Christmas at Dolly Parton's place

'Welcome folks, grab your partner by the hand. We sure hope you like chicken.'

That's what the announcer should have said. As it turns out, he shouted out something similar - the welcoming, the warning that there would dancing happening - but nothing about chicken. Which is strange, seeing as several hundred people were served one each. A whole chicken, each, along with corn on the cob, some potato, soup, some other meat, and a cheesy ball which locals, in Tennessee, USA, call a biscuit. Humph.

Several hundred diners, three shows a day, seven days a week. That's a lot of chickens. Luckily, I quite like them.

The show is called Dolly's Dixie Stampede. It's in a massive auditorium in Sevierville, Tennessee, Dolly's home town, and now also home to the famous Dollywood theme park. The town is a long 'main street' of clothes store, souvenirs (aka bits of wood) and enough places to eat you could pick a different one every day and never go back to the same place for a whole year.

The cars, usually SUVs (sports utility vehicles, which we Brits would call trucks, or Chelsea tractors) are driven no faster than about 20mph, or 30mph tops. Nobody is in a hurry. At night the road, which is several miles long, wider than a motorway and straight as a ruler, is lit up by stores which stay open most of the night. The glow is tacky, but quite beautiful too. Hardly anyone seems to be shopping, mostly people are just out cruising.

Anyway, back to Dolly's Dixie Stampede. Unlike the drivers outside, the cast inside Dolly's auditorium are going at it 100mph. Not just the performers doing tricks on horses, but the waiting staff too. Impressive how they manage to serve a few hundred chickens in a matter of minutes. No chance of being served booze to wash it down with - Sevierville is a dry town (but luckily there's an impressively seedy liquor store in the next town, Gatlinburg, brown paper bag and all) but instead your plastic cup of diet Pepsi, iced tea, or whatever, is refilled every other second.

Did I mention the hot chocolate served before the show, while we watched a blue grass band? It came in a plastic cowboy boot-shaped mug. And we even get to keep them. Now that was class.

Posted via email from Marc Cooper @ Posterous