Loretta Lynn_ Coal Miner's Daughter - Loretta Lynn [77]
I don’t like to be told what to do. I like to be asked. I don’t think a man has the right to tell a woman what to do. He should say, “What do you think about this?” If somebody tells me what to do, I’ll do just the opposite, just because I’m meaner than a snake in some ways. You ask Owen Bradley. I’m like that at a recording session. Tell me one thing, I’ll do another. I never felt that one person owned another person. I think Doo feels the opposite. He feels he has the right to tell his wife what to do.
People who meet us get all nervous when they see us argue. Really, sometimes it looks bad. I’ll get some notion in my head and maybe I won’t even listen to him. Then he’ll get annoyed and start talking to me like I’m stupid. Sometimes that leads to one of my headaches, and I’ll just sleep for twelve or eighteen hours.
People who don’t know me too well get all nervous about that. They worry about me “escaping” into sleeping too much, or getting too nervous. But I usually bounce back the next morning. I’ll wake up and hear a redbird singing, or I’ll have a funny line in my head, and I’ll start joking around with Doolittle, and he’ll see that I’m happy again, and he’ll relax and take charge of the day’s doings. Then the same people who got so worried the day before will tiptoe past our motel room, and there we’ll be sitting around laughing like it never happened … until the next time.
People say, “You can’t live like that forever.” I say, look, we’ve stayed married this long, we must be doing something right. Sometimes people ask if we’ve ever gone for marriage counseling or guidance. Heck no. They don’t know as much as I do about marriage. They weren’t married as young as I was, I bet. I just believe you do the best you can with yourself and hope for the best.
23
The Hyden Widows
We talked about the pretty lady from the Grand Ole Opry.
We talked about the money she was raising for the kids.…
—“Trip to Hyden,” by Tom T. Hall
If there’s one way me and Doolittle are alike, it’s that both of us are soft touches for a sad story. And believe me, you hear a lot of them when you’re on the top in country music. Everybody expects you to do favors for them, and it’s hard to say no.
When we first got to the top in Nashville, me and Doo would agree to almost any benefit for a good cause. We were worn out until we hired David Skepner to be our manager, because he knew his job was to say no and protect us from ourselves.
You wouldn’t believe some of the requests we get. Like, we’ll be driving down the highway in the bus and some car will cut in front of us and make us stop. The people say they’ve got a sick relative dying in some cabin five miles off the road—and can we pay a visit? I’ve said yes a few times, and Doolittle hides his face when his tears start to show.
But Doo has more sense than me. He says he catches me staring out the windows at all those pickers that wander into Nashville trying to get discovered. He swears I’d hire every one of ’em if he didn’t put a stop to it.
We visit hospitals whenever we can. The best way to do it is to try and not think of all the problems that the people have. I was in the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, and this young boy was in the cancer ward and he said, “I’ll bet you don’t remember me?” The boy said it like he was sure that I wouldn’t and he was all set to be disappointed. But I’ve got this memory for faces and it seemed like I knew him.
“Yes,” I said, “it was in London, England, two years ago at that big stadium. You said hello to me.”
And that boy got so excited, he started crying. The