You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
Dollywood Splash Park.
It’s a walking tramp stamp. It’s a bouncing stomach bulging over a swim suit pulled too tight. It’s heat searing my head from a clear blue sky.
Dollywood Splash Park is tucked in the Great Smoky Mountains. The trees are tall and green and the ambiance is wonderful. The air should be crisp and cool but on this day there is a chunky film in the air you can touch.
Dollywood is a waterpark wedged between the Pancake House and the T-shirt emporium. Dollywood can’t help that it is geographically situated between white trash and tourist trap malfeasance.
As you cross through the Dolly gates, you are enveloped in a Southern heat that is all ready charl-broiling your skin at 95 degrees.
A Bruce Springsteen song fills the heavy air. It’s refreshing, but you wonder how long before a Country tune by Dolly herself rings out.
I quickly look around for fiddlers dressed like moon shine runners.
We go to the lockers and cram a back pack, three pairs of sandals and a towel into the square box. I push the door shut and am secretly relieved when it latches closed.
There are a dozen people by me. They are covered with ink. There are tattoos of every color and dimension. I see white people, Indian people, black people covered with designs big and small.
I see skin so saturated with ink I think that Gutenberg would be proud.
The sun is blaring like a Dollywood mountain yodel. You can only hover in the shade of a butterfly tarp for so long. The water is inviting so in we go.
The lazy river is aptly named. People with stomachs bigger than truck tires lounge like sloths inside of inner tubes that strain to remain buoyant.
A film of sun screen seems to ooze off their tattooed skin, mixing with the churning water fall to create a bubble pool of bacterial hyginx.
We try all the rides. Swift Water Run. Fire man falls. Toilet bowl.
Each ride is a variation on the same theme. Fat people plus water plus slick water slide equals rapid acceleration.
All in all it’s a ton of fun and a test of manhood and patience.
If I never see another chubby boy ass crack it will be too soon.
I hear every dialect of Southern and every variation of the word “AIN’T”
I hear mommas of every trailer nationality threaten to discipline their children with a tenacious drill sargeant demeanor.
“You go near that again boy and I’ll swat your butt.”
Nicely put trailer mom from the Ozarks.
Once again, Dollywood reminds me that I am lucky to be alive, to have a place where I can drop hundreds of dollars to swim in refrigerated water with yahoos who may not sound like me, but all bleed red white and blue.
I love this country. I love Dollywood. Long Live the South.
And that is crazy.