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I will never forget the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Not because the assassination had any direct impact on my life, or because the man held any significant meaning to me, but because it is the first memory I have that is firmly anchored to a specific time and place. What's more, it is the first memory I have that involves events beyond my immediate family and thus is the first common frame of reference that I share with others, no matter who they are or where they come from.
On November 22, 1963, I was a typical six year old sitting at my desk in the First Grade when the principal came into the room and made an announcement. I don't recall exactly what he said, and I'm sure it held no particular meaning for me, but I do recall walking home from school, following the railroad tracks toward my house, when Stephanie, an older kid in the neighborhood, told me to look back at the flag in front of the school. I looked back and saw that the flag had been lowered to half-mast. "That's because the president was killed" Stephanie explained. The sad fact of the matter is that I didn't even know that we had a president. Years later it would occur to me that in a matter of moments I learned that we had, and that we did not have, a president.
The JFK assassination never really impacted on me in any way while growing up. I do recall that I never trusted the government explanations and that the lone-assassin theory never rang true, but I didn't have any particular passion concerning the event. As I grew older, it would sometimes surface again in the news and become a topic of conversation between myself and my friends. I vaguely recall seeing the funeral procession for JFK on the television while I was going about the daily routine of my six-year-old world, and I am certain that I saw the Zapruder film at some point, but I never felt any strong connection to the assassination until I saw Oliver Stone's movie "JFK". Still, at some point before seeing that movie, I can't recall exactly when, I had become interested in tracking down information about the assassination, having already read several of the assassination books and having watched various television specials on Oswald. "Fair Play" was a treasure when I first discovered it on the Internet.
When I had the opportunity to visit Dallas in April of 1994, to attend a conference for work, the first thing I thought of was visiting Dealey Plaza. This particular conference is held in a different city each year, and cities are announced two years in advance, so I first learned of my impending trip to Dallas in 1992. Thus, I was looking forward to my trip to Dealey Plaza for two years.
My friend from work who traveled with me to this conference was fairly neutral on the whole JFK assassination thing. When we had attended the same conference in New Orleans I had badgered him in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to accompany me on a trip down Magazine Street to seek out the house where Oswald had once lived. So I had worked on him for every day for the two years since I first learned the conference would be held in Dallas in 1994, preparing him for the visit to Dealey Plaza. By the time we first set foot in our hotel room in Dallas late Saturday night he was actually eager to make the trip the next morning.
Because I had read all of the required books on the topic of the assassination, I was an expert on Dealey Plaza in November, 1963. However, I soon discovered that I knew next to nothing about Dealey Plaza in April, 1994. I seriously thought that we would be the only two people to visit the site, awkwardly staring at the Texas School Book Depository, stumbling around the grassy knoll trying to locate landmarks, while Dallas locals stared at us as if we were fools. It didn't take me long to find out how naive I truly was about Dealey Plaza.
In the hotel lobby on Sunday morning I asked the man behind the counter where the Texas School Book Depository was. He looked at me and mentioned something like "Oh, you mean the Sixth Floor," and then handed me a brochure. I stared at the brochure and was surprised to learn that the "Sixth Floor" was actually the sixth floor of something called the Dallas County Administration Building, which had apparently once been known as the Texas School Book Depository. According to this brochure, the Dallas County Historical Foundation, funded in part by a grant from the Texas Committee for Humanities, established a visitor's center and "tourist attraction" on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository, called, appropriately enough, "The Sixth Floor." This "Sixth Floor" was a "permanent educational exhibition examining the life, death and legacy of John F. Kennedy within the context of American history," and was created to meet "widespread visitor demand for information and understanding about a tragic but important event."
When the taxi arrived, we didn't even have to tell the driver where we wanted to go. Apparently there are few other places in Dallas where tourists go at 9:45 AM on a Sunday morning. On the way there the driver informed us that the Sixth Floor was one of the most popular, if not the most popular, tourist attractions in Texas, and that it was open every day of the year except for Christmas.
Now this next part I may be imagining, but it seemed to me that, like the person behind the counter in the hotel lobby, the driver purposely avoided using the words "Texas School Book Depository." The sum of my knowledge on Dallas and Dealey Plaza had come from books written about events in 1963, so I found it difficult to think of the building in any terms other than "Texas School Book Depository." It occurred to me that this name may still haunt Dallas, and changing the name of the building may make it easier to live with. Of course, technically, it is no longer the Texas School Book Depository, so why would they still refer to it as something that no longer exists, except that the Texas School Book Depository does still exist, deeply ingrained in the American psyche. Making the building into an "educational exhibition" for the purpose of preserving history may be a way of sanitizing the "tragic but important event." The construction of this visitor's center and educational exhibition may have more to do with making the Texas School Book Depository and Dealey Plaza into something that Dallas can more easily live with than it has to do with meeting the demands of tourists. Upon reflection, it seemed like a logical and practical way for Dallas to deal with the tourists who flocked there just to look at a place where an enormous tragedy took place, yet still maintain some civic pride and dignity. In a way, it must be insulting to the inhabitants of Dallas that people like me still associate their city with a horrible event that took place over 20 years in the past, all the while remaining ignorant of any of the other things that Dallas has to offer. Shouldn't Dallas be able to grow and evolve and go about its business without being haunted by the ghosts of that day in November, 1963?
