Miles to Go (11 page)

Southern Girl

W
ho I am has a lot to do with my family and where and how I grew up. Sure I was living my dream, but that hadn’t happened overnight. So, where did that dream start? Partly on the stages where I watched my daddy perform. But mostly on our farm in Franklin, Tennessee, with a bunch of horses, cows, chickens, and my family.

People think that a farm is a lot of work, but if you’re not, like, harvesting crops, it’s not too hard to take care of animals. Horses can live in the wild, so you don’t always have to do a lot for them. We put them out to pasture in one meadow, the cows in another. They eat the grass. The grass grows back. They eat more grass. Sometimes we ride them (the horses—not the cows); they’re cool with it, and besides that, we just let them do their thing.

As for chickens, you can kind of make them into pets. My chicken, Lucy, will sit in your lap and let you pet her for hours on end. But you gotta start when they’re little, or they turn mean. Lucy’s our only sweet chicken. You’re going to begin thinking I’m really back-country when I tell you this, but chickens are pretty darn fun to watch. They walk around bobbing their wonky heads. Seriously, there’s nothing more relaxing than to kick back and watch chickens be chickens.

My mom always says that before I started school, our lives and schedules were based on an entertainer’s schedule. My dad was on the road a lot, playing shows, coming home late. He often didn’t get home until ten or eleven, so they’d let me stay up till all hours of the night, and then we’d all sleep late. Our time together was almost sacred.

Like I already said, when my dad was home I was his little shadow. I was four, maybe five years old when he’d saddle me up on a slow walking horse and take me, Braison, and Brandi out on the trails around our house.

(Trace was absolutely scared of horses and didn’t like to go.) Or he’d sit me in front of him, and we’d go four-wheeling or dirt biking all day, ending up at the top of a hill where there’s a tipi to camp in. (There’s even a real totem pole that Pappy gave Dad!) Then Dad would build a fire and we’d roast marshmallows.
We’d sit there next to that fire, with the trees and the big Tennessee sky. It was easy to start dreaming big under all those stars. I felt like the sky was never-ending, like I could see Pluto. I spent most of my childhood outside with my dad.

As we got older, we still spent tons of time hanging out on the farm. Even when I was suffering through sixth grade, I’d come home and play a game of basketball with Braison or spend hours on the trampoline with Brandi. Out on the trampoline, we’d talk and laugh about . . . who knows? Nothing that made sense. That’s the best part about hanging with a sister. You’re not having conversations with beginnings, middles, and ends. You’re just letting unformed thoughts bounce up and down and around and around.

At some point Trazz started building a treehouse between two beautiful trees. It was a work-in-progress for quite a while. Dad got into finishing it, but then he bashed his finger with a hammer and quit. Once I decided to help out. But since I have no clue how to build things, I just draped some blankets around what they’d built to make walls and a ceiling. You know, like a little kid’s fort. But I kinda forgot to consider the rain factor. Yeah. Rain. Not so good when your little house has walls made from quilts. Still, the treehouse is very sweet as is. Whenever we go back to Nashville, Brazz and I like to sit up in the trees and play checkers. Our own little hideaway, where dreams can grow as big as we want.

Our family has never been really competitive. We always let each other win when we have games of chicken in the pool. We’re careful of one another’s feelings.

Too bad that caution with feelings didn’t exactly translate into caution with vehicles. Let the record show that not one picture of me on a horse or a four-wheeler has me wearing a helmet. Dad always says he could’ve given some of those celebrity moms a run for their money in the unsafe parenting department. It never occurred to him to put us kids in helmets. Or to wear one himself, for that matter.
(He has gotten better!)

One time, when I was pretty young, Dad went four-wheeling with me in a papoose that he wore like a backpack.
(Don't try this at home!)
Again, no helmets. He was flying through the woods, going pretty fast, zig-zagging along when he came to a tree that had fallen across the path. He ducked under it, but only as he ducked did he remember that I was on his back.
Whack!
He brought me home with a huge knot on my forehead. I can only imagine what I might have achieved if Dad hadn’t given me minor brain damage. I’m still trying to come up with creative ways for him to make it up to me. Most of them start with the letters
C-A-R
.

Mule Day

I
was talking about where the dream started, but before I go further, I have to digress and tell you about Mule Day. That’s right, Mule Day. Pappy took me to it every year. Now, I’m not claiming that Mule Day played a huge role in making me want to be an actor and a singer, but I’m a girl from a farm and . . . come on, there’s an annual celebration called Mule Day! It’s part of my heritage. Don’t you want to know about it? Hold on. . . .

I just called my dad and asked, “Am I dreaming, or did Pappy used to take me to Mule Day? What was it?” Dad said, “I would describe it as when every jacka_ _ comes to Columbia, Tennessee.” So there you have it. I’m not making this up. (Don’t they always say truth is stranger than fiction?) If you haven’t been so lucky as to attend Mule Day yourself, it’s an annual celebration of mules (and donkeys) held in Columbia. It features live music, arts and crafts, clogging, and, of course, mules galore. There’s a mule sale, mule pulling, mule shows, and lots and lots of mule souvenirs. Pappy and I would come home with little miniature mules and mule T-shirts.

