A Series of Pictures That
Come and Go in My Mind ...

Flashbulbs was poppin' and slick-looking young men was sticking microphones in folks' faces when we pulled up to Nashville's Bellemeade Theater. It turned out that they was waiting on me, but a limo carrying Mae Axton, who wrote "Heartbreak Hotel," and the Johnson Sisters, who was runnin' my fan club at the time, rolled up right in front of us and the photographers and reporters all jumped on 'em. When they couldn't figure out who the Johnsons and Mae was, they ran over to the limo carrying me and Doo and Mommy. "Loretta!" They was screamin' and makin' a big fuss. I got nervous and tried to pat my hair down a little, then checked out my clothes. I was just about to find out what it meant to be a movie star, even though you ain't been in a movie yourself. And that's about the time I figgered out that I was the worst-dressed person at the premiere of Coal Miner's Daughter.

    For some reason, I didn't think about a movie premiere as being as fancy as a country music awards show, where you spend a lot of time looking for the right dress and getting your hair fixed. I wore this little old plain white dress, and my hair sure could have stood some work by a beauty operator.

    My family must have understood it, because they all dressed up just fine. Doo wore a tuxedo, along with his cowboy hat and boots, of course. My oldest son, Jack, got dolled up in a white tux and top hat. Now, I have to admit, I laughed when I saw Jack all fancied up like that. He was a sight. There's a picture of him in them clothes in my museum at Hurricane Mills, and even now, as sad as I am over his death, when I look at it, the picture brings a smile to my face. Mommy wore bright lipstick and a sparkly dress. She looked beautiful that night, even though she'd already had a lung removed from cancer and wasn't feeling a bit good. She'd warned my brothers and sisters about any griping they might want to do after the movie, too. Mommy said if they didn't like something, they should just bite their tongues, and if they didn't she might smack their faces!

    Doo would tell you that he'd got so worried they'd Hollywood up the story that he came to the premiere ready to pick the film to pieces. When he walked out he had to admit they done a good job. As he put it: "They hung close to the truth."

    I also realized that I hadn't been paying attention to some other details, like where all my family was gonna sit, and ways to make them feel special at the premiere. I guess that's just one of them times I counted on managers and agents and other people working for me to take care of everything, when I should have been doin' it myself.

    It seemed like every time I looked a different direction, some famous country star was ‘a standin’ there—Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb. Seeing my hero Ernest Tubb made me mad all over again because them Hollywood people didn't even want him in the movie. They never heard of him. I told them that Ernest had been the person who first introduced me on the Opry, and that scene had to be included. Ernest probably helped more people in the country music business than anyone else I know. Besides, I remembered how much I loved to hear Ernest singing on the radio when I was growing up, and how much our duets meant to me and to my career. But it was still a fight when it came to Ernest, because some of them people acted downright rude around him. They showed him no respect at all. Especially this one old boy. He kept makin' comments about Ernest's voice, and how he couldn't sing. That fired me up. Ernest Tubb was royalty in country music circles, and I wasn't gonna stand for no disrespect from some silly old boy from Hollywood. He didn't work on the movie much longer, I seen to that.

    I had some other incidents during the film's planning stages. Some was my fault, and some wasn't. One thing I done was mispronounce the director's name when I was on The Tonight Show. His name was Michael Apted, which I pronounced as Michael "Uptit." I was embarrassed, but Michael laughed about it.

    After it was all said and done, if someone was to ask me for very many details about that night, like who was sitting with who or what somebody said to me at the reception after the movie, I'd come up short. I think my mind must have just gone numb. Either that, or it went to Butcher Holler and wouldn't leave.

    The very first thing I thought when that film started rolling was how glad I was that I insisted they film these early scenes right there in Butcher Holler, Kentucky. They was about ready to try and build some kind of a set there in Hollywood, when I put my foot down and told 'em to make it real or not at all. So off they went to Kentucky, and they thanked me for makin' 'em go there after it was all over. It wasn't easy, though. Them big trucks carrying all the cameras and cables and microphones and stuff couldn't make it to Butcher Holler. So they drove as far in as they could and then hand-carried the equipment the rest of the way. Them Kentucky hills is steep.

    The hills wasn't the worst of it. The film folks got eat up by ticks and chiggers, and they was awful nervous about the snakes they knew slithered around in the hills.

    Bernard Schwartz, the producer, wanted to capture the weather just the way it is in Butcher Holler. He didn't allow no shooting breaks for snow or rain, for hundred-degree weather or twenty-degree weather.

