Jimmy Fallon better watch his back… Dolly’s comin’ for his job.
Dolly Parton told an amazing story on The Tonight Show a couple weeks back, and she certainly had Jimmy going, hook, line and sinker.
He was part of her recent Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas special, and he made a trip out to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to film a few months ago.
And during the interview here on the late night show, she remembered that she’d forgotten to tell him the story about one of the famous Smoky Mountain bears while he was in town:
“Everybody said, well did you tell him our famous story about our bear? And I said, ‘No, I never got a chance to tell him.’ Do you have time for it on the show? Well, this is a true story.
Up in Pigeon Forge, near where we were, and I know you asked me why they call it Pigeon Forge, and I told you it’s ‘cuz it’s where pigeon’s forge, but anyway. There is a pigeon river…
But seriously, in Pigeon Forge, many years ago, back when I was a kid, they had a bear in a cage. You know, we’re famous for the bears in the Smokies.”
And this bear became so famous, in fact, that tourists would go out of their way to stop at the market to see it and give it bottled Coke with peanuts in it (it’s a Southern thing… don’t knock it ’til you try it):
“And they had a bear in a big cage up there, and people would stop at this market and they would buy Coke’s for the bear that was in the cage.
And tourist would take pictures, ‘cuz Gatlinburg, that whole area, for years, they would put peanuts in the Coca Cola cans and whatever the bottled Coke’s were then… So anyway, this bear was just getting bigger and bigger.
But, they were doin’ that, and they were just sellin’ all kinds of stuff at this market, and this poor bear was just drinkin’ them all.”
But one day, some mean redneck put gasoline in a Coke can instead and gave it to the bear… and I feel like every bad story like this always ends with something caused by a mean redneck.
Anyways, the bear went insane after ingesting the poisonous liquid, and broke out of the pen to head towards Sevierville:
“And one day, some redneck put gasoline in a Coke can. Can you believe how bad people are? And the poor thing just went crazy, and it broke out of the pen.
And it started toward Sevierville, ‘cuz Pigeon Forge is about eight miles from Sevierville. And it just ran all the way down and you know, it was just going down there. And all of a sudden it just fell over.”
And Jimmy asks the obvious question here:
“Dead?”
To which Dolly, the queen of everything, replies:
“No, it was out of gas!”
Protect this woman at. All. Costs.
You can (and definitely should) watch her tell the story here… it’s absolutely brilliant:
