(Click on the image for Michael Graff's report)
Two young men, 20 and 18, facing north. Two straight lanes, clear and flat, inviting them into a very dark place.They arrive at the stoplight at the Burger King just before 3 a.m. on Feb. 16, 2008, a white Ford Crown Victoria in the right lane, a green Mercury Grand Marquis in the left lane, music thumping from each. They’ve been at a party and go-go band practice. The driver in the Mercury is the group’s lead singer.
Let’s say Darren Bullock and Tavon Taylor race. Each will admit to it later; each will deny it later. But let’s say they start right here in the same spot, and let’s leave the video evidence and the eyewitness evidence and the skid marks and the cops and the state’s attorneys and the media attention out of it for a moment. Let’s just say they race because, quite simply, that’s what young men do here.
. . . Long, straight roads have drawn young men to race since the automobile was invented. Longtime southern Maryland residents say this part of the highway has been a popular racing strip for at least a half-century, back to when the road was only two lanes and girls wore ribbons in their hair and cheered for farm boys who competed in quarter-mile bursts. Kids here grow up listening to stories of their parents meeting at the races along Indian Head Highway. For decades, the crowds for the semi-organized yet illegal street races were nearly all white. In the past 20 years or so, they’ve become nearly all black gatherings of residents from lower Prince George’s County and western Charles County. No matter how the area ages or changes, racing on this road remains irresistible.
