"With a new LP and movie on the way, Dolly Parton's life is more than an amusement park."

The two-room house with the sewing machine, brass chamber pot and sepia photo of Luther Parton at one end, wood-burning stove and moonshine jug at the other is exactly as Dolly Parton remembers it growing up. Only this isn't her actual home site, but a replica constructed just a few miles down Route 441 in Hollywood, the Smoky Mountain amusement park recently refurbished by the area's favorite hometown girl.

"I've always wanted to preserve the Smoky Mountain heritage, to give people a chance to corne from everywhere and see how the mountains are, how they live," says Parton of Dollywood. "You want to make your people proud of you." And nowhere do her roots seem more important to her than in her music. "I get back there every day," she explains. "That's one of the things that keeps me sane and balanced. There's not a day that I don't go back to other times and things. I think every day about my Tennessee mountain home, when I was a kid runnin' barefoot. I think about my upbringing, I think about our little old church.

"Just as soon as I sit down to start writing, I automatically write country and mountain songs. I have to get myself in a different frame of mind to think bigger. But what comes out of me naturally, it's always something simple. It'll be about bluebirds telling me I will. But so far, it's still a drag." Perhaps a more difficult problem was learning how to put her family problems in perspective, and coming to grips with not having any children of her own.

"I can't have kids now," she states flatly, but without regret. "I used to think I wanted kids because I was supposed to have kids. But my husband don't want kids, he never did. So I don't have to feel guilty about that. We talked at length about maybe we should adopt because we're supposed to have kids. But I don't know what kind of mother I'd be. I'd like to think I'd be good, but I might not. Then I thought to myself it might not even be fair to the kids. Anyhow, I don't miss it. Me and Carl, we're happy, we're content. I've always had tons of brothers and sisters, I've always been swamped with kids.

Now I got nieces and nephews, I take 'em on vacation. Everybody brings their kids to me because I'm a great granny. I'm available. I'm there. And I'm sure that I ain't seen the last of havin' to help raise other people's kids. You're talk-in' about a big family with kids and trouble and problems, and I often get saddled with a bunch of responsibility. So I'm just going to enjoy it that way and not have to worry about it." Nor does the financially comfortable star suffer from guilt about enjoying the monetary fruits of her labor. "I've got a good attitude about it. I'm not going to put it all in the bank and not go places or share the things I want to with people. I've got good investments and accountants and pension plans and all that, but even my own accountant thinks I spend too much money.

It'll always come back, and if it don't, what's the worst that can happen? I can always make a livin' doin'something." Such lighthearted self-assurance derives from having been through a lifetime of financial ups and downs, which Parton heartily insists she does not miss. "I struggled long enough so I remember it! I never get above my raisings and I never get a big head or nothing, because I know what it was like. It makes for great memories, but I don't miss it. It's still so much part of me and my memories. I had good times during the struggling days, but there were some times that were plenty hard, and I'm glad for the fun.

"I also think I write just as good songs," she continues. "A lot of people say you have to be hungry to write good songs, to sing good. I don't believe that's true. I'm working because it's something that burns within me." The fires are certainly stoked in the Dolly Parton dream machine these days. Ambitions for Dollywood include a dude ranch, a resort and a university of arts and crafts, among other things. She reports she will sign with Columbia Records, after almost two decades on RCA, though label sources haven't yet confirmed the inking. When she heads into the studio sometime this year to begin work on an album of newly penned material, she'll throw herself full force into the project. "I want to be a good recording artist, I want to write better songs," she declares.

Dolly's list of future plans and priorities is miles long. "I've got a bunch of movies in the making, with my production company, and I want to get on with the books. She's contracted with Simon & Schuster to write a series of "inspirational" self-help books. "Then I've got ideas for business restaurants, nightclubs, a line of cosmetics called Dollyface. My mnind is like a file cabinet, and even if I'm dreaming, if I dream a hundred percent of the time and if only ten percent of those dreams come true, that's enough to keep me busy for a lifetime. Every day of my life, I feel I'm just getting started. It don't feel like work, it feels like fun. And I love to have fuuuunnn."