Why Dolly Parton Spent Months Attempting to Dig to China as a Child
Dolly Parton’s childhood in the great smoky mountains of East Tennessee was filled with DIY fun. She and her 11 siblings didn’t have toys or games from a store. They made their own fun. One day, young Parton got in her head that she’d like to go to China. She was an avid reader for her age and had read a book about the country. The “Coat of Many Colors” singer thought it sounded like the most fascinating, magical place. So she convinced all the kids to help her dig there.
Somebody told Dolly Parton that a person could dig to China from America
Young Parton was so interested in China after reading about it that she talked of little else. Somebody told her that if she dug far enough, she could reach the country. That’s all she needed to hear. Even as a child, Parton was curious about the world outside of Locust Ridge. She’d been born to get out.
“I convinced the other kids to help me, and we started digging,” Parton wrote in her first memoir Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “We picked a spot up on the mountain. I can’t imagine why. You’d think if we were going to dig all the way to China, we would have at least given ourselves the advantage of starting in the lowest holler we could find. Kids gullible enough to try to dig to China in the first place are not likely to think of that.”
Though Parton and the other children might not have picked the best spot to dig, the “Down From Dover” singer does say that digging on top of a mountain made the act feel “secret and special.”
Dolly and her siblings dug for months
Parton and the kids were dedicated diggers. They were at it for months. Whenever the opportunity arose, they snuck away to the top of the mountain to work on digging to China.
“We dug with tin cans and knives and forks and just about anything that would move a little bit of dirt,” she wrote.
They thought they were so close to breaking through for so long. While digging, the kids would talk about what it would be like when they got to China.
“One of my brothers insisted that if we did make it to China, we would all be standing on our heads, but the rest of us pooh-poohed that notion,” she wrote. “We did, however, have considerable discussion about what the ‘Chinamens’ would be like. What would they think of us?”
They never did get to China
Though they never reached China, the hole still felt like an accomplishment to Parton and her siblings. They were proud of all the work they’d put into the massive hole. Or, at least, they thought it was massive at the time.
“I went back there as an adult, and the hole was not nearly as impressive as I had remembered it,” wrote Parton. “In fact, someone had put a little gate across the opening and was using it for a doghouse. Maybe if we had started in the holler, who knows? Even now, looking back on it, I think digging to China, or at least the attempt, was important for us.”
