JFK Assassination Site (Dealey Plaza) and Fort Worth(Cowboy Central)

BAM!

Two shots were heard as a motorcade passed by on Dealy Plaza, carrying the then president of the United States in it's many seats. John F. Kennedy, a 3 year (so far) president had been campaigning for Texas, and it was very vital for his reelection. His wife, Jackie, saw him lean forward in his seat, and blood splatter as red as the colors on the flag of USSR that JFK had dare defy in the Cold War. The beloved president, that had urged the Peace Corps and helping the poor and troubled, even though controversial and had some mistakes in The Bay of Pigs Invasion, was killed? The people of Dallas that day had come thinking they would see a good speech by the Democratic Former Navy Officer, origins in MA, but instead, a shot, a lean forward, and an end to the good cheer of the day, or the week, or even the month. Crowds ran and fled, fearing more shots from the unseen assassin. A daughter and mother tripped and made their way through the running crowd, no strings attached, everyone just trying to get away safely with their friends and family, with little to no accord to other strangers in the large mass of people. Meanwhile, Agent Youngblood, valiantly and bravely, shielded LBJ and Lady Bird's bodies with his own, saying to get down and to the driver to drive. This was on November 22nd, 1963. A day the world will never forget.

The rest is history: literally. An autopsy, although it was obvious what killed the president, was provided after they took him to a trauma hospital around the area. On Air Force One, LBJ was quickly sworn in by Judge Sarah T. Hughes, and the local police force (because in that time assassination of a president wasn't a national crime) worked to find their killer. But, I won't tell you any more, because you will find out in due time...later in the blog. But for now, let's talk about OUR part in the story of JFK's assassination, only a small, insignificant part, where we went to the 6th Floor Museum in Downtown Dallas, finding some information about it and the man's legacy. Earlier we had seen the home website. On the 6th of February, exactly one month before today, after getting ready to go for the day in the little R.V. park called Cowtown, we now embarked on the journey. I got my A Tramp Abroad book written by Mark Twain (I had read that Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones, and it was really good, on the day we had gotten my hair cut) and went in the car, with a break from my cowboy clothes I had worn earlier. But, at the last minute I put it on, because we were in Texas. At this stage it actually didn't make sense to put the attire on; for I hadn't seen one cactus or desert in Texas at all. It might change later though...

Downtown Dallas was kind of the same as Austin, although there was a break in the skyscrapers, separation between Fort Worth and Dallas, which we wanted to see later in the day. There was this thing they call the Spaghetti Roads, twisting and zig-zag highways, over and under and under and over, that cars wizzed along like bees to their honey. Trucks mainly, but a few small cars. Even a few R.V.'s. Typing in the GPS address, we came into all the buildings, and came into a big square surrounded by brick and glass buildings, with grass growing in the center, a few monuments. I wondered what one of them was about and who the figure of stone was. I looked around at this historic site of the assassination that all our teachers and parents had talked about, them saying that it was one of the most mysterious events of the 21st Century. Why did Lee Harvey Oswald kill JFK? DID he kill JFK? If so, why and did he work alone? These questions and more were on the minds of many Americans, and still are today. I didn't have an opinion, and wasn't picking any sides and thinking that any idea was on the board then. But, I decided I would make an opinion on the subject and state my claim who killed JFK. I thought about it as the GPS made us turn in a parking lot. The visit had begun.

It was a fairly sized parking lot, looking on the street and around Dallas. There was a brick building with large windows that said 6th Floor Museum in green and white. It wasn't a National Park (isn't that odd?) however, a private Museum or a state one, I didn't really know. We wished that it would be worth our money as we walked in a side door, with signs of a cafe and gift shop around. Did it have 6 floors and was that why it was named the 6th Floor Museum? Or because Oswald supposedly was on this floor when he shot JFK? The latter seemed more of the answer. In there was a counter, from where we entered, and big pictures taking up the walls, most of them in black and white. There was JFK waving and even the young son of him saluting. Images that moved a nation, and more than just one nation. We went up and paid a big amount for the tickets, getting the audio tapes. I hope this isn't a scam, please don't be a scam, I urged. Around the corner to the right in the green painting lobby, a lady gave us the tapes that were like the ones at MLKJ's assassination site. They told us to go to the 6th floor by pressing the 6th floor on the museum, as we came into the elevator. Then, with a ding, we traveled up, up, up, up!

