Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play.
Dead Man's Curve, you best keep away.
-- "Dead Man's Curve," 1964 LET ME ADMIT from the start that I've been in drag races. Never with much success, mind you, but familiar enough with the ways of this burn-and-peel auto competition. I once took part in an illegal drag on a side road that other kids had deliberately blocked off for these races.
But mostly my drag-strip experience was limited to official raceways where they have the Christmas-tree staged lights, the pervasive smell of burning rubber, the straightaway measured quarter-mile, and the unforgiving electronic timer that often contradicts the barroom braggadocio of muscle-car owners.
Drag vs. street racing
That is drag racing. It is not street racing, an illegal chase that too often leads to tragedy as did the unthinking deadly dash by three cars on Route 140 near Sandymount this month.
Drag racing may have its dangers, but it is not street racing, where the menace is much greater. So let's set the record straight: Stop calling the thoughtless mayhem of selfish, callous punks with autos "drag racing."
If you want to see how off-track, wheel-to-wheel drag racing is run, check out the classic 1955 movie "Rebel Without a Cause," in which James Dean emerges as winner and cultural icon of the restless generation. Or "Grease" for a light-hearted view of viaduct drag races in Southern California. (Or "Heart Like a Wheel" for the feel of real drag racing.)
"Rebel" may have nurtured racing bravado in adolescents of that day, but it depicts (in a socially redeeming manner?) the fatal price for such foolhardy abandon.
Jan and Dean
A decade later, Jan and Dean recorded the satirical hit "Dead Man's Curve," in which an improbable "drag race" was supposedly run on L.A. streets (which had constant traffic jams and heavy police patrols). Despite a contrite confessional in the lyrics that street racing was deadly foolish, that song encouraged hot rodders to search for the fatal curve and to prove their testosterone horsepower.
It may be that I'm too particular about use of the term, but kids in my school knew the difference between street and drag racing. I got a nasty gash on the head as a hapless passenger in a street race accident. It was stupidity in the extreme, never to be repeated.
My intent is not to glorify drag racing, or to tendentiously warn against it. It's simply to point out the distinction between street racing and drag racing.
