Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [75]
22
Me and Doo
I guess you think I’m crazy,
But it keeps him here with me,
And I only see the things I wanna see.…
—“I Only See the Things I Wanna See,” by Loretta Lynn and Loudilla Johnson
Buying that ranch was a good deal for us, but it also set up some problems for me and Doo.
First of all, the ranch has cost us so much money that I had to keep up a busy schedule. In country music, the only way people will keep buying your records is if you keep going back to their towns on personal tours. And while I was on the road all the time, wrecking my own health, Doolittle was pushing hard to fix up that ranch and watch the kids. That means we’ve got to be separated a lot of the time. You remember how our marriage got started, with us moving out to Washington State? Well, I still believe that was the best thing for us. If we’d stayed home, around our family and neighbors, we might never have stayed together. But being alone in Washington was good for us. Even though Doo and I both had our faults, we grew closer together. You hear a lot of gossip in Nashville about me and Doolittle—heck, like I said before, you hear humors about everybody in Nashville. This one is fooling around, that one likes both men and women, that one uses padded bras, that one’s a drunk, that one lies about her age. I’d say the rumors flow more regular than the bourbon or the Cumberland River. But I’d like to put a stop to all the rumors and just talk about me and Doo for a minute.
I think it’s honest to say I went into my marriage as a baby, didn’t know nothing about getting along with a man. But I think I gave Doolittle my full love because that’s the way I am—whatever I do, I plunge into it 100 percent.
In our scrapbook we’ve saved letters—all in my poor Kentucky handwriting—from me when I first went on the road, with me mighty lonely in some motel room, homesick and writing to Doolittle who was back working three jobs and watching four babies in Custer. I’d write, “Darling you no (that’s how I spelled ‘know’) I love you.” Every other word in my letters was “darling” or “love.” And that’s how I felt. When you love a man, you love him all the way.
But I guess I always felt Doo was in charge of me, just like my Daddy, because he knew better and was older. Maybe then I believed that a wife was her husband’s property.
If we had stayed in Washington, we probably would have been too dog-tired to make new problems. Also, nobody would have cared about us, and we could have settled things in private. There’s no privacy in country music, friends, I can tell you that. When you’re having a little argument it’s all over town faster than you can say “Fist City.”
Lots of times friends cause problems. Or people you think are your friends. Sure, Doolittle had himself a girl friend or two in his day. I ain’t saying he didn’t—even if the truth hurts. But there were nights when he’d take a second shift at the welding shop, putting in six hours under the hood of a car, getting a hot welding torch in his face, and this friend of his would come to visit at our house and say to me, “Where’s Mooney tonight? I didn’t see him down at the shop.” And all the time that “friend” was trying to get me to bed with him. That was the way he talked, trying to make me suspicious of my husband so I’d cheat, too. That stuff never worked with me, because frankly I just wasn’t that interested. But it did get me mad at Doolittle. So he’d come home at midnight all worn down from welding and I’d be sitting in the kitchen ready to jump on him. He’d look at me and say, “What did I do now?” And when he explained it, I’d know he was right. I’m a very jealous person because I believe in being faithful.
When we moved to Nashville, Doo let me know he wouldn’t stand for me changing my