There was just a black wall to look at as we went up in the elevator, but now we looked from a high view over some of the skyscrapers of Dallas, Texas. We walked now into a large museum environment, a lot of those museum blocks with the words and artifacts, low ceiling, with all around. All of the space, besides the walking parts, had museum stuff inhabiting it. Mom had trouble with her audio tape but got it to work later. I looked at the block I was facing, with a wall and window to my right, the only way to go being left. The man on the audio talked about the world as it was in the 50's and 60's, the Peace Movement and Civil Rights, with a lot of pictures. It was the kids in rebellion of their parents. I read one to the right, doing the audio thing. Pretty interesting, talking about the world events, the Cold War, and the Soviet Union. As I turned right and entered another section of this where Most of the stuff was on the right, there was some info there with a picture of JFK and his supporters, that in the debates with Nixon JFK was calm and charming, and that the younger people liked his young spirit better. The other one had pop culture stuff of the 60's, Science Fiction novels, Ernest Hemmingway, and magazines and CD's, such as the Beatles. The museum was interesting...so far.

The next few blocks were about the first few years of JFK's presidency, his working toward the Peace Corps and helping to end poverty. He went in the third world countries, with his Vice President LBJ by his side. I went down the thing, taking my time and being rather slow at it, with the others in front of me. Pretty soon I abandoned the audio tape as I did at the Biblical Art Museum, and just read the captions and plaques. It was a lot more interesting. JFK urged young people to do the whole Peace Corps, and I saw more pictures of JFK in Africa and such. There, to the right facing the alcove I was in, was a bio about JFK and his family in MA, that he grew up wealthy and went into the Navy, saving mens' lives in a sub that had been sunken by a Japan bomber, and becoming a Democratic Senator. It was interesting. I read a lot about how JFK really hated the Soviet Union, and promised to America that we would put a man on the moon at the end of the decade, and him assigning LBJ to the Space Program. There was a movie out of a small T.V. that kind of summed up his presidency, and I watched that, standing uncomfortably as one does in a museum, with some other people. I liked the movie, and I saw that this young president was witty and funny. That is, before he died.

As I read about this really cool and seemingly nice man, I wondered why anybody would even kill him for any good reason. It made no sense. But, however, killing anybody makes no sense. Just because of their actions or political standings doesn't mean their life should be sacrificed for it, unless those views but multiple people from many backgrounds in danger, an example being a terrorist's views. But Kennedy wasn't a terrorist. On that biography thing there was, I read that his brother, and his son were both killed after he was. Later in the museum I would make an opinion of his death, and this would be one of the leading facts for my statement, that others have made.

There was another small alcove, which talked about why they were in Dallas Texas (to gain support for the 1964 Presidential Election) that the Secret Service had a hard time for the upcoming day because of JFK's habit to mingle with the crowds, and how at lunch they were going to go to a center in Dallas for a luncheon with civic and business leaders at Dallas Trade Mart. Then, instead of the month by month or year by year timeline that had reigned prior, now it was minute by minute, talking about the arrival in Texas by Air Force One, and the other cities they stopped before going there at Love Field. The morning of Friday on November 22nd in 1963 looked optimistic and good, and they got in the motorcade. Then came times, numbers and dates of the motorcade turning corner to corner. The Governor was in the motorcade with JFK and Jackie, and LBJ and Lady Bird followed in their car. It told me exactly which seats held which people, the drivers, the agents, all in great detail. They went onto Elm Street, which even in 1963 before Freddie Cougar or any of that horror junk, proved to be close to the site of mass tragedy, about to occur. Then they went on different highways and on Main Street, also Houston Street, two streets that we had previously rode on when going to the 6th Floor Museum.

