By Randy Capps
One of the Capps family traditions is to take a Christmas-themed trip in December. Usually, it’s to Williamsburg, to soak up some holiday spirit at Christmasland.
This year, we decided to change it up a bit and visit Gatlinburg. The highlight of that trip had to be the trip to Dollywood. For the uninitiated, that’s a theme park owned by Dolly Parton.
To fully appreciate this tale, we have to take a sidebar. Shortly after Shanna and I got engaged in 1999, we went to Gatlinburg. We drove by Dollywood, but since we were on a tight budget, we couldn’t afford to go in.
In fact, the day before we were set to come home, we took out enough money for gas (around $15 in those days) and with what we had left, we bought a deck of Phase 10 cards, ordered a pizza and hung out in our motel room.
This time, we actually got past the front gate. It turns out that one day wasn’t nearly enough to take in the park’s full scope, but the parts we did see were amazing.
I enjoyed the museums detailing Dolly’s history, her childhood in the Tennessee mountains and her rise to worldwide prominence.
One of my favorite concepts on X, formerly known as Twitter, is that there are some people that unite the platform. When Dolly’s health took a poor turn recently, tweets flew in unison suggesting the world is a far better place with her in it — and that’s a rare thing on social media.
I thought about that when I passed by the Imagination Library counter of free books given away. It was a little more than 300 million and climbing. What a powerful legacy.
I’m not much on country music, but I’m a big fan of Dolly. As we rode the steam-powered train through her park, I thought about the lasting impact of such a remarkable life.
The rich and powerful are often ruthless and spiteful, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone to suggest that about Dolly.
Imagine if we all gave more, and cared more? I went to the mountains of Tennessee looking for Christmas spirit, and wound up being inspired by one of its favorite daughters instead.
