By far the most fascinating aspect of my trip to Dallas was visiting the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I had been there once before, but only for around ten stress-filled minutes. You see, typically when one wants to visit the site of the JFK assassination, one should not be driving a giant Penske moving truck. Unfortunately, though, this was the case as my father and I were driving a truck with all of my family's possessions as we moved from Phoenix to Indianapolis. Try to find a parking space behind the Texas School Book Depository in the middle of the day with a twenty-six foot truck. Our efforts were thwarted then, which left me even more hungry to see what I already considered a must-see location in my lifetime.
For whatever reason, of all the stories my dad, a history teacher, told me as a kid about everything from the American Revolution to the Battle of Iwo Jima, the JFK story was always my favorite. The aura of the Kennedys. The turmoil of the sixties. The controversy. The conspiracy theories. The morbid curiosity of seeing someone's head explode in front of hundreds of people. My heart starts pounding just writing about it.
Another amazing aspect of the site is how unchanged it is from that fateful day in November, 1963. Dealey Plaza was already a memorial park! What if the assassination would've happened on a city street lined with businesses? What business would willingly give up its building to construct a museum and memorial? And, even knowing that eventually a museum would emerge, surely all of the surrounding buildings would be remodeled or reconstructed in ways that would make the site look nothing like it did in 1963. All of this is moot, however, at Dealey Plaza, because the park was created way back in the 1930s to essentially stay the same for generations to come. Additionally, most of the buildings east of the park are government occupied - the courthouse, the county jail, the county service building. So those buildings are easily able to stay the same, too. Ironically, the only building that faced even a threat of demolition was the Texas School Book Depository. The company moved to a modern facility outside downtown in the late 1970s, leaving the building vacant. Finally, Dallas County bought the building and installed county offices and, eventually, the Sixth Floor Museum.
I sat on the Grassy Knoll for about a half hour as the sun went down one evening. I first thought about how calm and serene the location was on this lazy summer evening, and how much different it must have been in the chaos of November 22, 1963, as people dove for cover, screamed in horror, and ran up this very hill in search of a gunman as the shots echoed off the buildings.
Next, I thought about how quickly things can change in life. In the museum, audio of a local announcer plays on the speaker. The announcer goes on about how the threats to the president here in Dallas were obviously nothing to be worried about. The wife of Governor Connally, who was riding along in the car apparently leaned in and said to JFK, the moment before he was shot, "Mr. President, you can't say that Dallas doesn't love you!"
Forget that he's the president. There was a man, sitting in a car on a beautiful day, next to his wife, the mother of his two little children, and as they had a pleasant conversation, a bullet pierced his neck, causing him to clutch his throat. His wife, horrified, tried to help him while figuring out what had happened, and as she attempted to calm him, his head exploded from the second shot, pieces of his brain fell on her beautiful pink coat, and she, in shock, climbed onto the back of the car, not knowing what else to do.
Life changes that quickly. Changed by someone the Kennedys had never met.
It bothers me that other people, people you don't know at all, have the ability to end your life. Anyone, at any time, can completely alter your life forever. And there's not a whole lot we can do about it. So I thought about how that has happened so many times to the Kennedy family, and thought about how that has happened, to a lesser extent, in my own life. I wondered what JFK thought about when he woke up that morning, and if he had any sense at all of finality or reflection on his life that day.
The picture in the museum that stood out most to me was that of Lyndon Johnson taking the oath aboard Air Force One to become the next president. I wasn't looking at him, however - I was fixated on Jackie. The expression on her face in that picture is possibly the most profound, intriguing look of anyone in a picture that I've seen. All at one time, she is trying to reconcile in her mind what has just happened, what she could have done to change the outcome, how the death of her husband will affect her life, her children's lives, her family and friend, her nation. All the while, she is trying to look composed, knowing that she is being filmed and photographed for posterity as Vice President Johnson ascends to the position held by her husband only hours before.
On Elm Street, there are two white "Xs" painted in the center lane where two of the shots hit the president. I watched hundreds of cars pass by, and almost every one in the center lane moved over to avoid going directly over the Xs. I searched the internet to see if there was any documentation of this. Is it a superstition? Do Dallasites discuss how none of them should drive over the Xs out of reverence for JFK? I found nothing. But I know what I saw. Hardly anyone drove over the X. I have no idea why. But it adds to my already overflowing intrigue.
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