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The writer was a nice-enough guy who happened to have graduated from the same university as I did, the University of South Florida. Like me, he had a degree in journalism (they called it "mass communications" back in 1972 when I graduated), and he worked, I believe, in an A J-C bureau like I did, back in 1989-1990 (I quit to take over the reigns of the late and lamented Bracket Racing USA from the late Steve Collison).

So what will such illegal racing be called in the future? he was asked. "We're going to call it drag racing, because that's what it is," he said. "There was some convoluted politically correct term, something like 'illegal street racing' or something, but we have gone ahead and decided to call it drag racing."

"Even though legal drag racing at Atlanta Dragway or Pomona ...," I responded. "And drag racing has been around for so long, and for so long it wasn't legal," he said. "So they made a decision here that we can call it drag racing. It's so ridiculous some times with these sayings, but that's what we're going ahead and calling it."

"From now on, is that correct?" I asked. "Oh, yeah, we're calling it drag racing," he responded.

Then I brought up a conversation I had with Drag Racing Online editor, Jeff Burk, a week or so earlier about this editorial, where Burk said he remembers an incident a while ago where another teenager was killed in a single car crash, and the his local newspaper called it "drag racing."

"It's an editor's decision," the Journal-Constitution writer said. "I told them, 'Look, I've gotten some e-mails from people who are saying call it 'illegal street racing,' because it isn't drag racing,' and they all discussed it, and they all decided to go ahead (and call it drag racing). They're pretty conservative when it comes to stuff like that. The cops even call it 'drag racing.' When you say 'drag racing,' everybody immediately knows what it is. It conjures an image in your mind, so it is a proper term. Just because there's legal drag racing now ... it is more common for it to be illegal than legal."

Fair enough. So there's nothing we as readers can do about it. Hindsight being 20-20, if someone had copyrighted the term "drag racing" 40 years ago, we may have had reason to complain, and someone else could have sued, or at least given a reporter or an editor a free pass to the drags. We used to laugh in The Tampa Times newsroom when the word "Frisbee" got into print lower-case, as in "frisbee." Whenever that happened, the Frisbee folks would send the offending reporter a free Frisbee with an admonishment to write the word in upper case. The same went for Kleenex and Realtor and several other copyrighted words.

"Drag Racing" in uppercase. It might have been nice. But the term was born of the 1950s, and it was a slang term then, just as it is now, at least in some publications. "Drag it out in second gear," or "Drag it out of the garage," or whatever. The same goes for "hot rod" and "Funny Car" and "blower" and a "stroker" crankshaft and "slicks" and ... well, you get the idea. I've always thought that the term "sprint racing" might best suit our sport, but that term was taken up by the roundy-rounders years ago. Drag racing it is -- unless you're like Fran and me and you "bracket race." But try using "bracket racer" on the next reporter knocking on your door and looking for a feature story on that painted-up Camaro on the trailer in your back yard.

We have to live with it.

In the next issue here, I'm going to call on some old friends of mine like George Case of Maple Grove (Pa.) Raceway, Scott New of Firebird Raceway in Boise, Idaho, Bernie Longjohn at LACR in California, George Howard of the B&M Racer Appreciation Series and Steve Earwood of Rockingham Dragway in North Carolina and ask them what their local papers call it when some fool runs into someone else. Do the words "drag racing" or "street racing" appear in the following morning paper? It should be interesting.