    Right off they showed Levon Helm, who played my daddy, talking to the actor who played our cousin Lee Dollarhide. Lee looked a mess, nothing like he did in real life. Of course, watching Levon Helm made me get tears in my eyes, just like when I went to Butcher Holler while they was filming the movie. He did a good job playing Daddy. Close to perfect, I'd say. The next thing I noticed was that Mommy looked real drab in the movie. Mommy was anything but drab. She wore bloodred lipstick. The woman who played her was a pretty woman, but they had her looking kind of drab and dowdy. My mommy was the only woman in Butcher Holler who'd wear blue jeans back then. Mommy was lively. She was feisty. They couldn't show the actress's feet in the movie because she couldn't dance like Mommy. I don't think they really showed her feistiness in the movie, and that's why I'll tell you some more about her and Lee Dollarhide in a while.

    Since the movie started right when Doo came back from the army, when I was already thirteen, things I'd wrote in the book about early childhood was left out. They couldn't have told everything, or they might have had a movie that would have gone on for days. So I have some extra stories to tell from them days, too.

    Tommy Lee Jones done a great job playing Doolittle, and even Doo admitted it. I say even Doo, because when Tommy Lee first signed on for the part, Doo wouldn't help him a bit. Right after Tommy Lee took the part, he come to a show I was playing in Las Vegas. I remember him knocking on the door to the hotel suite, and me lettin' him in. He was wearin' a green sweater just like he'd seen Doo wear in some picture. And he'd dyed his hair red like Doo's. Doo was sittin' on the couch watching a ballgame and he hardly even looked up. Tommy Lee kept tryin' to talk to him and get him to agree to help him with the role, but Doo just sat there ‘a lookin’ at that durned old television. It was jealousy, plain and simple. And maybe he thought Tommy Lee was a gonna make fun of the way he talked. Doo didn't like some famous actor ‘a sittin’ there trying to copy things about him. Finally Tommy Lee excused himself and left. I was embarrassed, but you couldn't talk to Doo when he was in one of them moods.

    I'll tell you how Doo's attitude started changing. When they started filming in Butcher Holler, Tommy Lee rented a Jeep, bought a jug of moonshine, got drunk, and started driving around the back roads of Kentucky like a madman, he got arrested before he even made it to his first day on the set! Worse yet, he resisted arrest and ended up getting beat up the side of the head for it. Universal Studios had to go bail him out so he could get to work. So the next time Doo saw Tommy Lee Jones, he was hungover, fresh out of jail, and sportin' a big lump on his head. Well, I think Doo decided right then and there that Tommy Lee Jones was a man he could like. From then on Doo tried to help him any way he could.

    That don't mean Doo always liked it. It didn't bother me a bit when Sissy tried to mimic my ways, but when Tommy Lee followed Doo around trying to walk like him it made Doo crazy. He just hated it. In fact, Doo said he never felt like he met the real Tommy Lee Jones until the movie finished filming. Only then was Tommy Lee Jones hisself, and not Doolittle-Junior! I guess actors is that way, always trying to get into the part and forgetting themselves for the time being. Doo finally tried to help him, though, even when it was making him half nuts.

    Later, when the Academy Award nominations come out and Tommy Lee wasn't nominated, Doo was fit to be tied.

    "You ain't got nobody to blame but yourself, Doo," I said. "He come to you for help, and you didn't do nothing until it was too late."

    Doo knew it was true, so he didn't even argue with me about it.

    The only thing that I had a problem with in the Patsy Cline part of the movie was the scene where Charlie Dick sneaks some beer into Patsy's hospital room when I met her that first time. That never happened. Not when I was there. The scene bothered Owen Bradley, too. I know why they done it; to help show her character as a strong woman and she didn't care much about what folks thought she should be doin'. She did it her way, just like Frank Sinatra.

    But those things I noticed weren't all that important. Like I said, I was proud of the movie and proud of all the people who acted in it. The strangest thing was when the final scene come up and the credits started to roll. I told Doo it seemed like everything had gone by too fast. I'd seen my life in exactly two hours and four minutes!

    After the premiere, Universal threw us a little party, but to save my life I couldn't tell you where it was or what happened there. I do remember me and Sissy and Doo and Tommy Lee being on a little stage talking to people, thanking people for coming. But that's about it. The worst thing that happened was that Doo had durn near a truckload of whiskey delivered to the Spence Manor, where we had rented a suite and where all the Hollywood folks was stayin'. Me and Mommy ended up going home to Hurricane Mills the next day, 'cause I didn't want to see Doo sit there and drink until he'd gone through the whole load.

    To tell you the truth, at both the premiere party and on the way home that next day, my mind was still back in Butcher Holler.