So it was that by the time our taxi reached its destination, I was going through an odd mixture of emotions which were completely unexpected and not even anticipated just minutes earlier. The eagerness with which I initially approached this trip was all but gone. In its place I felt a little ugly about even coming here, like someone who slows down to stare at an auto accident, or crowds the sidewalk to watch another person's house burn to the ground. I also felt a bit disappointed because I now expected to see some sanitized "Sixth Floor" tourist trap/museum instead of the Texas School Book Depository.
When we departed from the taxi the first thing I noticed was that there was already a line of about 20 people, slowly entering the building as the doors were just opening. As I said before, when I woke up that morning I felt we would probably be the only people there, that we would stand and stare at a closed building, feel like fools, and then slouch back to the hotel. So now I had two surprises. First, the Texas School Book Depository was now an educational exhibition specifically created to meet tourist demand, and, second, we were not the only people there. In fact, more people were getting in line even as we approached the building. These were but the first of several surprises I would have that day.
One of the first things I noticed when we got in line was that very few people were talking. Even those who were obviously together were fairly quiet, as if wrapped up in their own thoughts. Another thing that I noticed was that no cameras were allowed, which vaguely annoyed me. I had brought my camera to take a picture of the outside of the building, but once I discovered that it was an exhibition through which people could actually pass I had entertained hopes of actually taking photographs on the sixth floor itself. Once inside the visitor's center, I handed my camera to a security person in exchange for a numbered slip of paper. Then we paid our $6 for admission. I also opted to get an audio tape and a pair of head phones to help guide me through the sixth floor displays. As we headed for the elevator that would take us to the sixth floor, I recall seeing a section of the wall to my side open, and I could clearly through the open door a dark room with video screens mounted on the wall. Obviously there were security cameras mounted throughout the sixth floor.
The elevator took us directly to the sixth floor. After stepping out of the elevator, I started my audio tape and began to follow the suggested path that took us past numbered exhibits consisting mostly of photographs and text mounted on a maze of walls. Most of the actual exhibit is lost to memory, but two specific things stand out: I recall that I could not read Oswald's job application and wondered at how anyone who wrote so poorly could ever get hired, and I could barely make out Oswald's scrawl on the instructions that he left to Marina in case he was ever "taken prisoner."
Initially I had resisted the idea of getting an audio tape, but I quickly became aware that this voice speaking in my ear tended to isolate me from the other people and make the tour more personal. At the same time it gave me a proper sense of orientation and prevented me from being overwhelmed by the experience. Several times I paused and switched off the tape, glancing around at the other people. The Sixth Floor had filled quickly and there was a constant flow of new arrivals from the elevator. I could not help but notice the diversity of the people, all ages and nationalities. I noticed the same expression on nearly every face I saw, the expression that one has when he or she is lost in their own thoughts. At one point I made eye contact with a man wearing a jacket with the name of the university where I work on it, and under his arm he carried a bag with the name of the conference I was attending. I nodded to him, feeling an immediate connection, but he seemed annoyed by my action, as if I was jarring him out of his own thoughts and interrupting a very personal experience.
At this point I understood why no cameras were allowed. When I was in Junior High School my family was in a flood caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. We had eight feet of water in the house and lost everything on the first floor that couldn't be carried upstairs before the flood occurred. We spent the night sleeping in the back of the car parked on a ridge overlooking the area where our house was. In the morning, I walked down to the hillside where I could see our entire neighborhood under water. Just the second stories of the homes were visible. Cars, dog houses, oil barrels, all sorts of things floated by, bouncing between the houses. Some times I could hear the sound of windows breaking. One house was lifted off of its foundation and was being carried away by the current. While I was there watching all of this, a car drove up and several people got out. By their behavior it was obvious that they were not flood victims. They all came over to where I was standing and took photographs of the flood and of each other on the hill, with the flood waters behind them. They seemed to think it was all pretty cool, and then they got in the car and left. I remember feeling violated by that, as if these people had no respect for my family or for the fact that we were in the midst of a tragedy. This feeling came back to me as I stood there on the Sixth Floor, realizing that taking photographs would reduce this place to the status of just another tourist attraction, robbing it of its real meaning, and it would also be an intrusion into the feelings that all of these people, myself included, were experiencing.
At one point on the tour my friend and I stopped to view a short film showing the events of that day, leading up to the assassination. Although we had each taken off our headphones and sat next to each other, we didn't say much to each other. Upon leaving the movie area, I saw a young man who had also just finished viewing the film, sit on a bench and begin to cry. He was obviously very shaken by the whole thing -- being here and seeing the film -- yet he could not have even been born on November 22,1963. Two of his friends, equally young, stood by and made fun of him for crying. This angered me and I wanted to go over and comfort him, to tell him it was okay, that I understood. But someone else, another stranger, sat down beside him and began to talk gently to him. I knew what had made him cry because I felt like crying also -- a tragic and enormous sense of loss was growing inside of me.
