Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [36]
Finally, he told us we could get off. I looked around for Doo, but I couldn’t find him. Then I saw Junior with another man, who turned out to be Clyde Green. They said Doo was out hunting for our supper. We drove out to the Green ranch near Custer, a little town of around 325 people, and there was Doolittle. He had shot a duck and wanted me to taste it for the first time. Doo has always been real good about providing for his family.
We were living in the Green’s farmhouse—Doolittle working on the ranch and me scrubbing clothes and ironing and cleaning and cooking, seven days a week. Bob and Clyde were real good to me, treated me like a sister. They would include us in their Christmas dinner. And after their mother died, their aunt, Blanche Smith, came to live with ’em. And that’s where I learned to cook.
Blanche Smith was an old, old lady but she was what Doolittle calls an “expensive” cook—she didn’t mind spending money on good meat and vegetables. Bob and Clyde used to drive Doo crazy by killing a cow and then grinding it all down into hamburger. See, they were just bachelors and didn’t care about fancy cooking. But one day Doo asked the butcher to save him just one good steak. That night, he fried it up with potatoes and put it down in front of ’em and said, “See, that’s the way you can eat if you don’t grind it down into hamburger.”
After that, Blanche gave Doo a shopping order and the bill came to sixty-eight dollars, but it was fresh food and things they never had in the house before. They liked it better than anybody. After that, we ate good even when I cooked, because Blanche taught me how.
After I got settled, it was time to have the baby. I knew how to change ’em but I didn’t know how to have ’em. I was afraid I’d have the baby in the middle of the night and wouldn’t know it, and the baby would smother to death.
I went into labor at 11:30 at night and went to the hospital an hour later. But it was a total of twenty-seven hours before I had the baby. There was no way I could have had it without knowing. When I started delivering, I thought I’d die. I was just too small in my bones to deliver a nine-month baby, and I had to take time to stretch. Finally, they put this mask over my head and it was like falling down a well. I didn’t know what happened until I heard the crying. But even then, I didn’t know what it was.
I knew Doo wanted a boy, so we had the name already picked out—Jack. I was under gas and I didn’t know what the nurse was telling me. I kept saying it was a boy and she kept saying it was a girl. When I realized she knew better than me, I started crying. I always thought you got what you wanted. Doolittle came in and said he was glad it was a girl, but I knew he wasn’t. Finally, the nurses told me that since I wanted a boy, they would keep that little girl for themselves. I was so young, I almost believed them.
We called her Betty Sue. She was only five pounds and sixteen inches, the shortest baby that hospital ever had, they told me. Her head was like an egg, all out of shape and bruised. They said I was lucky to have a nine-month baby.
They kept me in the hospital for a week. I was trying to nurse Betty, but I never had any milk for my babies, so they put her on the bottle and let me go home. Having that first baby was like having a doll and playing house. I really loved bathing and diapering her. I never felt like it was a lifetime deal—not with one baby. That didn’t strike me until I had the second baby a year later. We went back home to have that one because we were homesick, and that’s where I had the boy.
I remember that one because Doo’s mommy kept telling me there was a full moon and I was gonna have the baby that night. I told her I wasn’t ready yet. So that day I helped her do the wash for thirteen people, hanging it all over the holler. Then the clothesline broke, and we had to do it all over again. Took us all day, till dark. Then the moon came up and Angie said, “See, you’re gonna have the baby tonight.” But I didn’t believe her until the pains came.
Then