It broke down into minutes, now, the motorcade traveling on Dealy Plaza, and that last memorial photo of JFK waving to the people of Dallas, minutes or only seconds before the fatal shot. Nellie Connally, the First Lady of Texas, remarked, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you" and JFK smiled and nodded. Then, it happened. A shot presumably came from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository. John Connally said he thought he heard a rifle shot come from somewhere. Kennedy was caught on tape from a Zapruder, and I looked at the frightening and horror-filled black and white images that was on the large block that I looked at, the small pictures. 155. 171. 190. 215. 222. These were the shots that are only (that we know) of Kennedy falling forward in his seat, and then the blood, black in color on the Zapruder, splattering in different directions. The governor actually got shot, a fact among many I didn't know before coming there. The bullet hit him in the right shoulder, and it hurt him a lot, as he yelled "Oh no no no no. My God. There going to kill us all!" in exasperation. JFK, president of the United States, was dead, shot by an unknown sniper. The day was going to be one of the worst in America's history.

Through a hallway I was now into the opposite side of this sixth floor, and Mom and everyone one else was way in front of me; I didn't rightly know where they were. I looked at a glass box that held some cardboard boxes, with it facing a window, and saw the sign saying this was as it would've looked the day the detectives looked at it trying to find Kennedy's killer, and this was the supposed (I say that because some people believe Oswald didn't do the crime) spot where Oswald crouched with his rifle and fired the shot that killed JFK. I was literally then looking history straight in the face, this is the spot that caused what all the adults and teachers describe as such a terrible day and what people have talked about for decades since, and mourned about. This was the spot where Oswald probably, most likely, killed John F. Kennedy, and ended a great life forever. Behind me was news reports and old computers and typewriters, the first local newspapers sending telegrams and such saying that JFK died. I looked at that famous telecast with the Walter Cronkite guy taking off his glasses and tearing up. Then there were a few museum panels and blocks about them trying to keep him alive at Parkland Hospital. At 1:00 P.M. CST, John F. Kennedy was officially announced dead.

Meanwhile, LBJ didn't go to the luncheon, and was sworn in on Air Force One, and I've already mentioned that so I won't talk about that any longer. They were fearing an attack on the vice president, and so they got him back to Washington D.C. with lightning speed. The local Dallas Police force talked to witnesses who most of them said (some of them weren't accurate or didn't hear any thing over all the hubbub) that they heard the shots from a building behind all the parade stuff, in the Texas School Book Depositary, on the 5th of 6th floor, the building we were in right now. I was now in another room not unlike the other one, with a little opening to a maze of blocks and museum panels. There was a large open space on the left side, the side I was at. I saw Dad in one of the alcoves, the thing that wound around into the left, if you know what I mean, which you probably don't. To the right was just all the museum stuff, and to the left straight down, well, little to nothing. I read more about the people awaiting the news at the luncheon, praying that he wouldn't be announced dead. A Catholic Priest, because JFK was Catholic, did a little prayer on him before he died. People around the world tuned up their radios and turned on the T.V., hoping for some good news. And people around the world cried, the tears rushing down, when they found out that he had died. Young and old, male and female, kid and elderly, poor and rich, Christian or secular, famous or not so famous, cried. And cried.

I went into the alcove, after looking at a menu from the luncheon that actually went forward with it's plans and commenced, with awkward and red-eyed from the tears somberness at the untimely death. I went into the alcove, seeing Dad again, and talked to him, speculating and adding my opinion about what I had seen so far, JFK's presidency and everything up to that moment, the stuff I had seen and what I had thought of it. It wasn't talking for long, as Dad told me to read more and that he had to go do something. I read sadly about all the people around the world who loved him because of the Peace Corps and what he did for their country. There was an entry way to a dark room with benches and a screen, pretty medium sized. Mom and Rebecca were seated there. I came in slowly, and slid up to them. I got in the middle of a very moving and grieving of everyone around the world, in Japan, Africa, Kenya, Europe, France, England, all making shrines, memorials, and all in their different ways, like a poster on the Great Wall of China and a statue in Brazil. Very sad. But there was no narration, just captions and music, which made it have that special something. We also watched the black clothed funeral in Washington D.C., and JFK's son saluting him as he was put into the grave and the torch was lit. A 9 gun salute. A proper funeral for a war veteran and President, that I wished never happened.

