People Are Strange: The wildest gift Dolly Parton ever received from a fan
If there’s a soul in this world with anything bad to say about Dolly Parton, I don’t think we’ll live to hear about it.
Because how could you start trash-talking the queen of country now? She’s an icon in every way you possibly can be. Fashion? Dolly’s a go-to Halloween costume and has been since the 1960s. Cinema? Argue with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, I dare you. Philanthropy? Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has provided over 100 million free books to kids in need since its founding in the mid-1980s. Music? Come the fuck on now.
‘Jolene’, ‘Coat of Many Colours’, ‘Nine to Five’, ‘I Will Always Love You’, ‘My Tennessee Mountain Home’, if that scratch on the surface isn’t enough for you, then I fail to see what possibly could be. She’s arguably the most beloved figure in country music, and it’s difficult to see if anyone could come a close second, let alone give her a run for her money.
Yet, as anyone who has spent time in the public eye will attest, being famous is a mixed blessing.
This is a fact obvious to anyone with a functioning set of eyes right now. At times, being a public figure really does seem to be a form of profound mental torture, with everyone in the world seeing it as their Gods given right to pass judgement on you for things you probably didn’t even do. However, even on the vanishingly rare occasions where you’re universally beloved, and folks would rather chew their own toes off than say anything negative about you, there are also some truly disturbing things that can come your way.
As Dolly Parton herself found out the hard way, right when her career hit the stratosphere.
What was the strangest gift a fan gave Dolly Parton?
By 1973, Dolly Parton was already a famed, successful singer on the country circuit. However, as you can imagine, ‘Jolene’ changed all that. It was the first time a single of hers crossed over into the Billboard Hot 100, and thus, Parton’s celebrity moved from the somewhat insular world of country music into the mainstream.
She was no longer a country star; she was a true-blue pop star. High fives all-around, right? Well, Parton felt the same way until she arrived home from tour one fateful day. Speaking to the Windy City Times in 2011, Parton said, “We came home one day, and there was a baby in a box at our gate with a note in it. The note said, ‘My name is Jolene, my momma has left me here, and she wants you to have me.'”
Let that sink in for a moment. The idea that a song you wrote got so beloved and so popular that people start bequeathing their children to you out of sheer devotion. That’s not love, that’s obsession. Also, like, child endangerment, but that should be obvious. Of course, Parton did not take the child in.
“Of course, we all freaked out!” she said, “We immediately called Human Services and took care of the baby until they got there. We never did know or hear anything about it.”
One can only wonder what an interaction like that can do to your psyche, but to Dolly Parton, it’s probably only one of the weirder things to ever happen to her. There’s probably quite a lot that rivals it, which is possibly an even more frightening prospect.