Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [73]
Me and Gloria started in the house by putting wallpaper up in the halls. We had some walls knocked down and the kitchen area opened up so that we have a large, country-style kitchen. The twins’ bedroom is right off the kitchen area. We had to close in windows and the door, so we’d have enough room for their two white canopied beds. There’s a back stairway from the twins’ room that goes upstairs, but we keep it locked because you can guess what they’d be up to if we didn’t. Doo recently had a large recreation room built near our pool, out in back of the house. It has a huge stone fireplace, and we keep the TV and stereo set out there. I bought Doo his own pool table for Christmas, and he keeps his gun collection locked up out there. Also, we put our old living room furniture out there. It’s rugged and sturdy and suits the room. That meant I could buy a new set for the living room. Actually, it isn’t new furniture at all. I found a beautiful old set of Victorian furniture, lamps and all. We don’t use the living room much, because I’m on the road all the time, but it does look nice with its gold carpet and all. We use our recreation room for entertaining.
We had an interior decorator come in to help with our bedroom in the front of the house. It’s a real fancy place, just like you see in magazines. It has a coral shag carpet, and the curtains and bedspread are printed in a big floral design, the same coral as the rug. We have a king-sized bed and even the headboard is covered in the same material. The nicest thing is a beautiful crystal chandelier that hangs from the tall ceiling. When we were knocking out walls we had a bathroom added right off our bedroom.
The one thing we don’t have in that fancy bedroom is a telephone. Doo has a thing about phones. He doesn’t like ’em around. Until 1975, he wouldn’t let us put an extension phone anywhere. Our only phone was right in the middle of the living room, so any calls we made were with everyone sitting around listening. It’s what you’d call open conversation. It would be kind of frustrating when you’d be upstairs or out in the recreation room and you’d have to come all the way to the living room to answer the phone. Doo did string up a kind of private line to his little office in one of the out-buildings near the house. The only trouble is, every time he used that phone, the one in the house went dead. When I asked for extra phones, he said he just doesn’t like people talking on the phone. He wants me to rest, and I guess it’s true I’d just keep on talking. Finally, in 1975 we got a couple of extensions put in, with buzzers to call out to the recreation room. We’re getting real modern out at Hurricane Mills, folks.
In the hallway next to the living room, we had cabinets built to hold all the little china dolls, antiques, salt and pepper shakers, and Indian relics that people give me. I keep everything because you can never tell when somebody will visit the house and look for their gift. Gloria says the hardest part of me coming home for a day is when I unload all the food and presents my fans give me.
On the wall going up the winding stairway, we’ve got all forty-five of my albums framed in the order that I did ’em. There’s some when I didn’t use any makeup, before Doo finally let me. You can see me changing, album after album. It’s really kind of weird to see.
I’ve got all kinds of souvenirs around the house—a bed Hank Williams owned, the cowboy hat Tex Ritter used to wear, my second rhythm guitar, some personal things Patsy Cline gave me. I have Roy Acuff’s yo-yo, a suit from Hank Snow, a coat from Marty Robbins, Chet Atkins’s golf hat, and a beautiful gown that my friend June Carter gave me. Some day I’m going to put ’em all into the museum I’m making out of the old red mill across our creek.
We left the high ceilings in the house, even a tin one in the family kitchen area, but they do make the house hard to heat. We’ve got modern heat and even air-conditioning, but because there’s not any insulation in the walls, it really gets cold in the