Thursday, 4 April 2019
Dallas, Texas, USA
For the first time in months, not woken by the early morning racket of various wildlife outside my room.
No.
Instead, it’s a Puerto Rican maid banging on the room next door shrieking “Housekeeping!”. Obviously oblivious to my ‘Ssssshhhh….enjoying a rest’ sign on my door.
Regular readers will know of previous experiences at local post offices thus far. Having accumulated 28 postcards since Buenos Aires, the time is nigh to make another attempt. Wander into the main post office in Dallas. Greeted by a delightful counter assistant. She has stamps. They’re cheap as chips. She’s very helpful. All done in a matter of minutes. Some lucky people should receive them soon. One lucky girl even has eight postcards being sent.
Wandering around downtown Dallas is a bit dull. There’s not a lot to see or do. Which reminds of that joke, “What’s the difference between a pot of yoghurt and Dallas?”.
A pot of yoghurt’s got culture.
It’s surprisingly devoid of many people. There’s no hustle and bustle. There’s hardly any traffic. There don’t appear to be that many shops. Is this because everything is now on the outskirts in malls?
Wander over to the Perot Science and Engineering Museum for lunch and a quick look. There’s an exhibition to do with ‘The art of the brick’. Assumed it was bricks as used in construction. But it’s not. It’s Lego. An artist has recreated famous artworks using Lego. It passes a few minutes of my time.
Not technical Lego though. You can’t go wrong with technical Lego. My young nephew was given a technical Lego set for Christmas a few years ago. I obviously had to help him. He was a bit miffed that I completed it without much input from him though.
Walk through deserted side streets to the Dallas Book Depository 6th Floor Museum. Those of a certain age will no doubt remember exactly where they were when they heard of JFK’s assassination.
22 November 1963.
1230hrs.
The Dallas visit was intended to shore up support for the Democrats as Vice President Lyndon B Johnson was Senator for Texas. JFK insisted on travelling in an open topped car but in those days, it wasn’t protocol to have armed guards on the rooftops along the route. Photos show the motorcade driving down Main Street with crowds either side within touching distance of the President.
Can you imagine that now?
At the end of Main Street, the motorcade turns right onto South Houston Street for a few hundred metres before turning left to go down the slight hill of Elm Street. It’s at this point, Lee Harvey Oswald makes his first shot and a few seconds later the fatal shot, at which point many of you may recall the reaction of Jackie Kennedy, JFK himself and the Secret Service agent travelling in the car behind running up to the boot of the President’s car and scrambling on.
The museum has cordoned off the corner area of the 6th floor from where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK, including a mock up of the boxes that were used to hide the area from fellow workers.
But you can get a feel for his line of sight from an adjacent window.
I’m no assassin (only a ‘smiling assassin’ on site, so I am told) but if it were me, I’d take the shot when JFK was approaching me on South Houston Street, so I’d have more body mass to aim at. He was shot as he was travelling away, with only the back of his head and shoulders visible.
It’s a fascinating museum which also highlights the possibility of a second shooter on the ‘grassy knoll’. Indeed, the second government reported actually said that there was a second shooter but in a later investigation this was again amended and returned to the original finding of one shooter in the Book Depository.
Lee Harvey Oswald.
Later captured 7hrs later after shooting dead a police officer near Oswald’s home, Lee Harvey Oswald was then himself shot dead by local gangster and thug, Jack Ruby, two days later on the Sunday morning as he was being transferred to jail.
Of course, in those days, photographs and film capturing the assassination are few and far between and grainy and poor quality. Not like today’s high definition cameras on mobile phones.
Outside, the grassy knoll is just in front of the Book Depository and surprisingly close to the motorcade. For some reason, I’d always thought the grassy knoll was on the other side of the road and much further away.
Eyewitnesses and photographs show people and police reacting to something on the grassy knoll at the moment of assassination. Reports say that people heard a shot from the grassy knoll but this could be a reverberation of sound from the Book Depository.
Either way, a couple of old blokes are doing a roaring trade setting up stalls on the grassy knoll selling their DVDs of their own investigations and interviews. They seem to be convinced that there was a second shooter and highlight that a number of witnesses they interviewed were never interviewed by the authorities.
A couple of white crosses in the middle of the road show where the first and final fatal shot hit.
Very interesting museum.
