Part 1
The Bear That Ran Out of Gas: A Masterclass in Storytelling
The bear is already running. On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Dolly Parton leans forward, and the studio lights catch the impossible architecture of her hair. She is telling a story about a bear in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Someone gave the bear a Coke can filled with gasoline. The bear drank it. Then the bear broke out of its enclosure and ran eight miles toward Sevierville. It ran and it ran, all that fuel pushing it forward, until it fell over. Dolly pauses. The audience is already laughing, but she hasn't delivered the punchline yet. She lets the silence sit there, the way a great raconteur does. Then she says it: 'No, it was out of gas.' The bear didn't die from the gasoline. It died because it ran out of gas. The joke lands like a door slamming in a quiet house. It is absurd, dark, and perfectly timed.
That moment is a masterclass. Dolly Parton is not just a country music icon or a theme park mogul. She is one of the great American storytellers, a woman who can take a bizarre local legend from a small Tennessee town and turn it into a universal laugh. The bear is a seed. What grows from it is a whole philosophy of performance.
Why does the story work? First, Dolly's comic timing is surgical. She doesn't rush. She gives the audience just enough detail—the Coke can, the gasoline, the eight miles, the direction of Sevierville—to build a vivid picture. Then she withholds the ending. The pause is not empty. It is full of anticipation. When she finally says 'No, it was out of gas,' the release is enormous. It's a shaggy-dog story, a form perfected by talk-show hosts like Johnny Carson and David Letterman. Carson could spin a mundane anecdote into gold by stretching it out, letting the audience wonder where it was going. Letterman turned weirdness into a science, interviewing people like a bear expert or a guy who collects rubber bands. Dolly does the same thing, but she adds a layer of warmth. She isn't mocking the bear or the people of Pigeon Forge. She is inviting us into her world, where even a tragic bear becomes a punchline.
That world is Pigeon Forge. Dolly grew up in nearby Sevierville, in a one-room cabin with eleven siblings. Her family was poor, but her imagination was rich. She has said that she learned to tell stories from her mother, who would read the Bible and tell folk tales. Those stories were not polished or fancy. They were raw, funny, and sometimes sad. The bear story is a direct descendant of that tradition. It is a local legend, the kind of thing you'd hear at a general store or a church picnic. Dolly didn't invent it, but she owns it. She carries it with her the way she carries her Tennessee accent, which she has never tried to lose.
In 1986, Dolly opened Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. The theme park is a monument to that local color. It has roller coasters and shows, but it also has a replica of her childhood cabin. It sells fried chicken and moonshine. It is a place where the bear story could happen. Dollywood keeps the spirit of the Smoky Mountains alive, not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing, slightly crazy celebration. The bear would fit right in.
But the bear is more than a joke. It is a metaphor for Dolly herself. Think about it: a creature that seems unstoppable, fueled by something unexpected, running eight miles in a straight line, leaving an impression on everyone who sees it. Dolly has been running for over sixty years. She started with 'Dumb Blonde' in 1967, wrote 'Jolene' and 'I Will Always Love You' in the same afternoon in 1973, and watched Whitney Houston turn that second song into the biggest-selling single by a female artist in history. She has acted in films like 9 to 5 (1980, directed by Colin Higgins, 109 minutes) and Steel Magnolias (1989, directed by Herbert Ross, 117 minutes). She has been nominated for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, though she hasn't received it yet—a fact that made Barack Obama admit on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that it was a 'screw-up.' She keeps going, fueled by something unexpected: maybe it's love, maybe it's ambition, maybe it's just the sheer joy of being Dolly. And when she finally stops—if she ever does—it won't be because she ran out of fuel. It will be because she ran out of gas. But even then, she'll leave us laughing.
That is the power of a single story. It starts with a bear and a Coke can, and it ends with a whole life. Dolly Parton doesn't just tell jokes. She builds worlds. She takes the specific—a bear in Pigeon Forge, a wig on Jimmy Fallon's head, a lawsuit over a poodle named Fluffy—and makes it universal. We laugh because we recognize something true. We laugh because we are all a little bit like that bear, running on something we don't fully understand, hoping we don't fall over until we've made our point.
So the next time you see Dolly Parton on a talk show, watch her eyes. She is not just promoting an album or a theme park. She is telling a story. She is taking you to Sevierville, to a one-room cabin, to a bear that ran eight miles and then fell over. She is reminding us that the best stories are the ones that feel like they could only happen to you, but somehow happen to everyone. And she is doing it with perfect timing, a wink, and a wig that could survive a hurricane.
