watch the Tobacco Festival parades. From a Broad Street curb, where she would secure an early position, it was her habit, once her courage climbed, to try to hitch the open convertibles in which the various Tobacco Princesses rode. The drivers, Jaycees one and all, never noticed her; they kept their gaze straight ahead for the safety that was in it—tobacco gods would cough lightning should a Jaycee drive up the hindquarters of a Marlboro Filters float—but the waving Princesses, projecting eyebeam and toothlight into the multitudes, ever on the alert for kinfolk, boy friends, photographers and talent scouts, the Princesses sometimes would catch sight of a pleading pod, and for a crowd-puzzling second—Oh the perils of innocence in the service of nicotine!—lose their carefully coached composure. We may wonder what thumbtales—thumbfacts evolving into thumbmyths—those beauties carried home to Danville, Petersburg, South Hill or Winston-Salem when that year's Tobacco Festival had burned down to a butt.
In 1960, the Tobacco Festival parade took place on the night of September 23. The Times-Dispatch reported that there were fewer floats than the previous year ("but they were fancier, and wider by six feet"); even so, it took ninety minutes for the procession to pass a given point. There were twenty-seven Princesses, from whose company Lynne Marie Fuss—Miss Pennsylvania—was the next day named Queen of Tobaccoland. The parade grand marshal was Nick Adams, star of a TV series called “The Rebel.” Adams was a perfect choice since “The Rebel” had a Civil War theme and was sponsored by a leading brand of cigarettes. The actor became piqued at one point in the parade when he discovered, rather abruptly, that his horse's flank was the target of a gang of boys armed with peashooters. There were marching bands, clowns, military formations, drum majorettes, dignitaries, animals, “Indians,” a few temporary cowgirls, even, their reptile-shiny shirts loaded down with embroidery and udders; there were hawkers of souvenirs and the aforementioned gang of evil peashooters. City Manager Edwards estimated attendance at the “noisily lavish extravaganza” at close to two hundred thousand, by far the largest crowd in festival history. Sissy Hankshaw was not among the throng.
Miles across town from the thousands (who, according to the newspaper, “yelled, giggled and clapped"); across the James in South Richmond, where, economic theories to the contrary, it was always depression time; in a dim, dinky house, frescoed with soot and some termites' low relief; before a full-length mirror merciless in its reflection of thumbs—Sissy stood naked. (Never say “stark naked.” “Naked” is a sweet word, but nobody in his right mind likes “stark.")
Sissy was making a decision. It was a point in life that could not hold still for ninety minutes' worth of bright-leaf boosterism to pass it by.
In the seven weeks since her arrest a lot had happened to the girl. First, an assistant commonwealth attorney, encouraged by the police-woman who had driven Sissy home, was pulling strings to have her shipped to reform school. The public defender was using those terms “incorrigible,” “wayward,” “curfew breaker” and “beyond parental control,” that, when applied to a young girl, mean simply “She fucks.” As late as 1960, the large majority of juvenile females behind bars were there because they had acquired an early taste for sexual intercourse (early in the eyes of civilized society, that is, for by nature's calendar the twelfth or thirteenth year is precisely correct).
That our Sissy remained free on that September evening when animated cigarettes pranced in glittery goosesteps down Broad Street was owing in part to the efforts of a social worker who had been assigned to her case. However, if Miss Leonard had helped keep Sissy out of reformatory, insisting that the girl's hitchhiking was a chaste idiosyncrasy that
In 1960, the Tobacco Festival parade took place on the night of September 23. The Times-Dispatch reported that there were fewer floats than the previous year ("but they were fancier, and wider by six feet"); even so, it took ninety minutes for the procession to pass a given point. There were twenty-seven Princesses, from whose company Lynne Marie Fuss—Miss Pennsylvania—was the next day named Queen of Tobaccoland. The parade grand marshal was Nick Adams, star of a TV series called “The Rebel.” Adams was a perfect choice since “The Rebel” had a Civil War theme and was sponsored by a leading brand of cigarettes. The actor became piqued at one point in the parade when he discovered, rather abruptly, that his horse's flank was the target of a gang of boys armed with peashooters. There were marching bands, clowns, military formations, drum majorettes, dignitaries, animals, “Indians,” a few temporary cowgirls, even, their reptile-shiny shirts loaded down with embroidery and udders; there were hawkers of souvenirs and the aforementioned gang of evil peashooters. City Manager Edwards estimated attendance at the “noisily lavish extravaganza” at close to two hundred thousand, by far the largest crowd in festival history. Sissy Hankshaw was not among the throng.
Miles across town from the thousands (who, according to the newspaper, “yelled, giggled and clapped"); across the James in South Richmond, where, economic theories to the contrary, it was always depression time; in a dim, dinky house, frescoed with soot and some termites' low relief; before a full-length mirror merciless in its reflection of thumbs—Sissy stood naked. (Never say “stark naked.” “Naked” is a sweet word, but nobody in his right mind likes “stark.")
Sissy was making a decision. It was a point in life that could not hold still for ninety minutes' worth of bright-leaf boosterism to pass it by.
In the seven weeks since her arrest a lot had happened to the girl. First, an assistant commonwealth attorney, encouraged by the police-woman who had driven Sissy home, was pulling strings to have her shipped to reform school. The public defender was using those terms “incorrigible,” “wayward,” “curfew breaker” and “beyond parental control,” that, when applied to a young girl, mean simply “She fucks.” As late as 1960, the large majority of juvenile females behind bars were there because they had acquired an early taste for sexual intercourse (early in the eyes of civilized society, that is, for by nature's calendar the twelfth or thirteenth year is precisely correct).
That our Sissy remained free on that September evening when animated cigarettes pranced in glittery goosesteps down Broad Street was owing in part to the efforts of a social worker who had been assigned to her case. However, if Miss Leonard had helped keep Sissy out of reformatory, insisting that the girl's hitchhiking was a chaste idiosyncrasy that
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