It's interesting to see how you can hold your composure when you ride in a parade through North Myrtle Beach with the name on the side of the car,'' said Audrey Orvin, Miss Hell Hole of 1976. The name comes from this Berkeley County community's defining body of water, the Hell Hole Swamp. How the swamp got its name is anyone's guess.
Locals make the best of it.
And in the South, every self-respecting festival has a beauty queen. Three judges picked her from a field of 11 young women, who began the night in casual wear and ended in evening gowns. There was no talent or swimsuit competition, or pained interviews. Former winner Orvin, the emcee, introduced the contestants to an audience of about 100 in Jamestown's aptly named Steel Shed. As Orvin called the young women's names, they paraded across the stage, before a backdrop of an enormous painting of a flowering swamp.