One day, to commemorate our mutual dedication to Mule Day, Pappy brought me a real, live donkey. He drove it all the way down from Kentucky in a horse trailer. He told me the donkey—I named him Eeyore—was half zebra, and that was why it had stripes on its ankles. It was only recently that I had my “Hey! Wait a minute . . .” moment and realized that
all
donkeys have white ankles.

So . . . Mule Day. Thought you should know about that.

My Little Breaks

T
here I was in Tennessee, watching chickens, celebrating mules, and risking serious injury at the hands of my four-wheelin’ dad. I didn’t have my heart set on being a huge star. Who does? But even then I knew I definitely wanted to perform in some capacity at least. A couple of years before we moved to Toronto, I went to “Kids on Stage,” a summer acting camp at a little theater called the Boiler Room in Franklin. When our camp put on plays in the Boiler Room, I was never the lead. The only part I remember playing is an old woman. I think there was a wig involved, so I guess I did get
some
experience that would prove critical in later years.

At school I was way into doing plays, “way into” being sort of the nice way of saying I was Miss Bossy. When my mom came in with me and my homemade costume, my second grade teacher, Miss Severe (also Brandi’s teacher. And Braison’s. And Noah’s) said, “Miley has it all planned out.” I was
that
kid. The teachers loved me.
(The kids: not so much.)
Except when I wouldn’t stop talking. Which was most of the time.

In fifth grade—one year before the infamous Year of Being Bullied—we finally moved to Toronto to be with my dad. My mom had been holding out, not wanting to uproot us from Tennessee, but like I said, we all just needed to be together. Leaving my cheer-leading squad was the toughest change for me—I had been so into it. So my mom tried really hard to find a way for me to cheer in Toronto. Yeah—turns out cheerleading’s not so popular in Toronto.

Mom finally found a squad in Burlington, an hour outside of Toronto. You were supposed to be in seventh grade to join, so I was too young; but she told them I’d been cheering since I was six and begged them to at least meet me. When I went out to the gym, they loved how teeny tiny I was. It was really easy to throw me all over the place. I got in!

Toronto was pretty darn cold compared to Nashville during a normal winter. The winter we decided to spend in Toronto turned out to be the coldest they’d had in fifteen years. So every Sunday we’d drive through a blizzard to Burlington for practice. My poor Southern mom, who’d never driven on an icy road in her life! She was a total hero.

In Canada, when I wasn’t cheering or being home-schooled, I was always tagging along with my mom. That meant dropping by the set of Doc to see my dad. Being around the set so much, I absorbed a little bit about filming; how the camera blocking worked, what it meant when they said “Cut”; how important it was to be quiet. But mostly I liked trying on wigs in the wardrobe room. I know, I know. Some people look back on their lives and discover the theme to their life has been overcoming adversity, or battling injustice, or comforting the afflicted. So far, when I look back on my life, the only theme that I see starting to emerge is wigs.

My dad had been on
Doc
for a couple of years, and the producers all knew our family. Shortly after we arrived on the scene, the producer (or was it the director?) of
Doc
offered me the part of a girl named Kiley on an episode of the show. Kiley was an outgoing little girl with an alcoholic, abusive mother who came to live with her father in New York. Kiley’s dad lived in the same apartment building as Doc (my dad). I had some good scenes as Kiley—some deep scenes dealing with the abusive mother, and a scene where Kiley tried out for the school play and got made fun of for her Tennessee accent. Little did I know how much I would need the experience. In two arenas: acting on TV
and
dealing with the mean girls.

If I had to pinpoint a moment, I’d say playing Kiley definitely gave me the acting bug. But mostly I have to mention it because it was nearly half of my professional acting résumé when I tried out for
Hannah Montana
.

After
Doc
, I started doing an actors’ workshop and went to a few camps where I got to do monologues and plays. And I guess it paid off. The next time we were in Nashville on a visit to friends, my mom’s friend Wendi
(the one who later helped me write "I Miss You" about Pappy)
was taking her kids to audition for a Banquet Foods commercial starring country singer Lee Ann Womack. I was curious, so she brought me along. Wendi’s kids are younger than I am, so when the casting director said they were looking for an older girl for the spot, Wendi said I should go in. I don’t remember what happened at the audition, but I got the commercial—and an agent in the process.

What I
do
remember is that the night before I went in to tape the ad, my mom cooked up some of the Banquet Foods products I’d be eating the next day. But when I came into the kitchen to have a taste, my brothers had eaten all of them. So they couldn’t have been too bad—but I’m a picky eater. The next day, between takes, I ducked behind the table and spat out the beans (I think that’s what they were) into my hand.

I guess nobody from Banquet Foods complained, because soon after that my new agent asked my parents to put me on tape for an upcoming movie directed by Tim Burton, called
Big Fish
.