Dolly Parton and her siblings got new shoes once a year. Their father, Robert Lee Parton, would make the trek into town with his childrens’ foot sizes marked in sticks and pick out 12 pairs of shoes to last through the fall and winter. Whether the shoes actually fit or not, the Parton kids would always tell their dad the shoes fit perfectly.
How Robert Lee would buy his kids’ shoes
Every year, the Parton kids needed new shoes. But there wasn’t a good way to haul all 12 of them into town to try them on.
“Transportation was a big problem, and Daddy was not about to try to drag all of us into town with him,” Parton wrote in her first memoir, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “He usually only went about once every six weeks or so, and it was easier for him to just ride our plow horse by himself.”
To know what size to get his kids, he’d gather a bunch of sticks and measure their feet against the sticks, making notches with his knife to mark the size. Then he’d write the name of the kid on the stick that matched their foot size.
“Off he’d go with his pile of sticks, either to town or George Franklin’s store, and he’d put the sticks inside the shoes until he found a pair to fit each of us,” wrote the “Coat of Many Colors” singer.
The excitement of new shoes
New shoe day was an exciting day in the Parton house.
“When we thought it was about time for Daddy to be getting home, we would begin to look for him up the trail,” wrote Parton. “Then finally we would all pretty much gather in the yard waiting to catch the first glimpse of him, eager to find out what kind of shoes we would get.”
Though, they almost always got brogans—a sturdy, high-top leather shoe that could take “a lot of punishment,” which was exactly what the Parton kids were going to do to them.
Robert usually returned home around sunset. The kids could see the new shoes tied together by their laces, slung over the horse’s neck. When he got inside, the kids were anxious to grab their new shoes, but the “Jolene” singer’s father had a system.
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“Daddy would systematically take the stick out of each pair, look at the name on it, and hand that pair to the kid for whom they had been prescribed,” wrote Parton. “We put them on and laced them up and commenced clomping around the house in a ritual that, fortunately for Mama’s nerves and the mice under the old floorboards, only happened once a year.”
The Parton kids would lie if their shoes didn’t fit
During the clomping, the Parton kids would learn if their shoes fit or not. But if anyone realized that their shoes did not indeed fit, they’d keep it to themselves.
“The prospect of having to stretch a pair of shoes a bit or wear extra socks or lace them up real tight seemed preferable to having Daddy take them back to be exchanged on his next trip,” wrote Parton. “We would all rather have ill-fitting shoes than wait six weeks for another pair.”
Patience was not something the Parton kids had in abundance.
So when Robert asked everyone if their shoes fit, they’d all answer: “They jist fit me fine.”
Luckily, if the shoes didn’t fit, they were likely too big, which is a lot more comfortable than wearing shoes that are too small.
“That is in part because it’s impossible to put a stick into a shoe that’s too short for it and in part in keeping with the belief that mountain people had, my daddy among them, that kids should ‘grow into’ things,” wrote Parton.
At least with new shoes, even if they were too big, Parton and her siblings felt they could wear them to school “with dignity.”
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