From Dallas to Memphis

We woke up relatively early today to make our way, by foot, over to Dealey Plaza, a short walk from our hotel. In the same way when we visited Honolulu at the tail end of our Hawaiian honeymoon some years ago and only visited Pearl Harbor, our only goal in Dallas was to visit the site of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and the assassin's perch/workplace at the Texas Book Depository, the top of which has now been converted into the Sixth Floor Museum (the lower levels are now used by Dallas County; oddly, the first sign you see when entering the building is a posting of the Texas legal code that forbids you from bringing concealed weapons into a workplace, even though they are legal to conceal elsewhere in Texas).

When we arrived at the Plaza on foot, both D and I had the same reaction we've had at other historical sites: it's a lot smaller than you think. It's the same reaction I had when I first saw Wall Street years ago: this is it? In fact, Dealey Plaza, located next to a major freeway overpass, seems like an afterthought to downtown Dallas, and as we learned in the Museum, it was one of the least-well attended portions of the motorcade that day. It looks much as it did in November of 1963, with only a few minor modifications (noted elsewhere on the web by assassination aficionados) to lighting, signage, and foliage. At first, we thought the large white structures surrounding the Plaza were built as a tribute to JFK; in fact, they are a WPA construct from the 1930s and are quite visible in photos taken on November 22, 1963; we've just never noticed them before. Apparently, this is a common reaction of visitors to the site. The structures do appear to be in poor shape, however.

The other surprising aspect of Dealey Plaza is that Elm Street is still an active motorway, with many cars cruising along and under the overpass at speeds of 40 mph and more as we watched. More than a few tourists put themselves in harm's way crossing the street to separate sides of the Plaza as cars whizzed by; no doubt, crossing the street is made more tempting by the presence of an "X" painted on the roadway in the approximate location where President Kennedy was hit by the fatal shot.

[D's note: For those of you who knew me as a teenager, you can imagine what it meant to me to be in Dealey Plaza. (And for those of you who didn't know me, let's just say there was life before Sydney Pollack.) The Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum, see below, were incredibly moving and sad. And it was bizarre to see "the grassy knoll" up close and realize that it was just a little patch of grass just aside the Book Depository; you realize that anyone who was standing in Dealey Plaza could not have accurately determined, once they even realized what they just heard, that gunshots came from the grassy knoll as opposed to the Book Depository. I can't imagine driving past this site on a regular basis, as many in Dallas seem to do, without thinking about the murder of a man 13 years before I was even born. P and I were waxing philosophical for the rest of the afternoon after visiting this...]

After spending time looking around the Plaza -- and, of course, up towards the former Book Depository -- we made our way to the Sixth Floor Museum. The Museum, opened in 1989, is a beautifully assembled, chronological exhibit that summarizes President Kennedy's life and career, culminating in that fateful final day in Dallas, and then leading into the resulting pursuit, arrest, and murder of Oswald, and the decades of subsequent re-investigations into the assassination by various government agencies and congressional committees. The Museum pays respectful attention to many of the conspiracy theories out there, but does lend itself strongly to the belief that, at the very least, Oswald was the only person shooting at JFK that day. There's even a re-creation of the sniper's nest Oswald created for himself in the window, and you can essentially look down on Elm St. from the same perspective he did 45 years ago.

[D's note: Yeah, looking out the window is rather freaky. It really does appear to have been an easy shot, and it's incredible to think that anyone would be allowed up there during the President's motorcade, let alone someone who owned firearms. As P mentions below, it is, harrowingly, not at all difficult to imagine how Oswald could have pulled this off. On the other hand, it's very difficult to imagine that any one person could be filled with enough demons to want to do this, and maybe that explains why so many people insist that more than one person was involved. I like thinking of it that way, as opposed to assuming that so many people who believe in vast conspiracies are just plain ignorant. On that note, however, I was surprised to hear a young woman, probably about 20, remark that she thought President Kennedy's wife was pretty and then ask whatever happened to her after the murder. WHAT???? Can anyone not know who Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was??? Well, since I'm in a forgiving mood, I'll assume she was actually a very mature looking 8-year old.]

During my visit to the museum, I was reminded of something my grandfather said many years ago: That if Adolph Hitler had visited the US in the 1930s, he would have seen our cities, our cars, and our wealth, and he never would have started WWII. D and I had a similar thought: If every Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist visited Dealey Plaza, half of the conspiracy theories out there would dissolve. Looking at the sniper's nest, looking at Oswald's history (including a failed assassination attempt on right-wing general Edwin Walker a few months earlier), looking at the small size of Dealey Plaza, and Kennedy's relative lack of security that day, it just wasn't that hard for Oswald to do what he did. He had means and opportunity. As a Frontline piece back in 2003 put it, Kennedy just had the bad luck to drive by a building where a man with a rifle had the desire to shoot at him.

Which brings me to my second reaction while visiting the Museum: The Dallas police really botched the handling of Oswald. They probably wouldn't have apprehended Oswald at all had he not been foolish enough to (1) leave evidence everywhere and (2) kill police officer J.D. Tippit as he raced to get away from the scene. Then, unbelievably, they trotted him out for a press conference in the basement of the police station at midnight on November 23rd. He hadn't even been assigned counsel. Finally, they couldn't manage to keep the press out of the police station all weekend following the assassination; this made it all too easy for Jack Ruby to hang around and shoot Oswald on Sunday morning when it was convenient to do so.

OK, this isn't a JFK assassination blog, it's our travel blog, so I need to move on. Besides, there are too many interesting or moving aspects of the Museum to discuss here -- suffice to say, if you're in Dallas, this is absolutely worth two hours of your time. We made one last stop in the gift shop and bought a magnet with the image seen at right. (Side note: As I write this in our hotel room in Memphis, Senator Ted Kennedy is on TV speaking at a rally for Senator Obama today. How strange it must be to be Ted Kennedy. By the time you are 36, four of your siblings have died -- two the victims of high-profile assassinations -- and you've barely survived a plane crash yourself. A year later, your brother's dream of putting a man on the moon comes true just as you, at the very least, fail to prevent the death of a young woman and leave a dark shadow hanging over the rest of your long and otherwise fairly distinguished career. If Ted Kennedy had died in that plane crash in 1964, imagine how differently he'd be thought of now. Likewise, if Vice-President Richard Nixon had been elected President in 1960 and killed in Dallas in 1963, imagine how differently he'd be thought of now).

After a quick lunch, D and I finally hit the road for Memphis. Unlike the country roads of Texas yesterday, we were on major highways the entire way -- efficient, but not charming. Our only detours were for a needlessly long side-trip to Starbucks just outside of Dallas courtesy of Sheila and a stop for dinner in Carlisle, Arkansas at the excellent Nick's Bar-B-Q and Catfish. There are signs for it on the highway. Oh, we also stopped at a Wal-Mart in Arkansas. I mean, how could we not?

[D's note: Unbelievably, P has forgotten to mention what's been keeping us sane in the car on our 5-hour driving stints: an audiobook of Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. We downloaded it on iTunes because it was the only thing we could agree on (P wanting something history-oriented, me wanting something that wasn't so soporifically dry that I'd end up driving us off the road). It really had nothing to do with the fact that we were going to visit the place where Kennedy was killed, honest. Anyway, it's a very entertaining book. And I am very thankful that Sarah Vowell isn't the least bit attractive, or else I'm fairly certain P would declare her his soulmate and leave me somewhere in an Arkansan swamp.] [P's note: Sarah, ignore D. If you're out there -- call me!]

Now there's a documentary on about Martin Luther King, Jr., on TV, who was assassinated forty years ago this past Friday...