Does anyone remember the episode of The Simpsons where Lisa becomes Little Miss Springfield, but renounces it when asked to promote tobacco products? I felt like I was living that episode this past weekend...

My friend C invited me to the Ripley Tobacco Festival, which is an Ohio river town an hour-and-a-half away from Cincinnati. We went to see the bed races, but instead wound up spending most time at the festival itself. It was a hoot. Ripley has a nifty Sullivan-esque public Library, high-style prairie with terra-cotta florettes beneath a panel of stylized leaded-glass windows.

It also has a brick farmhouse that is the Ohio Tobacco Museum. C and I went. "Real, live, honest-to-goodness" (but retired) tobacco farmers were on hand in the museum as docents. The man at the desk, right after I gave my suggested $1 donation, began railing about ... something, I'm not sure really what. The price of a carton of cigarettes used to be $ 8 - 10 in 1979, and now costs $ 35 -- but the price a tobacco farmer receives for a bushel is the same: $ 1.79. (I don't know if he chose that number because that is also the current price of a gallon of gasoline.) There's also a lot of taxes to pay. I think his argument was that the government was making it very difficult to be a tobacco farmer these days. I didn't particularly like being preached to, although mind you I definitely believe that the small farmer is the backbone of this country. (I believe the small farm is preferable to plowing the land under for another McMansion suburban development or a Super Wal-Mart, or having the small farmer himself plowed under by an agribusiness like Archer Daniels Midland.) Still, I wanted to argue that if tobacco is so unprofitable, then why don't you grow something else? (Apparently, it's mostly Asians that come in and buy the tobacco these days. For Marlboro and other American cigarette companies? No, for Asian cigarettes. They sit for another two years over there before even getting into a ciggie, which I thought was curious, because I hear my smoker friends complaining about how their cigs go stale a day after opening a pack.)

A crusty farm woman gave us a talk on the process of growing tobacco, complete with a whacking stick or whatever it's called. You would leave the sticks in the field until it's time to harvest the tobacco, then, placing a metal spear on the top, you whack the tobacco off at its base and impale them 3 - 5 at a time on the top of the stick. After the tobacco is harvested, they're put into bound pallets and stored in a curing barn for six to eight months until it's sold to those Asians. They had packets of seeds, tiny, with the comment that a tobacco bush grew to be 6 million times its seed size. (Or something like that, maybe it's only 2 million.) I asked her if they rotated their crops to replenish the soil, and her eyes, magnified behind glasses, looked at me, and she said there was no need: "You just put Nitrogen on everything, oh, and grow winter wheat which you could also use in the Spring to shield the young tobacco." She talked about the quality of the local crop: "We've smoked this stuff for years, and there's never been a problem." I felt bad about taking a free packet of tobacco seeds, so I left it behind discreetly in the other room.

My friend C made me laugh. Exhibits weren't exactly kept under lock and key, and C was picking up and sniffing a wide roll of tobacco, packed in a plastic baggie with a government packaging label on it from 1917. It looked like a giant doobie! When I mentioned that this was some historic tobacco, she was mortified she had just instinctively reached out and handled it...

At the fair itself, it was the happening teenage spot: Girls wearing the tightest shirts, one had on a black and white mini mini with black platform shoes and a plastic handbag with a circa 1989 Madonna on it. There really was a Miss Ohio Tobacco and her second runner-up, and throughout the afternoon and evening we saw them in various evening/prom gown type outfits, complete with tiara and blue eye-shadow! Some of the things people had for sale were totally hilarious to look at. There were t-shirts with a buxom babe on it holding deer antlers "Find a nice rack and mount it". I think it would be so funny for me to own and wear one of those t-shirts, but I don't think very many people would see the humor. I actually saw two people wearing this t at the fair. There were also flags featuring the confederate cross-bars, in the middle of which there was one of those trucker-splashplate-Babe silhouettes in a Charlie's Angels flame. Verrrry tasteful.

There were booths where the tobacco companies were handing out free samples -- C's sister said: "C'mon, I'll get you some chew." The sign said they were handing out only 2 packets, but they weren't being too circumspect and were jamming handfuls of samples into plastic bags. They acted like they were desparate to hook potential tobacco consumers. It smells smoke-apple-y, and we were laughing that they would make good potpourri sachets. I haven't yet tried it, I told my parents about it, and they freaked that I could get tongue cancer. Just for that, maybe I'll take it to Maine with me and try it out in front of them. (There's a difference, I learned, between chew and the SKOAL-type stuff. One you actually chew it -- and that's what I guess is what I got free -- the other, you just wad it into your cheek and hold it there.) Such an education, so much to learn!

C and I talked about getting tattoos because they were so cheap in that town ($35 minimum, $50 average), so I spent a lot of time checking out the tattoos on everyone. Some cool tattoos: one guy had an anklet with black triangles and black dots between, it reminded me somehow of a clown or jester motif.

Now I'm back at work. More later.