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Dolly Parton died two weeks ago and the tributes have mostly been about Nashville and Sevier County, which is fair, because that is where she was from. But there is a Kingsport thread in her story that runs through a chamber of commerce filing cabinet and a Dollywood fire station, and I went looking for it this week. What I found was better than a concert date.

In today's post:

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Everybody around here has a Dolly Parton memory. A Dollywood trip in a car with no air conditioning. A grandmother who played Jolene until the tape stretched. That typewriter intro to 9 to 5 coming out of a radio in somebody's garage.

She died on August 25 at 80. For two weeks the tributes have been about the songs, the park, and the wigs. She cut her first single at 13, a thing called Puppy Love. She was writing professionally at 16. Forty-nine studio albums and more than 3,000 songs later, the one most people can hum is the Whitney Houston version of a song Dolly wrote.

The Kingsport part of the story is a piece of paperwork.

In 1995 she started mailing books to preschoolers in Sevier County, where she grew up. The first order was a little over 1,700 copies. Every child got the same first title, The Little Engine That Could, then one book a month until they turned five, when the last one to land in the mailbox was Look Out Kindergarten Here I Come. No income test. No application past a name and an address. The book came addressed to the kid, which was the entire point.

Sullivan County got in line early.

On May 29, 2003, three county librarians and three board members went to a state workshop put on by the Friends of the Tennessee Libraries. The pitch was to go home and start one. They went home and started one. An organizational meeting followed that October. A council formed in March 2004. That July, the Dollywood Foundation and the Kingsport Chamber Foundation signed a memorandum of agreement, and books started showing up in Sullivan County mailboxes with children's names on the labels.

The program ran under the Chamber Foundation for five years before it spun off into its own 501(c)(3). It still has no paid staff. Ninety-four percent of what it raises goes to books and postage. The state covers half the cost through the Governor's Early Literacy Foundation, which works out to about $12 per child per year. The local affiliate raises the rest, roughly $7,000 a month.

Last summer they threw a party at the Farmers Market for 25,000 Sullivan County kids who have graduated out of the program. Books mailed at that point: about 1,345,000. The current rate runs between 6,400 and 6,800 a month.

That first order of 1,700 books in Sevier County now mails more than three million books a month to children in five countries, and it still works the same way. Local people, in a local town, raising the local half.

Then there is the fire hose.

In 2014 Dollywood opened FireChaser Express, a family coaster built around the volunteer fire departments that worked the woods around the Smokies in the 1940s. Dolly showed up for the opening in a leather fireman's coat and sang Great Balls of Fire. That part made the news. The part that did not is inside the station house you walk through to reach the train. Dozens of fire hoses hang from the ceiling in there, donated by real departments from around Tennessee and signed by the people who used them. The plaque underneath salutes the men and women who answer the call.

Four members of the Kingsport Fire Department were at that opening. Andrew Catron, Tom Fields, Terry Arnold and Barry Brickey.

One more thread. Gary "Biscuit" Davis, the five-time national banjo champion who played in Dolly's band for more than 20 years and ran it for much of that stretch, has played here. He and mandolin player Matt Munsey did a Kingsport Chamber event at MeadowView in 2024. Fifteen dollars at the door, food included.

She was from Sevier County, a hundred miles down the road, which in East Tennessee terms makes her a neighbor. We claim her here the same way Sevierville does, and we are right to. But the thing she built that traveled the farthest was not a song or a theme park. It was a mailing list. And it got to this county because six people drove to a workshop in 2003 and came home thinking they could run one.

The books went out again this month. They go out again next month. The legacy lives on.

A few things worth getting off your couch for:

Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion | Friday through Sunday, September 11-13 | Historic Downtown Bristol The festival turns 25 this year, and the Sunday bill is the biggest one they have ever put on State Street. St. Paul & The Broken Bones and Los Lobos headline Friday, Sierra Ferrell takes Saturday, and Old Crow Medicine Show closes it out. Details

Kingsport Farmers Market | Saturday, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. | 308 Clinchfield Street Late tomatoes, early apples, and the last good stretch before things turn to squash and mums. Get there before ten or take what's left. Details

"Dark Side of Light" | Saturday, 12 p.m. | Bays Mountain Park Planetarium A show about light pollution, which sounds dry until you remember what the sky over this county looked like before everybody put a floodlight on their driveway. Six dollars. Details

One place in this town doing the work.

Sullivan County Imagination Library They mail a book a month to every registered child in this county from birth to age five, sixty books in all if you sign up at birth. No paid staff, no office overhead, and 94 percent of every dollar goes to books and postage. The state covers half the cost and this county has to come up with the other half, month after month, which is where you come in. Give

1808 Bramblewood Drive | 5 bed, 5 1/2 bath

Speaking of fires worth gathering around.

This one sits in Huntington Woods, in Ridgefields, and it is a custom build that has been kept up like somebody cared. Five bedrooms, five and a half baths, and a floor plan that clearly anticipated a full house. The kitchen is the real thing: granite counters, double ovens, a five-burner gas cooktop with pop-up venting, multiple pantries, a trash compactor, and an island with a magnetic wireless charger built into it. Off that, an oversized eat-in breakfast area and a formal dining room, because the people who built this expected both kinds of meals.

The den is vaulted, has a fireplace, and opens onto the screened porch. There is a formal living room, and a private office with its own full bath that works as a guest suite or a place to put a parent. Upstairs, the primary has his-and-her walk-in closets, dual granite vanities, a soaking tub, and a tiled walk-in shower. One more bedroom with its own ensuite, two more sharing a Jack-and-Jill. Laundry is on the second floor, which means nobody hauls a basket up a flight of stairs ever again.

Downstairs is a second house. Family room with a fireplace and a wet bar, mini fridge, built-in ice maker. Bonus rooms for a gym or a hobby or a game room, one of them wired with a projector and sound system that stays with the house. A full bath. Then an expansive unfinished stretch with interior access and its own garage door off the lower driveway, which is the part a person with tools will circle back to.

And then there's the backyard. The screened porch feeds a deck, the deck feeds a stone patio, and on that patio sits a wood-fired pizza oven and an outdoor fireplace built to match it. Ridgefields residents can buy into the neighborhood country club for golf, swimming, and tennis, and the restaurant there is open to the public. But you are not going to the club on a Friday in October. You are going to be out back making pizza.

See the full listing at sellstateline.com.

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That's it for this week. Thanks for trusting me with your inbox. Let's tell some stories.

Talk soon,

Ryan