Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [64]
Cissy has been a perfect child. She got good grades and finished high school and got a nice job with the water company in Waverly. Now she’s married a boy named Gary, and they had their first child in 1975, named Harold Wayne.
Cissy was only nine when we had the twins—I’ll tell more about them later—and I think she was a little jealous. Even today, she’ll fuss with ’em and tell ’em she was really the youngest child. And they’re so sassy, they fuss right back at her. There’s always something going on like that around the ranch.
Looking back, we tried to do the best we could with our kids. We didn’t have much education but one thing we could do was to teach ’em to work hard when they were young. After we got some money, we tried not to spoil ’em, but you know that’s hard when you can afford good things. We still bought our clothes in the same stores as anyone else and they wore hand-me-downs, and they still do.
We never sent ’em to private school like some people do when they get rich. They went to public school. Sometimes they’d say, “So-and-so said we’re rich, we shouldn’t go to public school.” And I’d say, that’s too bad, you’re going to public school like everybody else. They wasn’t no better than other kids. I kept their report cards, even to this day, to show they got mostly passing grades, as far as they went.
Still, I would have liked ’em to have more education than they did. Jack and Cissy graduated from high school and two didn’t. I still think maybe Betty Sue will go to college some day, and maybe the other kids, too.
We still try to help the kids when we can, even though they’ve mostly grown up now. Maybe I try too hard—give ’em too much, because I wasn’t around when they was growing up. If I could start over again, I would still go into show business. But if I could change just one thing, I would be with my children more.
19
Performer
I don’t know exactly when I’ll be back this way again,
’Cause the going’s getting rougher every day.…
—“Blue-Eyed Kentucky Girl,” by Bobby Hardin
While my kids were getting used to all them baby-sitters, I was out on the road, getting used to being a singer. It was an exciting time for us, seeing our Decca records start to sell, but I still had a lot to learn.
The Wilburns told me I couldn’t just make records. I had to get out and reach the fans. They set me up on a tour in 1962, and I worked forty-two shows in twenty-five days, at state fairs. Each show paid me twenty-five dollars, and the Wilburns gave me another twenty-five. I felt I was a millionaire. They also had me on their television show, which was seen all over the South. So I had to get used to appearing before bigger crowds than I’d ever seen before.
Then the Wilburns said they’d take me out with ’em, doing clubs and auditoriums and stuff. Hap Peebles was the promoter, out of Wichita, Kansas. They opened in St. Louis—I wasn’t supposed to be in that particular show, but they introduced me anyway. I was standing around looking like a mess, in curlers and traveling slacks, but I came out and said hello. The Wilburns were trying to see how I behaved on stage. I was still kind of nervous about making conversation.
They taught me a few jokes but they didn’t like for me to just talk, because they were afraid of what I might say. Doyle used to tell me to just shut up and let him do the thinking.
I had some sorry times before I got things right. I had to learn to smile when I walked onstage, which wasn’t always easy if the weather was terrible and I missed my babies, and especially if I was getting a migraine headache or stomach cramps.
Doolittle had to scold me to look happy walking onto that stage. It wasn’t always easy. At first, he wouldn’t let me wear any makeup on stage,