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.

Miscellaneous: 50 Years Since the Kennedy Assassination (November 22, 2013)

I imagine many of the people in the United States old enough to remember that day are thinking back on this 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. On Facebook people are asking their friends the inevitable questions--"Where were you?" and "What were you doing when you heard about it?"
People standing in line at Costco are probably doing the same thing, strangers sharing stories. Have you tweeted something about it on Twitter?

I was three years, seven months old on the day Kennedy was killed. My memories of that day are sketchy, dream-like, but November 22, 1963 is the first day in my life that I have memories of.

We lived in Brooklyn. Our six-storey brick apartment building had a small flight of stairs from the street to the front door. My mother and I had been down the street, shopping for groceries. My mother was carrying a brown bag of groceries. As we approached the stairs to the building, Sue, one of our neighbors, suddenly came out the front door. The image I have is of her lips moving, but no words come out. Sue was the mother of my best friends. Clearly, though, something she says upsets my mother. Our apartment was at the end of a long hallway. We somehow find ourselves at our apartment, although we never walk down the hall. The key is in the lock. My mother steps across the front room to the TV and turns the knob to switch it on. That is strange. The TV is never a priority. It's never on in the afternoon. She never turns the TV on the moment she enters the apartment. Next I see my mother sobbing in front of the TV, kneeling on the floor in front of the small black-and-white screen, still clutching the bag of groceries. I don't know what's going on, but clearly something is wrong.....

That's how I remember it*. Memory is a tricky thing. It may not have happened that way, but these images are nevertheless an integral part of my personal history. In the following days, I keep hearing the name Lee Harvey Oswald. It becomes as familiar as the name of a relative. Conflated are images of the eternal flame at Kennedy's grave, which for many years as a child, I mistakenly believed was somewhere in our neighborhood, at Grand Army Plaza. Beyond that, I cannot separate actual memories from what I know about the assassination as an adult.

*[I asked my mother about what she remembers. She points out that I would have been at day care when news of the assassination broke. So, the way I remember the day is impossible. She says she heard the news from Sue when she went over to Sue's apartment to give her daughter, my playmate, a birthday present. So, what I remember must have been from later in the same day.]

I believe the photo above to be in the public domain. I was unable to find an attribution for a photo credit.