Places I'm Visiting: Fort Worth

After a day in Dallas, I spent a day in Fort Worth, starting with a visit to the Cowgirl Museum, which turned out to be rather more interesting than I expected. When we visited, it was only partly open as it is undergoing an expansion, but on view were a section featuring riding gear used by women who participate in Escramuzza Charra, part of the charrería, or Mexican rodeo. It is a timed, competitive event in which riders (in fancy dress and riding side saddle using specially designed saddles) go through a routine of twelve or more exercises for review by a panel of judges who look at clothing, tack, and execution; there was a section looking at the cowgirls who rode in the shows of Buffalo Bill, including a great deal about Annie Oakley; and there was a display of Western-themed Hermés scarves, which noted that Hermés started as a tackle company, a fact that was new to me. Also new to me was the fact that in her retirement Annie Oakley lived at 233 Salem Ave, in Dayton, Ohio, fairly close to where I once lived.

After the museum, we went down to the Fort Worth stockyards, which is now mostly shops and restaurants, but twice a day a herd of longhorn cattle is paraded through the streets. In reality, only about 17 head of cattle were in the parade, led by cowboys on horseback, but it was interesting to see the animals and, after the parade, the area where the cattle are kept is open to the public. There is an elevated walkway that allows you to look down on the animals in the pens below. Some of the animals have a hornspan (if that’s a word) of up to 10 feet, but 6–7 feet appears to be normal. Both males and females grow horns, I was told. Apparently the horns grow quickly in the first 7-8 years of the animal’s life but then mostly they stop. 

The shops are stocked with such things as cowboy boots, cowboy hats, belts and belt buckles, cow hides, cow hide pillows, cow hide furniture, horns in various sizes, cow skulls with horns, and taxidermy of all sorts, including cattle, goats, elk, deer, foxes, coyote, and buffalo. A nice longhorn head for your wall will cost you about $2,000. A buffalo head for your den will cost you more like $8,000. 

After the stockyards, we were introduced to Fort Worth-style barbecue – brisket, pork ribs, and smoked catfish – along with such local specialties as deep-fried pickles, which are exactly what you are probably imagining them to be: sliced, deep-fried dill pickles.

Places I'm Visiting: Dallas Museum of Art

After visiting the former Texas Book Depository Building and the museum it houses on my recent trip to Dallas, I went to The Dallas Museum of Art. I had always wanted to visit. I’ve noticed many choice paintings on loan from the museum in large traveling shows at other institutions over the years, suggesting a strong collection. 

Having now seen the museum, I can confirm my impression. There are some gems. In addition to the permanent collection (which is quite broad, including some fine textiles aside from the paintings), there was an exhibition of Surrealist art on show featuring works on loan from the Tate Gallery. 

Here are some favorites, including a Jackson Pollack splatter painting. In general, I really don't care much for the these paintings, which are so highly praised. Often they just look messy to me and, while I understand the idea that they may be intended or at least interpreted after the fact as records of an action, they often strike me as simply uninteresting to look at. This one, however, I rather enjoy. I think it's the blank areas of canvas that make it more appealing. 

 

Places I'm Visiting: Dallas

Two days visiting in Dallas/Fort Worth. I heard opinions only on the Fort Worth side, but it seems people from Dallas and from Fort Worth don’t think much of each other. I get the impression that, at the very least, Fort Worth natives think Dallas is sterile, cold, and citified, whereas Fort Worth, they will tell you, still has its cowboy soul. 

We visited Dallas mostly to go to the Dallas Museum of Art, but, as it opens relatively late, at 11:00AM, we went to the Book Depository Museum, which occupies the sixth and seventh floors of what was the Texas Book Depository in November 1964 when John F. Kennedy was shot from one of its sixth-floor windows. Like many people, I’ve seen photos of the building, photos of the stretch of Elm St. the president’s motorcade was passing when the shots were fired that killed Kennedy and wounded Texas Governor John Connally, and I’ve seen photos of the “grassy knoll.” I have seen the Zapruder film, sequences isolated from the film, and stills from it. So, visiting Dealey Plaza in person, felt oddly familiar. 

