Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [74]
As soon as you walk out the door, there’s liable to be three or four dogs and cats. I’ve got a pet ocelot in an out-building, and you can usually smell it. There’re flies and birds and sometimes skunks and a snake or two.
Like I told you—we’re country.
We don’t have much artwork around the house. We do have a painting of Jesus that Loretta Johnson did. I’m real proud of it. It shows him suffering on the cross, with a real intense look of pain, and his muscles straining and the sweat pouring off him. She said she wanted to show he was a real man, suffering real pain. It’s a real good painting.
We use the ranch for making our album covers and television specials. Mrs. Bobby Woods, who runs the general store across the creek, isn’t going to forget the time an assistant from the Dean Martin Show came in and ordered thirty-four dollars’ worth of bologna sandwiches. But she made ’em, spreading the bread all over the counters.
The problem is that I’m hardly at the ranch enough to enjoy it, and when I am home I’m usually tired. My secretary does all my shopping and my manager sends me clothes when I need ’em on the road. So the only shopping I do is with the twins. I love to go to the five-and-ten-cent stores and the dollar stores, not the fancy stores. Me and my babies buy all kinds of junk. The only problem is, even in Waverly, folks follow me around the store, just staring at me. Maybe when I’m around more often, they’ll get used to me as just another little old country girl looking for bargains.
When I’m home, Doo likes me to do outdoor stuff with him, like riding and boating—except that I’m scared of the water. One time in 1971, me and Doo went out in a motor boat on the Buffalo River, near our ranch. I don’t know how, but the boat overturned and I went under.
I couldn’t swim, so I started going under—once, twice, then a third time. I knew I was drowning, but I wasn’t really awake. Sometimes you wonder what it’s like to know you’re dying. Well, I knew it, and I wasn’t scared. It was real peaceful, like floating away on a cloud. I remember thinking that Doo must have died, too, or else he would have gotten me.
But Doo wasn’t drowned. He was searching all over for me. Finally, he pushed up the edge of the boat and saw my hair floating in the water. He pulled me up and carried me over his head to shore. I was surprised to wake up and find him working over me. The water must have poured out of me for hours. I was just surprised to know I was still here.
I guess I should have been more nervous after it happened, but I wasn’t. I didn’t get nervous until Sunday night, when we were doing a show on the road. Suddenly, I had this horrible thought.
“Friends, this is Sunday, and I would have been buried today,” I told the audience. And I told ’em about how I almost drowned.
Well, my knees started to shake so bad, I couldn’t remember my songs. My boys had to help me offstage.
I’ve stayed off the river since then, but last year we built this heated pool behind the house, and I made up my mind I would learn to swim. But one of the twins jumped on my back and pushed me into the deep end. They pulled me out, but I was more shook up that time than I was from the river. Now I stay in the shallow end of the pool.
Other things I like to do around the ranch? Plant flowers, go for a ride in Doo’s jeep, maybe ride a horse. Or I just like to sit and talk with my kids. Or visit with company. There’s always somebody visiting the house.
Like I said before, fans are all over the place when I’m home. They think nothing of walking right up to the door. If I play with the kids in the yard, there are fans coming up to take pictures or to talk. Somehow, my home doesn’t seem like home anymore. I try to avoid going home for just a day if I’ve got time off between trips. It seems like the whole time is spent unpacking, getting laundry done, catching up on what’s been done at the ranch. My kids come in and stay all day, and I’m glad to see ’em, but it gets hectic all squeezed