy love.
But it was more than that. When we were working on this book, Doo told the writer: “I was attracted to Loretta at first by her looks. She was real mature with a full woman’s figure. I didn’t know she was only thirteen until I was at her house a few times. But it didn’t change my mind. When you’re in love, it don’t make no difference. I was fresh out of service and I had done my share of chasing around. I knew what I was looking for to marry—and Loretta was it.”
Mommy and Daddy started getting real nervous. Doo had this reputation for being wild because he drove too fast and had gone out with other girls. You know how country people are. Actually, he wasn’t as wild as our own two boys are today, but he seemed pretty wild then. Mommy and Daddy were afraid I was getting serious so Mommy decided to send me to her sister’s house, just across the Big Sandy into West Virginia. She packed my clothes and had me driven over there.
I didn’t know what was going on. Mommy’s sister was trying to get me to forget about Doolittle, because she fixed me up with this other boy who was as old as Doolittle, maybe even older. She got this boy to visit me at her house one night while she and her husband went up to their room. This boy got fresh with me and scared me half to death. He was a-grabbing and I was a-running all around the living room. Finally he gave up. Too tired from running, I guess. The next day Doolittle found out what the deal was. I don’t know how he knew where I was staying, but he showed up in his jeep and told me, “Get your stuff. We’re leaving here.” I even left my clothes behind and never told Mommy what happened at her sister’s house. I just came home like nothing happened.
Then me and Doo started going out on dates, right after New Year’s. We were talking about getting married in April or June or sometime. One night we went to a skating rink over near Prestonburg with my brother and his girlfriend. Daddy warned us not to go there because they sold moonshine and it was kind of a rough place. But we went anyway. When I got home, Daddy whipped my butt. It was the first time he spanked me in years. But it didn’t change things.
I kept telling Mommy, “We’re gonna get married,” and she kept saying, “You’re too young.” But I kept telling her.
We were talking now about waiting until February, but one Friday night Doolittle came over and said he had a big paycheck that day from working in the mines. He said we might as well get married the next day since he had the money. I thought if he asked me, I might as well get married. So I said yes.
Me and Doo had this discussion in the living room at my house. Daddy knew something was up. He was standing on the outside porch, even though it was cold out. He liked to stand out there at night, where it was dark and quiet. So I told Doo, “You’d better tell Daddy.” But when Doo went out on the porch, Daddy said, “You’d better tell Clary.”
Doo found Mommy in the bedroom and tried to tell her, but she said, “You’d better tell Ted about it.”
But when Doo went back to Daddy, he said, “You’d better tell Clary.”
I could see