The Museum mostly presents an extended series of explanatory panels. Some put Kennedy’s visit to Dallas into the context of the time. Others show what happened as the president was hit and right after. Still others look at how the world reacted to the assassination, at the investigations and re-enactments that followed, and at the forensic evidence for assigning the murder to Lee Harvey Oswald. A large model of Dealey Plaza used by the FBI and by later investigators is on display. Examples of cameras various journalists and amateur photographers used at the scene are on display.  Lee Harvey Oswald’s wedding ring is even on display.

Most moving, however, is simply being able to stand at almost exactly the spot on the sixth floor from which the sniper fired. From there, you can look down and to the right and see the X etched in the pavement on Elm St. showing the approximate point at which the fatal bullet struck. 

Having seen the path of the motorcade from the perspective of the sniper, one thing seemed odd to me. The motorcade made a right turn off Main St. onto Houston St., pointing right at the corner of the Book Depository Building from which Oswald fired. It then made a left turn onto Elm St., passing in front of the Book Depository Building, moving away from the sixth floor corner window, off to the shooter’s right. I don’t understand why he waited. He would appear to have had a closer, easier shot just as the motorcade slowed before making its left turn onto Elm St. We will never know what Oswald was thinking, but, had it been me, I would have fired at that – most vulnerable – moment rather than waiting for the car carrying the president to start moving away toward the triple underpass beyond the Grassy Knoll. 

After seeing the museum, we walked down to look at the X on Elm St. from the Grassy Knoll and at the place nearby Mr.  Zapruder was standing as he filmed the progress of the motorcade and, inadvertently, the assassination. Judging from the historical photographs, the place has changed very little since November 22, 1963, the day the president died. 

November 22, 1963 is the first day in my own life that I have a memory of. I was going on four years old. My mother and I were returning from grocery stopping. As we approached the short flight of steps up to the main doors of our Brooklyn apartment building, a neighbor came out and said something to my mother who then took me inside and rushed me down the hallway leading to our apartment door at the far end of the hallway. Inside the apartment, my mother kneeled down on the rug in front of the television, still holding a paper bag of groceries, and turned on the set – something she never did; my mother was largely indifferent to television; in later years, she didn’t even own a television. Having been a small child, I didn’t at the time understand what had happened, but I remember the day and the name Lee Harvey Oswald being spoken over and over again for days. Visiting the museum and the location of the assassination was a quintessentially touristy thing to do, but it was worth doing once.

Places I'm Visiting: Dallas and the Southwest

On the spur of the moment, my wife and I decided to visit my son, who is currently living near Dallas, Texas, having been drawn to that location by his enrollment in the music school at University of North Texas. I’ve never really been to Texas before. I spent a day in Galveston once on a business trip. I once drove east out of Houston on a road trip that ended in Savannah, Geogia. I’ve mostly passed through Texas rather than visited Texas.

My first college roommate was a Tulsa, Oklahoma native. Both Texas and Oklahoma – about as far as you can get from the two coasts of the US, where I have spent most of my time in the US – seem a bit exotic to me. My impressions of this part of the world have been created by news clips, by movies and television shows, and by stories I’ve heard – not especially reliable sources. 

We set out from San Francisco on a flight to Dallas/Ft. Worth. I happily gazed out the airplane window as we crossed from California into Nevada then over bits of Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. 

I’m one of those who is perfectly happy with my nose against the window for an entire flight. I don’t understand people who seat themselves, pull down the window shades, and completely ignore everything outside. I enjoy watching the changes in the terrain. I enjoy seeing the lakes with one flat side that gives away that they’re manmade, created by a dam. I enjoy tracing the courses of rivers and the canyons they cut. 

I particularly like seeing oxbow lakes or finding sharp turns in rivers that allow me to imagine how an oxbow lake will form in the future. Flat desert areas. Snow-dusted mountains. Circular patches of green created by irrigation booms that rotate around a central pivot. Dense developments of houses that seem too large – much too large for the tiny plots of land they’ve been built on, set close side by side. 

As we approached Dallas, we flew over Dallas Love Field, the airport that served Dallas and Fort Worth until the airport in use today took over that role.  On the ground in Dallas, I watched airplanes landing and taking off as we taxied to our gate – those leaving the airport disappearing into a low layer of light clouds.