I liked the museum too, but I also wished that it was never made, because it was made for the assassination of JFK and to tell information about the day and the site. I know people have gotten jobs and made money for it, but at what cost? A man's life? Mom and Rebecca left, leaving me alone because they had already seen the part I was now watching. They assured me it would be fine; Dad was going to come and sit with me also. And he did, later, and then Rebecca came back and said that they had finished the floor and were gonna go to the gift shop. Then she left, and they went down, while we saw the end of the movie and got up.The rest of the alcove was about Abraham Zapruder who made the film pictures I had seen earlier, and that the local police force tracking down Lee Harvey Oswald who worked there at the Depository, and how he had a gun in the little basement they found him in. He had been living in Russia a little, and was a retired Marine who was always in trouble. He profoundly denied being the one to shoot Kennedy, and was going to be transported from the one in Dallas. Jack Ruby, an owner of a bar and club who's face vaguely resembled Al Capone, intercepted Oswald and all the police in the basement about before the door, while news media asked all the juicy questions. I saw a...well I need to now start a new paragraph.

Like I was saying, I saw a video on the left side of the hallway, out of a small screen, and all the people gathered around in the concrete area, with Oswald in his weasel like looking, with those dreadful eyes and the up black hair, how small he was... ooh it gave me the shivers. He answered a question saying he didn't know he was being tried as the president's assassin until they had already long taken him into custody. Now, Oswald was a Marxist, and a Leftist, and he supported Castro in Cuba, having dealings with Russia and the Soviet Union. Jack Ruby, pistol barely even concealed, shot Oswald at point blank with all these people here, and I saw the picture of him aching in pain and the newscaster's voice in the background screaming and repeating, "OSWALD IS SHOT! OSWALD IS SHOT! HOLEY MOLEY!" Okay, so the rest is history, Jack Ruby goes into jail and he testifies that he was such a lover of JFK and that he was just in disbelief and enraged at the assassination. I don't believe that an assassination of an assassin has taken place and been so famous at that one before or even now, perhaps. Now, I know that Oswald was probably a terrible guy, but I kinda wish that he had been given a chance at trial so people would know why he killed the president and if he acted alone. It will forever be a mystery...only God knows.

The rest of the museum out of the alcove and at the end of the big room was about the FBI's investigations, and the ballistic tests and readings and all the automatic evidence, people evidence (there was a row of panels with witnesses' accounts), all explained descriptively on the block, with a large diorama of Dealy Plaza and surrounding areas, that the bullet would have gone at a slant, and hit him in the back, that it must of come from there. Also was the rifle used to kill JFK. I went over to the end of the hall. Then there was the Warren Commission, and all of that in court and all of the different tests. I yawned; this wasn't as interesting as the rest of the museum and took a little bit of thought for me to clearly understand all the science and criminal evidence. I looked at the documents and panels with tired legs, and an empty stomach. The rest was about how Bill Clinton (real name William Jefferson Blythe) did an updated investigation with modern technology, with the same results. Who killed JFK? If Oswald, did he work alone or was he backed and/or persuaded by the Leftists? This was the question that the last few blocks asked, telling all the theories and how all those books were published on the subject, with everything from UFO's to a government cover up to the FBI to the Soviets to the Mafia. Who killed JFK?

I turned right, to a big corridor with Dad sitting at a bench with elevators by there, and then a stairs behind that and an opening to yet another movie room the same size as that funeral one.

