The First Time Dolly Parton Realized Boys Were Interested in Her
The first time Dolly Parton realized boys were interested in her was at a pie supper. To her delight, she brought quite the popular pie. That night, the “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” singer also learned a lesson in manners. Here’s the full story.
Dolly Parton brought a popular pie to the pie supper
When Parton “got to the stage where I was growing out of my tomboy years and starting to take an interest in boys,” she found herself invited to a pie supper. A pie supper is an event that has each girl bake a pie (Parton’s mother baked hers) and bring it to the social. Then the pies are auctioned off to the boys who bid the highest. The boy who buys the pie then sits with the girl who made it and they share it together.
“It was a sweet old country custom, and I guess it was a way of getting around shyness,” Parton wrote in her first memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “It was a lot easier for a boy to act like he really wanted a certain pie than it was for him to admit he was interested in the girl who came with it.”
Parton went to the pie supper with her lifelong friend Judy Ogle. The “Coat of Many Colors” singer’s pie was ultimately bought by a boy named Dewey King, but he had some competition first.
“I don’t remember how much he paid for it, but I do remember he had to bid against a couple of other boys for it,” wrote Parton. “This was the first indication I can remember that boys were interested in me, and I was touched by that. Although I’m not quite sure where. Dewey seemed determined to have my pie at any price, and I was impressed by that as well. He had a twin sister, and they both had snow-white hair. He was the prettiest thing you’d ever want to see.”
Dolly Parton’s lesson in manners
Also at the pie supper was a cute young teacher named Bud Messer who Parton thought very highly of—”he seemed to be such a fine gentleman.” He always tried to teach his students manners and social skills.
As Parton and King sat and enjoyed their pie, Messer came over to their table to join them. He attempted to discreetly tell Parton to chew with her mouth closed.
“It’s nice for the young ladies to chew with their mouths closed,” he said quietly.
“I was a little embarrassed, but I was also proud that I had learned something,” wrote Parton. “I felt so grown up that I could sit there and eat like a lady.”
The singer tried to teach her family to chew with their mouths closed
After the pie supper ended, Parton was excited—excited about how the evening had gone and to get home and relay what she had learned from her teacher.
“I was anxious to get home so that I could tell the other kids, even the ones older than I was,” she wrote. “I felt like it was my duty to help bring them the finer things in life. None of us Partons had ever had any table manners. We would sit at the table and smack our food like a bunch of possums in a mulberry bush.”
But when Parton got the opportunity to relay what she had learned at the pie supper, she jumbled her words.
“I had learned that I was not supposed to talk with food in my mouth and that I was supposed to chew with my mouth closed. When I became the teacher rather than the student, it came out as ‘You’re never supposed to chew with food in your mouth,’” she wrote.
The Parton family had a good laugh at that.
The “Down From Dover” singer might not have been able to teach her family to chew with their mouths closed, but she felt confident in her new knowledge of how to “eat like a lady,” especially now that she knew boys were interested in her.
