Why Dolly Parton ‘Religiously’ Planted ‘Horse Turds’ as a Child
Dolly Parton got up to some wild things as a little girl growing up in the mountains of East Tennessee. Burying horse poop in the ground and diligently watering it in hopes that a pony would grow, for example. Here’s the story of how Parton and her siblings believed they could grow ponies.
Dolly Parton’s uncle told her she could ‘grow a pony’
Parton’s uncle Dot Watson (married to the singer’s mother’s sister Estelle) was a playful guy. One day, he told the “Coat of Many Colors” singer and her siblings that they could “grow a pony.” As far fetched as it sounds, the Parton kids desperately wanted a pony and were excited to believe there was a way to get one.
“We had all kinds of animals on the farm, but we never had a pony,” Parton wrote in her first memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “A pony, after all, would eat feed and have to be taken care of and not really contribute anything to the survivability of the family, except for providing the kids with a little fun. We used to dream about having a pony and how wonderful he would be and the freedom he would give us to hop on his back any time we felt like it and traipse across the hills.”
The Parton kids took diligent care planting their ‘pony seeds’
When Parton asked her uncle how exactly she and her siblings could grow the animal they wanted most, he told them: by planting pony seeds.
“A pony seed to anybody else would have been a horse turd, but to a kid who’s ready to believe anything with such great promise, it sounds like a simple and workable concept,” wrote Parton.
So the Parton kids set out to find the best pony seeds they could find.
“We studied turds for hours, talking about how well shaped that one was or what a good, strong pony this one would make because it had a lot of hay fibers in it,” she wrote. “We planted our horse turds and weeded them and watered them religiously.”
The “Don’t Make Me Have to Come Down There” singer said she and her siblings really believed they’d walk outside one day to find “a row of fine, healthy ponies.” When they didn’t, they thought they must have overwatered the seeds or planted them too close to a tree.
“And all the while Uncle Dot would listen to our questions and give us advice,” wrote Parton. “He always said we should be ready with a rope because the ponies came up really fast once they got started.”
What the experience taught the country singer
Looking back, Parton said the experience didn’t hurt anyone. In fact, she and the rest of the kids had almost as much fun planting the pony seeds as the adults had at their expense.
The experience reminded Parton of a story she was told as a little girl:
“[There was a] little boy who was such an optimist that it got on his brother’s nerves. The brother decided to break him of it, so one Christmas he hid the little boy’s real present and put a sack of horse manure under the tree instead. On Christmas morning, the brother was surprised to find the little optimist digging excitedly through the sack saying gleefully, ‘With all this horse s***, there’s got to be a pony here somewhere!’”
Parton and her siblings were nothing if not young optimists.
“In those hills there are worse things to be,” she wrote.