The second to last big wide museum block was really cool, a panel asking the question, sort of white and see-through, with tons of books behind it on a shelf, big and small, all saying things like JFK'S Assassination: New Info Revealed or The Leftist Assassin; Was it the FBI? and at these dozens of others. I looked at that for a little, the Private Museum that the 6th Floor Museum posting anything they want, even the whole government thing, which a National Park wouldn't do, of course. Then I made up my decision I had been musing over all day, deciding where I stood on who or what or what group of people killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I said that since Oswald was a Marxist and Leftist that the Soviets, who had some beef with the whole Kennedy's and whose Mafia JFK and RK (Robert Kennedy) tried to stop and did several bad things to, that Oswald was either payed, persuaded, or told to kill JFK by those people, or he did it on his own because of his views. I don't really know for sure, but that's my opinion. I just wished that this man was never killed on that dreadful day of November 22nd, 1963, the day the world...will never forget. Even though that was a day the world will never forget, JFK was also... a man the world will never forget.

The final panel block was by in front of the movie part. It talked about his legacy, how he was a great man who saved the US from the Cuban Missile Crisis becoming nuclear war, and how he wanted to help the poor and in pain with the Peace Corps. The writer of that block stated that for years to come, and still now, JFK is known for what he did, but more known for what he could've done...if the assassination had never occurred. He died young, as many great people do, and he was a great man, for the time he lived. He helped even put a man on the moon. He did many great things, but he could've done a lot of more great things... if he didn't die. JFK was pretty sure A OK, if you ask me. The MA Senator had that wit and charm, that Northern accent, up until the minutes that he did die. I have such a hatred for a man who would kill a man like that, and it's terrible Oswald did. But that's history, I suppose, with it's ups and downs. Sadly.

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) R.I.P.

I didn't have time to watch the movie because Dad ended the phone call he was on and told me to come down. Down into an elevator we came out into a gift shop, with Mom on the bench in front of us by all the audio cart with the lady. The museum had totally not been a scam. Rebecca wasn't with her. Mom said that she had gone up, looking for us. Mom went and got her and they came down together. We looked in the small gift shop on the block, and I looked at some books but all of the ones about the assassination would either be opinionated or just tell me the info I had learned at the museum, so I didn't get one. However, I did see a museum about history which was cool, but it was a DK and big so I could buy it off of Ebay maybe when we return to Roswell in June. (Dad's trying to stretch it 'til July or August, but I don't think that that will happen.) We got in the car and drove off, putting in our GPS the coordinates for Fort Worth, the old cowboy town. I was suddenly glad I had worn my cowboy suit; now was the time where Texas would start to look like the Texas of John Wayne, Hondo, the Lone Ranger, and Buffalo Bill. I was about to get that Texas as we rode into Forth Worth. Not the Texas desert, however, but the Texas town.

The next few paragraphs describes this cool place - The Stockyards in Fort Worth, TX.

They were mostly brown buildings, with old signs and that western feel, boots and cowboy stores everywhere, with cowboy hatted men, saloons, and gift shop places. That double swing door was used almost everywhere here. We went up through a railroad tracks into the hilly area, and we looked at cow and rodeo places with all the metal gates and little areas, with the stinky smelly cows present. I liked this cool cowboy town. We parked at the top of a hill that was higher from a boot store, which we were going to go to because Rebecca "NEEDED" to get boots in Texas, because it made it special or something. I can't blame her though; sometimes I do the same thing. We went down the smoky streets, and I tripped after gluing my eyes (not literally) to the glass display which had a piercing rattlesnake. In doing so, I tripped and fell on my face. I quickly got back up, hardly rattled, just a little limp. That snake was in the midst of a tattoo parlor, and later on our return we would see a man actually with the needles putting tattoos on another guy. Shivers. I'm never getting a tattoo; it's like painting your body, eternally when you can't take this thing off again. I don't think necessarily people who have tattoos are evil or something, but I am totally not getting one of those things.

