By Andrew Marshall, The Mountaineer, Waynesville, N.C. The Tribune Content Agency
Dolly Parton's husband, Carl Dean, recently passed away. It's a terrible thing, because their marriage survived Dolly's gigantic fame and life in show business for 60 incredible years. Nothing can ease the sting of death, but I hope we can collectively try, for Dolly's sake.
Let's sandblast the slavery apologists off Stone Mountain and carve Dolly up there in their place. And add Outkast while we're at it. Maybe Ray Charles. I'm open to suggestions.
Let's name a star after her. Hell, let's name the sun after her. Let's call alpenglow "Dollyglow" instead.
We owe the sequined songbird something. She makes the world a better place.
That's especially true around our house at the moment, where Dolly is experiencing a 100% approval rating in the all-important 0- to 3-years-old demographic.
We subscribe to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, a program that mails books to children ages birth to five, once a month, for free, in five different countries. More than three million children have received 270,748,534 books and counting over the 30-year program. Dolly started it in memory of her father - who was illiterate.
As a man of the written word, as far as I'm concerned, that qualifies Dolly for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, knighthood, sainthood, a lifetime supply of Moon Pies, and a portrait on the $500 dollar bill. They don't make a $500 bill anymore? Let's fire up the printers at the Treasury Department.
Dolly's photo graces the inside flap of every Imagination Library book we receive. It's a humble picture, down in the bottom right-hand corner, hardly noticeable. But my freshly-turned-three-year-old is in a noticing phase. Things he's noticed lately: men with more hair than me (most of them), men who are taller than me (all of them), visible butt cracks at Walmart (loudly, we're working on it), and Dolly Parton's photo in his books.
"Who dat, dada?" he asks as we finish an Imagination Library tome about humanity's greatest invention, green tractors.
"I love her," he says, expressing a sentiment that most right-thinking people on the planet share, albeit not usually people smeared in peanut butter and wearing Tyrannosaurus rex underwear.
"That's...a long story. You see, with flaming locks of auburn hair," I begin before my wife cocks an eyebrow at me. That particular eyebrow is somehow connected to my jaw. The eyebrow goes up, my mouth closes. Don't ask me how it works; it's science stuff.
In deference to The Wifely Glance, I try to change the subject away from Jolene, that scarlet, emerald-eyed temptress who once made the now-immortal mistake of flirting with Carl Dean at a Tennessee bank. But my boy will have none of it. That morning, we listen to Dolly's 1974 masterpiece of an album Jolene on the way to and from daycare, regardless of what my wife's eyebrow thinks about it. We have every day since, at his request.
Dolly now comprises the bulk of our conversations. Throughout our sweet hours together, my son peppers me with questions about Dolly's life. Questions not easily answered by Wikipedia.
"Dolly Parton have horses, Dada? Dolly Parton have green tractors, Dada? Dolly Parton have monster trucks, Dada?" he ponders, idly inspecting a freshly retrieved booger.
"Um. Yes!" I say. I have learned that unearned confidence goes a long way in parenting.
At bedtime, after books are read and the songs are sung, warding off mountain chill under thick blankets, we both fight sleep for our own reasons. Me because I've still got some writing to do, him because there are facets of Dolly's life still worth exploring.
"Dolly Parton like oatmeal, Dada? Dolly Parton's horses like oatmeal, Dada?" he murmurs as gravity pulls at my eyelids, and I dream confused dreams of oatmeal and horses and green tractors.
Riding in a monster truck above that strange toddler cacophony of interests, the sweet siren of the Little Pigeon River - still with us, thankfully, no doubt making the heavens themselves green with envy.
Dolly, you never had to worry about Jolene. I hope, somehow, that helps.