DATE: Sunday, August 3, 1997                TAG: 9707310162

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: DAVE ADDIS

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

SING THE PRAISES OF HAMPTON...UH, HAMPTON...OH, WHATEVER

There was a wonderful little nugget back on the sports pages the other day, about a game that the Hampton Roads Sharks, our local semi-pro football team, played in Charleston, W. Va.

In the Charleston paper, the team was called the ``Hampton (Va.) Road Sharks'' on first reference, and simply the ``Road Sharks'' thereafter.

Just another little reminder that the decades-old moniker ``Hampton Roads'' isn't exactly a household word, even in a neighboring state.

Undaunted, the region's leaders struck back the very next day: They announced a Hampton Roads-wide competition to design a Hampton Roads flag as a way to promote the image of Hampton Roads in areas outside of Hampton Roads, where nobody has ever heard of Hampton Roads, but they will pretty soon if the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce has anything to say about it. (That last sentence oughta be enough to get me elected mayor of Hampton Roads. If such a place existed.)

Fortunately, the official flag of Hampton Roads will be designed by schoolchildren. Kids are much more creative than their parents, and are unburdened by political concerns.

The adults, each insisting that his or her city get equal billing to every other city, probably would come up with a peanut-shaped flag with an emblem showing Nauticus, the Naval Shipyard and Captain George's Seafood Buffet against a field of Lake Gaston blue.

It would bear the Latin inscription, Norsufportspeake Beachum.

The schoolkids are certain to come up with a design that more truly captures the spirit of the region. Probably a line of stalled cars leading into a tunnel, with a pair of blinking yellow lights against a field of exhaust-fume gray.

It would bear the Latin inscription, E Pluribus Merge-um.

But a flag simply will not be enough to spread the Hampton Roads spirit to the world beyond our borders. We'll need a motto, and an anthem, too.

Here are the early leaders in the motto competition:

Hampton Roads: Come idle awhile!

Hampton Roads: Where ``neutral'' is a state of mind!

Hampton Roads: You'll wish you'd never (turned) left!

Hampton Roads: You're only a bridge-lift away!

Hampton Roads: When we say ``jam,'' we ain't talkin' Smuckers!

The anthem could be trickier. Truckin', by the Grateful Dead, would work pretty well, but it might be hard to negotiate the rights now that Jerry Garcia has gone to that big rest stop in the sky. So we've done one of our own, which you can mumble to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner:

Oh-ooh say can you see

Through the flashing blue lights?

What so deeply we feared

That the traffic's not move-ing.

Whose four lanes with white stripes

That our tax dollars paved,

Are now stalled for five miles

So the drivers are steam-ing.

And brake lites red glare!

The horns blaring in air!

Gave proof through the night

That the Midtown's a'snare.