We walked down, and went through a door on the corner, where it was facing a monument, bulls being led by a cowboy on a horse. There were also glass displays in the windows of this place, with cowhides and a counter to the left where you pay for things. A few men said hello to us, and they were a lot nicer and more helpful than the others. Two 30 to 50 women, and one old man, that we saw first. He showed Rebecca, going to the left toward some boots, some of them, being very nice and grandpa-ish - sorry that's the only way I can describe his character. He later told us his name was Dubby. Dubby had been there, born and raised, for all his life and had gotten a family and grandchildren there. That was pretty cool. Rebecca didn't like many of these boots, saying they were too young for her or too girly, she didn't like white, brown, pink, or anything else. I left my Tramp book and went down a step into another place, and I asked one of the ladies where the bathroom was. This was another room about the same size, and I went to the rest room and came back out. It was only a little outhouse inside, if that makes sense. I went back up, and Mom was there. She told me I needed a belt, that my jeans were getting big. Then came the boring thing called trying on things.

A weird guy with grey hair that was not on his forehead helped me try them on, telling me that men put the belt in on the left side, with women doing the right side. He told me that he had no sizes that fitted me, and it was either for me to lose a lot of weight in the next months or get big. It was meant to be funny, but it wasn't. That guy was nice, I guess. A little weird. Well, they didn't have many boots that Rebecca liked, in her profound standards, but that dude actually did find one that fit close to me, and I just had to stretch it a little. It was with a silver belt buckle. Pretty nice. Dad, as we were exiting the building planning to go to another boot store to get the boots for Rebecca, asked where the famous Billy Bob's Bar, the largest bar in the world, with more than 48 of them, was. The weird guy said it was just across the street, the big building. They also recommended to go to a boot and hat store called White's, which might have more selection for Rebecca being young and a girl. Thanking them, on our way out we told them about the trip, and I held the door for guys taking saddles. Fort Worth is cool; if you want to become a cowboy all you have to do is move there. Everybody is a cowboy there. Not one Jersey boy or city girl among them. Except Spencer.

Rebecca and I went to those bulls and cattle, and I remembered the cowboys of the Deadwood Jones book, and how they led all the cows along. We took pictures on them. Then we crossed a street and came in front of a big building called Billy Bob's. The window with the counter and lobby smelled of smoke, and we didn't go in but got some pictures. After we were done, we got back into our car, driving down to White's store front, and parking by that on the road. Dad wanted to know if the place was racist, but later in the visit the person working there would say that that was not true, they named it that because the building has white paint on the store front. Pretty simple, actually. Walking in, we saw on the fronts a grand selection of kid's hats and boots, plus little toy guns. There was a square counter in the middle, with a door into the rest of their store. A little littler than the other one. A little littler... funny. But anyhow, Rebecca and Mom for the next 30 minutes did the whole boot thing, and I tried on a few hats, reading and talking to a lady named Shannon about Mark Twain, and she said she didn't really watch much of the SuperBowl which was only the last night. I liked a lot of those ads...

She had blonde hair into a pony tail. I asked her if she knew who she was, and she said he was some kind of writer. For the rest of the evening I asked another lady who helped out Rebecca with her boots and a young guy, and all knew. I talked to the lady that helped Rebecca a lot, and she actually asked me if I wanted a sarsaparilla. I had heard of this famous drink before, but wondered if it was okay to have it, and asked Mom, a little shy. The lady led me to the other room where a counter was and she got a bottle out, and said if I didn't like it my parents could get it. It was horrible. Mom later told me it was also called Root Beer. Rebecca thankfully got boots, nice red ones, there. We said goodbye and left, walking for a long time among the stock yards and in a fairground, where a parade was going to go. There was an empty country mall where we went to the restroom, the concrete floor and everything. We went home and had a quiet evening. I liked the 6th Floor Museum, although it was kind of sad. It was cool to see Forth Worth also. Okay, so now I guess we had begun to see the Texas I had planned on seeing and wanted to see... and in the next blog post and in the one after that we'll see more of that Texas I wanted to see. Goodbye for now.

A rootin' tootin' cowboy with some bootins' that went on lootin' resembles that new Russian guy, Putin',

Andrew.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos, but here are some links...
www.jfk.org/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Floor_Museum_at_Dealey_Plaza