She Was Just Always Around

Dolly Parton, a first date, and the strange way some people become part of your history.

Illustration generated by ChatGPT

There was this boy, not long after I went down to Tennessee for college, and he wanted to know, would I like to go to a movie?

He didn’t have that thick down-south accent. Points for him. So I said sure, let’s go see that new one about working nine to five.

I found out later he didn’t really want that movie, but he went anyway, because he wanted me.

For our honeymoon we went to the World’s Fair in Knoxville. It was raining, and I don’t mean a drizzle like back in Portland. It felt like the beginning of Noah’s flood. They gave out free garbage bags, and we made holes for our heads. We saw the Japanese bullet train simulator, but the rain kept coming, so we gave up and headed to our new hometown, Atlanta, Georgia.

The 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair, as I remember it. Illustration generated with ChatGPT.

I got a COBOL position typing code onto a green screen. And a promotion. And a database. Heaven. People with databases get important work.

The VP of finance needed me to fix some calculations. He liked to come to my desk so I could show him the fixes on my screen. He would lean close with his arm across the back of my chair. Sometimes he lit a cigarette. “Do you mind?” And I would think of that movie.

Who were the actors? Dolly Parton. And Jane Fonda. And also the lady from Laugh-In?

I remembered some of them from TV when I was a kid. Dolly had big hair and a bigger accent, and I wondered back then if it was all fake.

But as the years went by, my own kids brought home friends with the same accent. They barely noticed. They just said, “Oh, Johnny, he talks country.”

Microsoft called us to the Pacific Northwest. Back home for me. But the kids were confused. What is this so-called pop? And Mom, you SAID it didn’t rain all that much here.

They still made jokes about the Big Chicken. They mourned the loss of Waffle House. We used to eat there on Christmas morning, because they were open, and also you could get hash browns scattered, smothered, or covered. Or all three. Your choice.

A few years ago my daughter’s family chose to move back. Now I know how my folks must have felt when I left for Tennessee. The distance. The travel plans. Don’t even get me started on tornadoes. And I get flash flood warnings on my phone. For Tennessee. Why is that?

The other day everybody on Facebook started posting “RIP Dolly.” You know they do that without telling you a thing. So you have to go find some news. I found ABC, and they already had a special planned for 10 p.m. There was Dolly and her movies. Dolly helping out with the floods back in ‘24. Dolly and Kenny Rogers. Dolly and … wait, Howard Stern?

The show was OK, but it felt like they were turning her life into a list. Five things you should know about Dolly.

Don’t tell me what I should know. She was just always around. That’s what I know.

And then I thought of the Christmas song.

It’s 2020 and I’m flipping channels, and there’s Dolly all alone in a set that feels like a living room with lots of candles. She looks older. Hair’s not so big. Same accent. Fancy dress. And she starts singing “Mary, Did You Know?”

At first it sounds like a quiet little story, with the soft voice, up in her head. But then she gets to the part about how the blind will see and the lame will leap, and she’s belting it out. Way down in her chest. And I’m thinking, wait, isn’t she like 74 years old? Where is the old lady vibrato?

There was not one wobble in that voice. None. At. All.

Yeah.

You know what’s weird? I never really paid attention to her singing before. I mainly liked her movies.

Back in ‘89 we went to see Steel Magnolias at the Merchants Walk 8 on Johnson Ferry Road. Dolly played the part of Truvy Jones. Truvy seemed like somebody who could do my hair. Her accent sounded like half the people I knew by then. My kids would have said she talked country. Fine by me.

There was sadness in that film, but it was a stick-with-you sort of sadness, like, this is how we deal. Terrible things happen. You cry, somebody says something funny, and somebody does your hair.

I never really thought about any of this until I heard the news. She was just always around.