Roy Exum
Every year at this time I get a little melancholy, remembering so vividly when the start of a new college football season would send the Southeastern Conference “Skywriters” on their annual pilgrimage, but things got a little worse on Sunday when the Nashville newspaper revealed this will be Hope Hines’ last week on the air at Nashville’s Channel 5.
Hope has been the sports anchor for WTVF, the old WLAC, in Nashville for 40 years and we fell into step with each other in the early ‘70s when we were invited on the “Skywriters” Tour. Every year the SEC would ferry the top sports writers and broadcasters from around the South to what was then the 10 member campuses to preview each team.
It was a pretty prestigious thing to get invited, because you were with the best writers and voices in the South, but it was also the wildest bunch of people I’ve ever been around in my life. It was like the movie “Animal House,” where members of our loose media fraternity would try to outdo one another in raucous stunts, hysterical folly and two weeks of sheer bedlam that would have gotten any of us expelled from a church.
Last week in Birmingham a talk show spent a couple of days reliving many of the really funny shenanigans that made the “Skywriters” Tour legendary. I heard my name got mentioned a lot, which is how “nothing-but-rumors” get more embellished with each new year, but it's true great friendships were made that last a lifetime and for many years Hope and I have enjoyed one another’s laughter.
As a matter of fact, Hope Hines was a key player in the infamous “Dance of the Seven Veils” caper, which is one of about 1,000 zany events old “Skywriters” laugh about whenever our paths cross. The stories make your eyes water, too, because we had such fun and merriment with each other.
Anyway, we had flown into LSU late one afternoon and, because of the intense heat, had gone to a night practice. It was still hot enough to kill a mortal, but LSU had lots of beer to go with the frog legs and crayfish. Because the practice was late, the TV types among us got most of their tapes done right then.
We writers had to wait until the next day’s luncheon with the coaches and players, and then scurried back to the hotel to write all afternoon. Again, the TV “pretty boys” were already finished so Hope and his camera crowd demanded the cocktail lounge should open much earlier than usual.
Well, they started telling funny stories and were soon well on their way to getting foolish. Unbeknownst to any of us was the fact the hotel was next to this big office complex were many pretty Louisiana women were employed. Not only that, on Fridays after work the dear ladies loved to gather and get chilled refreshments at the darkly-lit lounge.
By the time the first covey came through the smooth-talking “Skywriters” were primed just perfectly. They commandeered the juke box and, with liquid salvation flowing freely, they immediately launched the “Miss Louisiana Dance Contest.”
While they were doing such steps as the twist, the hula, the jerk, and the gator, more and more pretty ladies appeared. By dark most of the writers had filed their stories and, with the plane not leaving until early the next morning, were obliged to help as dance partners or stern-faced judges in what turned into a somewhat colorful competition.
The thing lasted until way after midnight, the ladies still coming and going, until finally no one could properly stand up. That’s when the lounge lady presented Hope with an $846 tab. All the girls thought the drinks were free and, back 40 years ago, no TV sports announcer was making more than about $150 a week.
Elmore “Scoop” Hudgins, the Skywriter’s caretaker, darn near had a heart attack over the bill, which nobody could pay, and in the end I think the “High Tribunal, a select group of Skywriters who made smart decisions, devised a way for every company represented on the Skywriters Tour to get a $25 bill from the “Baton Rouge Baggage Company” for “handling our luggage due to an airport strike.”
Now it can be told there was no such company, nor any such strike. It was really a scam to pay for what notoriously is known among the Skywriters to this day as “The Dance of the Seven Veils.” I’ll bet a dollar that the beloved Hope Hines, when he signs off the air for the last time this week, will remember that some of those Louisiana girls were pretty fine dancers, too.
royexum@aol.com