Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [39]
We didn’t have much money for entertainment. I never went out much because we couldn’t afford a baby-sitter. Besides, Doo liked to go out with the boys and have a few beers. It was them days that gave me the idea for the song, “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” which I wrote with my sister Peggy Sue.
My entertainment was staying home and singing along with the radio when I could find country music. It wasn’t too big out in Washington, but once in a while you could find Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams. Betty Sue says she can remember being a little girl and hearing me imitate all the Kitty Wells records and asking her, “How did that sound?”
But that was my only fun. I was so far away from Mommy and Daddy, that I’d sing to myself for hours, more out of homesickness than anything else.
11
A Death in the Family
Now Daddy talked with the Lord every day,
And Daddy and God were real close.
So let’s just say it seems that God
Takes the ones He loves the most.…
—“Mama, Why?” by Loretta Lynn
When we lived in Washington, I only saw my family a few times. When it was time for my second baby to be born, we got just plain homesick, me and Doo, and went back to Kentucky, where Doc Turner delivered my first boy. But after I had the baby, we went back to Washington.
The next thing I heard, Daddy had a stroke and was let out of his job at the mines. We weren’t in any position to send money. We hardly had enough to get by on. So Daddy went north to Indiana to try and find work. That’s what a lot of us mountain people do. You can see ’em in all the big cities up North—Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago. I’ll see ’em standing around, kind of bashful, the men more bashful than the women.
So Daddy moved to Wabash, where we had some friends and relatives, and put in his application at the factory. But they wouldn’t take him because all he knew was mining, and because of his black lung and high blood pressure. He was still only in his forties, but he couldn’t find a job by himself. He was so bashful, it must have been hard looking for a job and hearing the boss say they wouldn’t hire him.
After Daddy got home to Kentucky again, Mommy said she’d give it a try. See, the men are supposed to be the head of the household in the country. But the women lots of times find it easier to get along with office work and stores. Mommy went back to Wabash and found a job at the Penguin Point Drive-In Restaurant for sixty-five cents an hour. But after a while they gave her a raise because she was so good. Mommy already had eight kids by this time. Brenda—Crystal, she’s called now—was just a baby. But Mommy was so beautiful and young-looking that her boss didn’t know that she had any kids. One day Mommy told him that her family was coming up to live in Wabash. The man couldn’t believe it. He said, “I didn’t even know you were married.” She was even paying taxes as a single person. But Mommy didn’t think it was anybody’s business. She still kept a job after the family came up. Most of the kids went right into public schools in Wabash and Daddy got a job at Spencer-Karnel, the only factory that didn’t give medical examinations. They settled down and became more like Indiana people than Kentucky. I think about 25 percent of Wabash is from the mountains. Some of Doo’s family settled there, too.
After Mommy and Daddy settled in Indiana, we visited ’em twice. One time there I got a job in a restaurant, sometimes waiting on tables, but mostly washing dishes. I wasn’t any good at it because I was so clumsy. I was always