Dolly Parton Was One Of Us: The RV Interview I Almost Got

Everybody has a Dolly Parton reminiscence this week. Mine entails a Class B camper van, a aircraft ticket I by no means used, and a case of the flu I’ve been mad about for greater than ten years.

Here is one thing many of the tributes won’t inform you. Dolly Parton and her husband Carl Dean had been RVers. Not tour bus individuals, although she logged extra miles on a type of than most of us will ever drive. I imply precise RVers, the type who load up a small van and disappear into the hills for a few days.

I came upon about it by chance. This was again round 2014 or 2015, and I used to be writing a weblog referred to as Roadtreking.com, which years later grew into what you might be studying now, RV Lifestyle. Roadtreks had been my factor. Small Class B vans, constructed on a van chassis, no towed automobile, no leveling jacks, nothing to arrange. Word reached me from anyone within the trade that Dolly owned two of them.

I did what reporters do. I despatched a word to her publicist asking for an interview, and I absolutely anticipated to listen to nothing again. You intention excessive, you get ignored, you progress on to the following story. That is the job.

A few days later the reply got here again, and it was sure. Not a well mannered brush-off sure, both. Dolly can be delighted to speak about her RVing. And right here is the half that also will get me: I used to be informed she already learn my weblog. She cherished Class B vans. She owned two, one she saved out in Hollywood for the stretches when she was engaged on music and movie initiatives, and one at her dwelling in Tennessee.

So we began setting issues up. The plan was to fulfill her in Nashville. We nailed down a date and I booked the flight. I informed Jennifer. I informed a few mates. I’m not certain I’ve ever been extra enthusiastic about an interview, and I’ve interviewed presidents.

Then I acquired the flu. Not a sniffle, the true factor, flat on my again for days.

Jennifer took one take a look at me and stated what I already knew. You don’t wish to be the person who offers Dolly Parton the flu. So I canceled. I figured we’d simply discover one other date, as a result of that’s what you all the time determine. There is all the time one other date.

There by no means was. We tried to circle again and the schedules by no means lined up once more, after which a yr glided by, after which a whole lot of years glided by. That interview is the one which acquired away.

What I did study, secondhand, is the half I’ve thought of most since. I used to be informed that Dolly and Carl would slip away for a weekend or two each few months, and generally in the midst of the week when the calendar opened up. She spent an enormous share of her life on a tour bus, however that was work. The van was totally different. That was theirs.

Carl drove. They stayed near dwelling more often than not, poking round Tennessee, and right here is the element I like: with out the wigs and the rhinestones and the nails, no one acknowledged her. One of probably the most well-known ladies on the planet may pull right into a campground, sit outdoors a van in a garden chair, and simply be a spouse on a visit along with her husband.

If you will have ever questioned why so many people find yourself in a small van after years of chasing larger and larger rigs, that proper there may be the reply. A Class B shouldn’t be about luxurious. It is about having the ability to go, and about being no one particularly if you get there. Dolly Parton may have purchased any coach ever constructed, any one in all them, customized, six figures, no matter she needed. She saved two little vans as an alternative.

The one situation her safety workforce placed on my interview was that I couldn’t {photograph} the van. They didn’t need anyone studying what it regarded like and going trying to find it in campgrounds and parking tons. That was a totally affordable ask and I agreed to it with out hesitation.

Ten years later, with each of them gone, that motive has quietly gone away too. One of our RVCommunity.com members, Tim Honeck, lives not removed from Dolly’s dwelling. He drove over final night time and across the nook from the entrance gate with the piles of flowers and fan tributes, he discovered Dolly’s little Roadtrek 190.

That’s it within the above picture.

Carl died in March 2025 at 82, after a wedding that lasted virtually sixty years and stayed virtually solely out of public view. Dolly died final week, at 80. The tributes have been concerning the songs, the enterprise empire, the theme park, and the hundreds of thousands of books she put into the arms of children who couldn’t afford them. All of that’s true and all of it’s earned.

But I maintain coming again to an image I by no means acquired to see in individual. A gravel pull-in someplace in Tennessee, a small white van, a person behind the wheel who appreciated being left alone, and a lady within the passenger seat along with her hair down and no rhinestones wherever, going nowhere particularly.

Turns out she was one in all us.