Big-hearted Dolly’s real-life coat of many colours was right there in front of us, and we all cried

The clocks changed as if by magic on the road between Nashville and Knoxville. It took us a fraction of a second to lose an hour as we went from Central Time to Eastern Standard Time. On one side of the invisible line we were six hours behind Ireland and on the other side we were five. It wasn’t just the clocks that changed – the terrain did too.

We were in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, Dolly Parton’s homeplace, where the trees grow as high as the sky and the mountains poke out through the clouds. There was no sign of dustbowls or deserts. East Tennessee is as green as home, and if you love trees, Joyce Kilmer comes to mind: “I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.”

And I have never seen trees as lovely as in leafy east Tennessee.

The place, like the song, is easy and slow. The petrol station just outside Knoxville was closed at about 3pm, like there was a siesta. The old man who was shopping for ham told us you’d never know when the place was open. His friend, who was taking a break from weeding a yard, loved his work and asked if we had come from Ireland by bus.

That’s not to say these aren’t smart people. Far from it. It’s just that some of them aren’t good at geography. Dolly Parton, who has travelled the world, is the smartest of them all. They love her here in this her home place. “She has done so much for east Tennessee,” said the lady in the fast-food place where fried chicken is the mainstay and more popular than in Kentucky.

Dolly still owns the old family home. The electricity has been installed, but there’s no running water. “She came from nothing” is often a derogatory term used in Ireland and also in eastern Tennessee, but her nothing was everything, because she had a loving home. And this is the theme of her early years.

We didn’t get to meet Dolly, because she wasn’t there. She gets home six or seven times a year, but she knows about us and gave $10,000 to our charities. Nearly a thousand of us dressed as Dolly and broke the world record. There wasn’t a word of criticism.

Our dressing-up made €75,000 for Comfort for Chemo Kerry and the Kerry Hospice. Our chairwoman, Cora O’ Brien, is another smart woman. She worked us long after five, and the party went on long after the balloon implants burst and the blonde wigs shed hair like a yak in summer.

The president of Dollywood is Eugene Naughton, an Irish-American who visited Listowel for Dollyday and became our friend for life after a few hours. He’s loveable and kind. He’s Dolly’s right-hand man and, like her, he’s full of fun.

We were invited to Dollywood by Eugene, and 15 of us showed up at a newly opened spectacular resort named Heartsong, just across the highway from the Dollywood theme park. We paid for our accommodation.

Heartsong is made from east Tennessee timber and local limestone. It’s built to last, but pretty, and it fits in just fine with the mountains. We were also in the original resort of DreamMore for a guided tour by Eugene. We got to Dolly’s bedroom. This is pure Dolly: pinks, reds and flamboyant.

Eugene showed us around the park. If you love Dolly, country music, cultural sustainability and mad high rides, this is your spot.

The show based on Dolly’s life is of Broadway standard. Coat of Many Colours resonates with so many people, and all of her hits were performed by the five Dolly Parton singers on stage.

Eugene took us on a preview of the new exhibition that is due to open soon. The actual coat of many colours, sewn from pieces of stray cloth by Dolly’s mother Avie Lee, is the centrepiece. Her songs are so real and so moving. We all cried when we saw the coat there in front of us like a childhood dream.

There were about 40,000 people in the park on the Saturday, and I’ve never seen more food consumed. The Americans eat more than we do. One slice of apple pie did six of us (the full pie cost $270). I saw a man tucking in to the whole pie and stood back in case he burst.

Eugene told us the ride on Bear Mountain would be no more than a gentle trip through the sky. I had my eyes shut from start to finish. The ride lasted two minutes and 37 seconds, but it seemed like hours on end.

Dolly and Eugene are true to their roots. There’s free healthcare for the workers and their families. More than 35pc of the employees are over 65, and a hairdresser caters for the long, untrimmed beards often fashionable in these parts. Next up is a resident dentist.

Locals are trained in the resort’s forge and there’s a glass-blowing factory with apprenticeships.

Dolly Parton is the biggest book distributor in the world. Even the profits from the resorts help fund her literacy projects. Her dad, Lee, couldn’t read or write, and Dolly honoured him the best way she could by giving free books to people all over the world.

In these days when philanthropy and good works are regarded by some in America as almost communist, Dolly sees her workers as an asset, not an expense.

The end of the Dolly Tribute show features some of her brilliant one-liners, such as “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb – and I also know I’m not blonde”; “I came across this one all by myself ”; “I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out”.

Dolly made it cool to be sexy, but most of all, she made it cool to be ourselves.

‘Her dad, Lee, couldn’t read or write, and Dolly honoured him the best way she could by giving free books to people all over the world’