Buffalo to Dallas- Tuesday, July 31, 2018

                 It was a heck of a short night.  We were up at 3:00 AM.  Anna and Emma took us to the airport this time and saw us off.   We flew to Chicago O’Hare and then caught our flight to Dallas-Fort Worth. The flights were cramped and not-fun, but not noteworthy otherwise.  The good news is that this will be our only time experiencing the “joys” of air travel on this trip.   Once we got our luggage in Dallas-Fort Worth, we got a rental car and that will be our transportation home.  Julie’s expectation is that she might want to buy things in Waco, and now won’t be limited by carry-ons.  We got a Ford Escape SUV.

                As we were getting our car, we asked the friendly woman who was checking the car out to us if she could recommend a quick place for lunch.  She suggested a nearby Whataburger and said, “Texas is known for Whataburgers.”  We took her suggestion and enjoyed it.  It was a busy place, and we’ve seen a large number of Whatabugers along the road already. 

                As we drove to downtown Dallas, we both had the theme to the television show in our head, in anticipation of seeing the skyline.  Actually, it didn’t look much like it did on tv.  Part of that might be because so much time has passed since the show was made.   Dallas is a big city, but it doesn’t seem super-big— like Cleveland, maybe.  It also reminded us of Cleveland because it had some really nice parts, like the area around Dealey Plaza, and some that seemed more rundown.

We parked a few blocks away from Dealey Plaza and walked there.  We went directly to the Sixth Floor Museum of what used to be the Texas School Book Depository.  The building is now an administration building for Dallas County, but the 6^th and 7^th floors are a museum dedicated to the assassination of President Kennedy.  It was from a 6^th floor window that Oswald is supposed to have shot him.

The museum itself was pretty crowded.  We were each given an audio tour which played on headphones for us.  The device looked something like a cellphone, and it hung around your neck from a lanyard.  At each stop in the museum, you can tap the screen and hear the narration for it.  The traffic pattern on the 6^th floor probably needs to be re-thought.  The crowds of people seem to cross each other more then once, and everyone bunches together when it comes time to watch a video clip in the displays.  Four different displays can be found in one little alcove, and the crowds bunch up in the little space, facing four different directions.  We thought the museum could have made better use of the little used 7^th floor, and also, instead of the long background given on Kennedy’s administration, an introductory film in a small theater might be better.

Anyway, there were no photos allowed on or from the 6^th floor.  The climax of the tour is probably the snipers roost that Oswald built by the windows.  The boxes full of textbooks are arranged like he is supposed to have had them.  The boxes used here are reproductions of the boxes that were kept in evidence in anticipation of a trial that never came.   There only a few objects on display, but they are pretty interesting.  They have Oswald’s wedding ring which he uncharacteristically left on the night stand that day, the place setting that was waiting for JFK at the reception that he never got to, the hat that Jack Ruby wore when he shot Oswald and the light-colored suit of the detective that Oswald was handcuffed to at the time.   There is a large scale model of Dealey Plaza that was originally built by the FBI to reconstruct what happened, and the cameras of many of the witnesses that were there along with a map showing their locations at the time of the shooting.   The original camera used by Abraham Zapruder and the rifle found with Oswald’s prints are not here, but examples of the same models are used in their place. 

We then went out into Dealey Plaza to take a look at the scene of the crime, which in many ways hasn’t changed much since that 1963 day.  White “Xs” are in the road where the bullets struck the President.  Today’s traffic drives right over them.  We stood along the route and walked over to the “grassy knoll” where some say other shots came from.  Abraham Zapruder made his famous film of the shooting while standing on a marble column, and it’s easy to see the scene for his perspective (though Scott didn’t climb the column but stood next to it instead).   We went to the fence at the grassy knoll and crossed the street to the grassy area across the street to look back at the School Book Depository building.   The temperature was in the high 90s, but the humidity wasn’t bad, and we took our time looking around here.

The museum clearly takes the view that Oswald was a shooter, but it recognizes the many conspiracy theories that have grown over the years.  At least nine different scenarios are given on one wall- the Mafia, the Cubans, the FBI, the CIA, the Russians, and so forth.   Scott takes the view of Lyndon Johnson who said, “I never believed that Oswald acted alone, though I can accept that he pulled the trigger.”  The Warren Commission famously declared that Oswald acted alone, but why did so many people run towards the grassy knoll at the time, and claim they heard shots from there?  Furthermore, when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, it seemed designed to slam the door shut on anymore information coming out.  It is certainly frustrating to have such a remarkable, earth-shattering event that we have so many conflicting theories about and so few definitive explanations for.

We went shopping at a few of the Texas cowboy themed stores near Dealey Plaza and then headed south, towards Waco.  We stopped at our hotel and dropped our things off, and then headed into town.  When we got to Waco, we drove randomly through its small downtown area and found the Magnolia Silos.   It was a few minutes past 6:00 and the shops there had just closed, but there were a lot of people headed there.  It seems like some sort of private event was happening there because people were wearing lanyards with passes on them.   We’ll see more of the Silo area tomorrow, and made plans to be there when they open. 

We drove around town looking for a place to eat, but the places we found either seemed to be closed or didn’t interest us.  We went back to our hotel, north of town, and ate at a Cracker Barrel.  Before coming on this trip, Julie said she only wanted to eat at Texas places.  Cracker Barrel isn’t specifically Texas, but we figured it was Southern enough for us today.