I was four years old when Dolly Parton walked into my life. She owned the television screen selling Breeze laundry detergent.

I certainly didn’t know that more than fifty-five years later I would still be walking with her.

My mother, Georgie Caylor, was already a Dolly Parton fan, and when Mama, said, “Oh, there is Dolly Parton.” I knew exactly who she was. I could not recollect her songs, but somehow my four-year-old mind (okay, just a few months away from being five) decided that Dolly Parton was important, and she, indeed, was. Check her out…

And now, 55 years after this commercial, Dolly is gone from her earthly home. But perhaps that is where the meaning of her song “Home” begins.

Dolly’s earthly home in the hills around Locus Ridge, Tennessee / Pigeon Forge is like me and my childhood in the hills of North Georgia combined with my home in McDonald, Tennessee where God blessed me, Sean, Carter, and Ammon as a family for 20 years.

When I hear Dolly’s “Home” it’s not just another country music song.

From my blessed childhood, I see me and my sister, Karen, at our house in Varnell, Georgia catching June bugs in the summertime afternoons then lightning bugs later that night in our yard.

I hear whippoorwills and katydids at Nanny and Granddaddy’s house which was also in Varnell. Still at Granddaddy and Nanny’s house, I hear a Southern Railway diesel at three o’clock in the morning. The whistle and the chug are far away. It draws nearer and nearer. It’s finally just beyond the front yard shaking the 100-year-old windows, then it rumbles into the distance. Then I drift back to sleep while enjoying the smell of the 4 o’clock flowers that are blooming right beneath the open bedroom window.

Dolly’s fishing pole reminds me of being at Mamaw Wimpy’s house and pond (only about 15 miles away from Varnell) where I would literally use a cane pole to fish for bream. We would catch bream and blue gill right and left. Every once in a while, I would have to put the fishing pole down and search high and low between the pond and the barn for crickets to use as live bait. At the end of the day at Mamaw Wimpy’s we would drink ice-cold Coca-Cola or eat popsicles on her front porch as we listened to thousands of jar flies singing across Houston Valley.

Back at my house, I can feel Mamaw kissing my scrapes and scratches after falling all around the yard during summertime play; oh, my goodness that unconditional love from Mama! … I am picking corn or digging potatoes with Daddy in our summer garden listening to him tell stories of his childhood… loved, loved, loved and miss the way Daddy could tell a story…

…And somewhere at the beginning of those memories, I am four years old again, sitting in front of a television watching Dolly Parton sell Breeze detergent.

Dolly’s song then helps me change to McDonald Road where, thanks to Carter and Ammon, I got to have a second childhood. I am watching Carter and Ammon as two toddlers run through the lush green grass we sometimes had to mow twice a week with the tractor during wet summers. I am swimming under the stars in our pool. Ammon, Carter, and I are running and playing tag under the shade of the Black Walnut Trees or taking a Montessori walk for our daily science lesson. The wonderful traditions of catching lightning bugs and June bugs were passed on to Carter and Ammon from Varnell to McDonald Road. My thoughts flash up to Grindstone Mountain with 5 Black and Tan coonhounds on a moonlit, autumn evening listening to their melodious bawls and chops as they track and tree raccoons. Our dachshunds, Sophie and Buddy, hang close by to me and enjoy every smell around them in the crisp, night air. I can hear the Screech Owl and the Horned Owl make their calls to each other across the mountain. In my winter thoughts I can feel the freezing snowballs hitting me in the face when Carter and Ammon threw them at me and see my giddy children creating snow angels. It was also because of Dolly and her love of the Smoky Mountains that I included in our children’s book, “Christmas Hawk” that Hawk’s region to help Santa search and report for his good children list was between the Mississippi River and the Great Smoky Mountains.

So, as I begin to close this post which has been over three weeks in the making, please watch Dolly’s “Home” video again…

Are you back? Home isn’t a physical house is it?  Since I fell in love with Dolly’s song, “Home” in 2014,  I believe this is what she has given me…

It has reminded me that home is not necessarily the house where we grew up, the house where we raised our children, or even the place where we happen to live today.

Home is Mama and Daddy.

Home is Nanny and Granddaddy.

Home is Mamaw Wimpy’s pond, a fishing pole, a cricket in my pocket, and the sound of jar flies humming through Houston Valley.

Home is a Southern Railway whistle fading into the darkness.

Home is five coonhounds bawling somewhere on Grindstone Mountain.

Home is lightning bugs in Varnell or McDonald Road.

Home is watching Ammon and Carter making snow angels.

Home is Carter and Ammon running through the grass.

Home is me swimming beneath the stars.

And perhaps, ultimately, home is the place toward which all of us are traveling.

For over 70 years, Dolly was singing about and honoring her earthly home that she knew so well, and for 55 years, I walked with her, sang with her, and honored both of our homes because they were so much alike. The first thing I did on Tuesday August 25, 2026, the day Dolly Parton died, upon arriving in my kitchen after school was to play “Home”.  As Dolly winked then bowed goodbye at the end of the song, I winked back at her and bawled out loud. Tears were flowing. On that day, I lost my lovely and talented walking partner who was called to her heavenly home. She now knows the eternal home that I have spent my life believing in just as she believed. And one day by the grace of God, I hope to know it too. …Until then, I will keep walking for Dolly and her legacy here on this terrestrial ball. And I will keep returning “home”.

“Raised on Dolly” is correct… this is the serving tray that my mother bought for me. The coffee set goes with it.