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By Root 379 0

but we held it out, figuring people weren’t ready to accept it. When we released it, the people loved it. I mean the women loved it. But the men who run the radio stations were scared to death. It’s like a challenge to the man’s way of thinking. See, they’ll play a song about making love in a field because that’s sexy, from a man’s point of view. But something that’s really important to women, like birth control, they don’t want no part of, leastways not on the air. Well, my fans played the record, and bought so many copies they forced most of the radio stations to play it. Some preachers criticized it in church—but that just did me a favor by making the people more curious.

But you know something funny? I never really took the pill for birth control in my life. The only time I took it was to regulate my periods. That was after Doo got himself clipped—what’s that they call it, a vasectomy?—after my twins came along.

I’m glad I had six kids because I couldn’t imagine my life without ’em. But I think a woman needs control over her own life, and the pill is what helps her do it.

That’s also why I won’t ever say anything against the abortion laws they made easier a few years ago. Personally, I think you should prevent unwanted pregnancy rather then get an abortion. I don’t think I could have an abortion. It would be wrong for me. But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. I believe they should be able to have an abortion. I told that to this Atlanta newspaper, The Great Speckled Bird, which is supposed to be for hippies and people like that. Some of my country friends got upset when I kept a copy of that newspaper in my office, but I said it was one of the best articles ever done about me because they printed exactly what I said.

Somehow I managed to get through those years with all those babies. I don’t know how I did it. When you’re young, you think everything is exciting. When you get older you say, “How in the world did I do that?”

I was learning something all the time in those days, back in Washington. A woman named Edna Brann taught me how to can meat and vegetables, and we never ate any store-canned food after that.

Edna used to enter the Northwest Washington District Fair over in Lynden, the biggest town near us. The next year she talked me into entering the fair. We put our stuff in her pickup truck and drove it over. We were hoping that she’d win a first prize, which she’d never done. The next day we went back to see the results and found blue ribbons hanging all over my stuff. I couldn’t believe it! I counted seventeen blue ribbons, thirteen seconds, and seven third prizes, plus a pair of dishes, a whole barrel of Crisco, all kinds of spices, ten dozen fruit jars, and twenty-five dollars in cash.

Edna seemed as thrilled as me. I felt so good that I started jumping up and down, shaking the whole fair building. They took a picture of me, three feet off the ground, and the next day they enlarged it to life-size and hung it outside the fair grounds.

They still have that picture. In 1974, me and my band played the Lynden Fair, and hundreds of my old friends came out that I hadn’t seen in years. They still remembered me jumping in the air and screaming when I won. Doolittle said I yelled so loud, I startled him in the quarter-horse contest and made him finish second. And all I could think about were those mean things he’d said about my cooking.

Except for winning that contest, there wasn’t much excitement in those years. I worked hard around the ranch, me and Blanche, caring for thirty-six people during peak seasons. When the fruits and vegetables were ripe, they needed every hand they could get. My nails were always broken, and my hands were rough and chapped. The only clothes I owned, just about, were blue jeans and a checked shirt. I went barefoot most of the time.

After a while, Doolittle went into the logging business with another man. He learned