When lanky Kyle Petty, 18, asks, "Dad, can I have the car?" that familiar request acquires a special meaning. Dad in this case is "King" Richard Petty, 41, stock-car racing's winningest driver. Richard, in turn, is the son of Lee Petty, 64, who won on everything from dirt tracks to superspeedways. The family car is likely to be a souped-up $50,000 Dodge Magnum. Kyle has opted to follow in the family tire tracks. In his first race he gunned to a half-car-length victory at 131.964 m.p.h. "He drove a hell of a race," said one Petty pit-stop partisan. "Just like his daddy -up against the wall."

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One is a grande dame of Broadway, the other a young Yale drama graduate. Colleen Dewhurst and Meryl Streep play mother and daughter in Taken in Marriage, Thomas Babe's barbed comedy about five women preparing for a wedding rehearsal in a small New Hampshire town. Getting ready for this week's opening, Streep took time out to reflect on her craft. "Good acting is opening the doors to that part of the role you see in yourself, and partnering that with your imagination and invention," she says.

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"Will you perform my wedding ceremony?" inquired pert Vittoria lanni, 22, daughter of a Rome street sweeper. The quick reply: Yes. But it was no humble priest the bold Vittoria had asked; at a papal audience for a delegation of sweepers that included her father, she put the question to Pope John Paul II himself. Vatican bureaucrats, already shaken by the new Pontiffs penchants for kissing babies, gladhanding crowds and holding impromptu press conferences, agreed this was another first; modern Popes traditionally perform the wedding ceremony only for their relatives or Vatican notables, certainly not for one couple, in this case a shopgirl and her electronics technician fiance, 23.

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A Harvardman (in drag) on her left, a Harvardman (in drag) on her right, and a ride through Cambridge in a yellow Rolls-Royce. What more could a girl want? Whether she wanted it or not, Actress Candice Bergen (Oliver's Story) got a special perfume named "Eau de Billy Joe," a gold bean pot and an award as Woman of the Year, bestowed by Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Bergen, who was kicked out of the University of Pennsylvania, told the crowd: "Today, as I proudly cradle this pot, I can look back on several visits by the dean of women at Penn, who once asked me, 'Candice, what will you be without your B.A.?' I can now tell her that she was right: nothing."

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England's Elizabeth II last week was not only Queen of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and assorted realms and territories, she was also His Royal Highness -honorary gentleman. Proclaiming her such was the Saudi Arabian way of solving a dilemma: women are strictly second-class citizens in one of the world's most conservative monarchies, yet great courtesy was due the first British monarch to visit their petro-peninsula. The Queen reciprocated by tailoring her trip to local custom. Royal Dressmaker Sir Norman Hartnell whipped up frocks with longer sleeves and hemlines. Hatmaker Frederick Fox tacked scarves to her hats to suggest the face veils worn by Muslim women. Prince Philip nevertheless ignored the stares of chauvinist sheiks and marched his customary three paces back.

On the Record

Donald Seibert, J.C. Penney chairman, after viewing the Treasures of Tutankhamun: "The Egyptians found a great way to get rid of their inventory. They buried it, but, even then, I noticed that they had some shrinkage."

Headline of the Week from the New York Times: HOW IRAN UNREST AFFECTS RUG TRADE.

Robert Orben, a Gerald Ford speechwriter: "I feel that if God had really wanted us to have enough oil, he never would have given us the Department of Energy."

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