Georgia Peach 

a belle with a southern accent is our february playmate 

From the heart of the old Confederacy we recently received a pair of candid snapshots and a few hopeful words, enticing enough for us to send a staffer to Savannah to meet Nancy Jo Hooper, the walnut-haired 20-year-old who was to become this February's Playmate. Hazel-eyed Nancy Jo has lived all her life with her parents and younger sister in the same Georgia town, so small that she asked us not to name it, because if six visitors arrived at once they'd cause a traffic jam. Now a telephone-company employee, this Southern bell ringer previously clerked in a drugstore, there heard Playboy purchasers tell her she was Playmate material herself. Discarding daydreams of discovery, she took the initiative by sending us snapshots of herself, because, as she explained in a caramel drawl, "It occurred to me that no one from Playboy would ever find me here on his own." Nancy Jo's flight to Chicago for test shots marked her first airplane trip, and her first visit to any city besides Savannah. Soft-mannered, soft-spoken and shy ("I really enjoy walking alone in the park"), well-read Nancy Jo offers the sort of attractions that could once more set armies marching through Georgia. She so enjoyed her Chicago trip that this erstwhile country lass announced she'd someday like to settle here, perhaps when she finds the man in her life, who will be "understanding and sophisticated -- but possibly with a small-town background." For a striking sample of rural electrification, see gatefold.