    A lot of folks ask me if I really remember Butcher Holler. A few more are likely to wonder if I'm lyin' when I say that my very first memory is about a funeral that happened when I was only eleven months old. Well, folks, I ain't no liar. I not only remember Butcher Holler, I feel it, smell it, and taste it. I take a little bit of Butcher Holler everywhere I go. I first sang to my little brother and sisters in Butcher Holler. Since then, I've sang in the world's finest concert halls. Sometimes, when I'm on a giant stage in front of thousands of people, I close my eyes and drift back to the swaying trees and bubbling streams of the only home I knew until I was fourteen. I can smell the freshness of the mountain air I breathed as a child. Yes, I do remember Butcher Holler.

    But memories can be funny. Sometimes you remember things just like you were reading a story in a book, with all the little details and sights and sounds. Other memories are more like snapshots, pictures peeking in here and there. That's how my very first memory is, like a series of pictures that come and go.

    It was when my Grandma Webb died. Even though I was only eleven months old, I can still see my daddy, Ted Webb, carrying me alongside the men taking his mama's body from the house and carrying it to a willow tree near her front gate. Daddy carried me in his arms while them pallbearers stepped on stones to cross a creek. They buried Grandma in the hills of Kentucky where time and weather have made her headstone a fading marker. Daddy was wearing a white shirt and he was crying. I'd never seen him in a white shirt, and I'd never seen my daddy cry. Both of 'em scared me to death. Maybe that's what made the memory stand out for so many years.

    I guess it might be important that my first memory is one of loss. It was important to me to tell about it in this book. Like I said earlier, a lot of what has happened to me in the past twenty years has been about losing people.

    Butcher Holler, Kentucky, is a coal mining and moonshining community about twelve miles from Paintsville in eastern Kentucky, about eighteen miles from the West Virginia border. You can ask anybody in Paintsville how to find Butcher Holler; they'll direct you to a gravel road that ain't really gravel. It's called "red dog," and it's made from slack that wasn't quite coal. It burnt for years and turned red. You'll only drive so far until you have to get out and walk along a path into Butcher Holler. During the Second World War, they thought about making a red dog road into the holler, but people got to thinking about it and said they didn't want one. They figgered that Hitler might fly over Kentucky and see that red line leading into the mountains, and think it was a target instead of a little old holler.

    Of course the trick is sometimes finding your way out of Butcher Holler, as some unlucky revenuers on the track of moonshiners found out over the years. That's just another side to mountain life, the world Doo and I came from.

    If mountain people was anything when I was growing up, they was resourceful. They wasted nothing and they was loyal. No stranger ever entered Butcher Holler without folks yelling from shack to shack, "Stranger coming up the holler, Stranger coming up the holler!"

    They didn't know a lot about the world outside the holler because they didn't need that world. They could make their own way. There's some people in that holler today, I'm satisfied, who don't know the name of the President, and don't care. It don't help the people in the holler to know the President's name. People have asked why there is no road to my old home place instead of just a dirt path. Why would there have been a hard road back in them days? Most folks traveled on a horse, a mule, or in a homemade sled pulled by a mule. I didn't even see a car until I was thirteen, and that was Doo's Jeep. There wasn't no development in rural eastern Kentucky then, or now. Nobody ever went to Butcher Holler except the folks who lived there, or their kinfolks when they came to visit. If you walk a mule on a hard road, you got to put steel shoes on the mule. We couldn't even afford shoes for ourselves. We each got one pair of brogan shoes a year, and each pair was two sizes too large so we could grow into them before we got another pair the following year. And mine were just like the boys'.

    My daddy thought everybody in Butcher Holler was born to stay there, and most of the time that was true.

    I was five years old and under the table when I remember Mommy saying: "Ted Webb, you're going to get me and these kids out of this holler! Nobody here is ever going to get ahead in life or get no education."

    I was in Butcher Holler not all that long ago, and for the first time in my life, I looked around and thought, "How in the world did I ever get out of here?" The answer is easy, of course. Doolittle Lynn took me out.

    The most modern thing that ever happened back in there was when Daddy bought a battery-operated Philco radio and we listened to newscasters Lowell Thomas and Gabriel Heater. On Saturday nights we listened to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Daddy wouldn't let us play nothing else 'cause he didn't want to run down the batteries. He could probably buy a new one for a dime; I don't remember.

    I remember hearing Ernest Tubb singing "Rainbow at Midnight" and "It's Been So Long Darlin'" on the Opry. Everytime he sung, I cried. Again, I was probably two years away from getting married. If anybody had told me in the 1940s that in 1967 I'd have a hit duet, "Sweet Thang," with Ernest, I wouldn't have believed them. But then, if anybody had told me in the 1940s that I'd ever get out of Butcher Holler, I wouldn't have believed them, either.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from STILL WOMAN ENOUGH by Loretta Lynn with Patsi Bale Cox. Copyright © 2002 by Loretta Lynn. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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