Well, here we are. Another year, another summer gone.
Summer 2026 seems like it disappeared -- evaporated before our eyes and vanished into nothingness as we held it in our arms. I told Daisy this past weekend that it feels like we just got back from Canada two weeks ago, not two months ago.
It is now Labor Day weekend. Well, for me anyway. For me it's been Labor Day weekend for two days already. I took off Wednesday the 2nd, and as I am already out until Tuesday the 8th, I have a rather uncommon stretch of six days in a row off work, unfettered, for downtime and relaxation.
I am, quietly and slowly/peacefully, trying to reset myself for fall. With fall comes cooler temperatures and work tends to slow down a bit (it has not yet, but it tends to). Football, both NFL and college, comes back this week. Schools are already back in session, of course, and school buses are continually rolling through the neighborhoods of Omaha once more. Pumpkin spice lattes have become a thing again, and I'm already starting the season right -- despite the fact that it was almost 100 degrees every day this week, I have already enjoyed a few pumpkin spice lattes, both made at home as well as purchased. That's right, I'm a basic bitch.
Anyway.
Fall this year somehow feels different as well -- I haven't made the Christmas cards yet. I don't even have good photos for the cards yet this year. This time last year I was worried about how long Pete was going to last and prepping for our trip to Canada -- this year we've already been to Canada and back again, Pete is dead, and we have a Dolly now.
Speaking of Dollys, I should probably mention how the passing of three greats this past week or so have really felt like a gut punch. I'm sure if you've not been living under a rock, you are aware that Dolly Parton died. Some of you who paid a little more close attention also would have heard that Tim Curry and Peter Cullen both died as well.
Look, I realize I am old now. I also realize that I am far past the age of where any celebrity, big or small, should have a profound affect on me if and when they eventually die. I can likely count on one hand the number of celebrities out there who I could name who I would be affected more by, and whose work really shaped a large part of my life more than Tim Curry and Peter Cullen.
I am sure there are people reading this website who don't really know who I am, or are reading it for the first time. Certainly some of my readers here have never met me in real life, or if they have, they have not seen me in over two decades -- I understand that and it's okay. But, for those of you who know me well, who have known me well for most if not all of my life, you realize that The Rocky Horror Picture Show affected me in profound ways. Not sexually, of course, but creatively, musically, even spiritually to an extent. Was it a bad movie? Oh hell yes. Is it still my favorite movie of all time, and is Tim Curry a giant part of that? Also yes. I realize his health had been failing in the past decade or so, and yes, he was an old man, but losing him is a tremendous loss to fans of not just musical theater, but of the man himself.
Similarly, Peter Cullen voiced my childhood. Since I don't expect most normal people to know who he was, here:
And a Canadian, too.
Every time I heard Optimus Prime as a child well into my adulthood, it was Peter Cullen (with the exceptions of a few roles in offshoot series, where Garry Chalk voiced one or more characters of other/some variations of Optimus). I am and always have been a huge fan of anything Transformers. I own the entire original series and the movie as well as all of Generation 2 and the sequel series Beast Wars and Beast Machines. I went to see the first...several? Michael Bay movies in the theater based on the fact that Cullen had returned to the role of Optimus Prime for those films. The man was loved in my heart and mind.
Everyone dies eventually, of course. I am likely going to see a lot of my heroes die of old age at some point before I kick off this mortal coil as well. One of my former friends told me that when Bob Dylan dies, she's going to wear black for a month, and...I get that. I echo that sentiment. I can't think of a major musical icon dying suddenly that really affected me and my own generation -- I guess Kurt was likely the last one, and even that was more Gen X than it was me as an elder millennial. Maybe Amy Winehouse? Still not the same level as Kurt though. I'm talking someone who my generation would be very, very upset over because they're a universally beloved household name. I don't know if anyone exists like that for my generation, someone that everyone knows.
But everyone knew Dolly Parton.
Young and old, everyone knew Dolly by music, looks, acting, or association. At the very least I don't think there's anyone on the planet in English-speaking countries who did not know who Dolly Parton was or who hadn't heard of her by name. And for those folks paying attention? She was universally beloved. It's not really hyperbole when I say that, either. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would have said something like "to hell with Dolly Parton, she's an awful human being" because nobody I've ever seen or known has ever disliked her.
Dolly was not of my generation; she was of my parents and grandparents' generation -- but we all knew her. We all adored her. We all knew more about her than most people would care to admit. And she was such a remarkable person, a true example of a great role model to follow. I am not going to go into details here because all of you can feel free to research her on your own, and many of you already know -- but I am going to tell two stories about Dolly, one short and one long.
The short one is, because of the association of "Dolly" to "Dolly Parton," I always wondered how many people immediately assumed that Daisy had named our cat Dolly after her. Of all the names ending in -olly, she chose Dolly -- over Holly, Polly, and/or Molly. That will, always, boggle my mind to an extent. And to be fair, Daisy did question the cat's name a number of times, not knowing that it really fit her. Well, now ten months into having that cat, the name fits her very well. She is a very vocal, outspoken girl with big words and a big voice, but she still has a little frame and a little face. She is our Dollbaby, our Dollface.
The second story is the longer story. As you folks may know, Daisy's grandfather built guitars. I don't think he ever really did it for a living, but more of a hobby. It seemed to be much more of a labor of love than anything else, but it seemed like his output increased as he got older. He would sell them for extra money, sometimes large sums of money -- so okay, maybe it was what he did for a living after a while. He didn't just build guitars, either -- he built banjos and dobros, he made his own guitar straps in his same workshop on the same workbench (and apparently also did other leatherwork as well, such as belts).
I don't know how many guitars he cranked out every year, or over his lifetime. It was a lot of work. They are some of the finest, most beautiful guitars I have ever seen. He made them in all sizes, and when we visited up there for the first time in 2015, I actually got to see some of them in-progress -- as well as got to briefly "jam" with him and Daisy's uncle (his son) in the basement where we spent most of our time a few months ago when we were there.
When he died, in 2022, the remaining completed guitars (all but two or three of them) were distributed throughout the family. Daisy got one, Daisy's sister and our nephew got one, etc. I am sure Mama has at least one, if not more than one, of his guitars too. The rest went to his sons, all that I know of but two -- they adorn the wall of the basement living room; one is a normal acoustic and the other is a shiny, silver dobro.
It turns out that his dobros got the attention, eventually, of someone quite famous.
That someone was Dolly Parton.
On the wall downstairs in that basement is a letter Daisy's grandfather received from Dolly Parton. It addressed him by name and said (and I am paraphrasing here) that he made the best dobros she'd ever seen, and invited him to join her to play one at the Dixie Stampede, where (at the time) she performed every night.
Now, this letter did not have a date on it. I don't know how authentic it is, only that the family claims it's absolutely authentic. I don't know when Dolly stopped performing nightly at the Dixie Stampede. But it is a remarkable artifact and conversation piece. I have a high-definition photo of the letter, which I will obviously not share here as it has family information/names on it. The letter, to this day, hangs on Grandpa's computer desk downstairs in the basement. He did not frame it -- he was not really a framing man, from what I gathered -- but it hangs there in bare paper as if it were a shopping list, on a desk in a basement where everything sits as if frozen in time since the day the man died in 2022.
So there's the stories. Now, onward...
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