After that I was jarred by two other emotional events. First, I found myself staring at the corner where the sniper's nest was located. It was preserved, or, more accurately, reproduced -- boxes stacked the way they were on November 22, 1963. The entire corner was enclosed in glass and thus sealed off from the rest of the sixth floor. I was disappointed that I could not cross to the other side of the glass partition and could not look out the actual window from which the shots were allegedly fired. And why was I so disappointed that I could not look out the window? What morbid desires would have been satisfied if I could look out that window or stand where the sniper stood? To this day, the fact that I was disappointed still troubles me. Is it simply the fact that the corner was sealed off and forbidden that made it so enticing, so appealing?
Standing there, inches from the glass partition, looking at the stacked boxes, I felt as if I was actually looking back in time. I had the impression that if I could actually look out that window, it would still be 1963 down below. I was certain that I would still be able to see the President's limousine turning the corner and heading toward the triple underpass, like some ghostly loop in time, played over and over again. I could stand there and watch all of the events of that day played out, and maybe, just maybe, the pieces of the puzzle would fall into place and everything would suddenly make sense.
Of course, the window in that corner is just one of seven windows on that side of the sixth floor. The next window over offers nearly the same view, and when I looked out it I was suddenly transported back in time. There was the triple underpass, Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll, the picket fence, and beyond the train yard, all of the familiar landmarks that were etched into my mind. Only they weren't in black and white, as I somehow imagined them, but in living color. And time was not frozen -- people moved about and traffic flowed, as if it were an every-day street in an every-day town. At that moment I also became aware that I had seen all of these landmarks when I was standing outside the building. In fact, I had stared directly at all of these landmarks and failed to recognize them. But from up here, from this perspective, seeing them all together made everything vivid and real. Each landmark stood out on its own, yet was part of a whole. I not only recognized everything, but could replay the events of November 22, 1963, in my head, as if they were still happening. And at that same time, looking out that window, a strange thought went through my mind, that someone -- Oswald or a mysterious "they" -- stole my future from me, from all of us, and changed how things could have been, and could be.
My friend stood next to me at the window and suggested that we go down and explore the plaza. I wanted very much to do this, so of course I agreed, but I was a little surprised that he wanted to do this. It became apparent to me that he was now caught up in the significance of this place and was not just humoring me. Like me, he genuinely felt the need to actually go down there and walk on the grassy knoll and stand behind the picket fence. Like me, he was now connected to this place and its history.
As we descended in the elevator and walked out of the building to the plaza (stopping first in the visitor center to retrieve my camera), I also became aware of another fact. Despite spending two years looking forward to this trip, to being here at this exact location, I was suddenly becoming timid. Simply put, I was intimidated by the fact that I was actually here. So I was pleased that my friend was the one to suggest checking out the plaza, and I was even more pleased when he suggested that we walk up to the picket fence. To be honest, I was overwhelmed by everything at this point, standing there on the plaza, dumbfounded, in the middle of it all, without a thought in my head. Such simple and obvious thoughts as walking up to the picket fence, or walking anywhere at all, for that matter, would never have occurred to me in the condition that I was in at that time. I didn't know in what direction to walk, or what to look at, or what to say. Maybe he sensed this and felt compelled to become my guide, as the voice on the audio tape had been while on the Sixth Floor.
On the walk to the picket fence I recall seeing graffiti saying "Posner is a lieing bastard." There was other graffiti too, but none of it stands out clearly in my memory. When we started to walk behind the picket fence, I hesitated, glancing about, wondering if we were allowed to do this. There were no signs saying that we couldn't, and no one was there to stop us. In fact, no one was there at all, and I wondered at why no one else felt compelled to come here, to stand behind the fence, to view the plaza and the street from that vantage point. So it was that we walked behind the fence and stood there, looking back down the grassy knoll and up the street to the Texas School Book Depository and down the street toward the triple underpass. I wondered briefly if this was the same fence that had been there on November 22, 1963, or if it was a completely different fence. Then I turned and looked back across the parking lot and the railroad yards, and noticed the switching tower. I guess it was inevitable, but my friend then walked in front of the picket fence and took a photograph of me standing behind it. I felt a little awkward at doing this, and wondered if it was in bad taste, but today I like that photograph. There I am, in the shadows, my head visible above the most infamous picket fence in history.
No sooner had he finished taking the picture than other people appeared, as if from nowhere, checking out the picket fence. It was then that I noticed more people coming up the grassy knoll from the plaza, approaching the fence. Whether it was seeing us up there that brought them, or whether we just happened to get there at a time when no one was there, we were soon surrounded by others who stood behind the fence, glancing around, reading the graffiti, all the while not saying a single word.
I reluctantly left the picket fence (it was too crowded) and walked down the grassy knoll to the sidewalk. Standing there at the bottom of the knoll and facing the street, watching the traffic go by, then looking at the Texas School Book Depository against the clear blue Texas sky, then looking at cars disappear in the triple underpass, then turning and looking back up towards the fence, I was suddenly aware of how small this area really was. The distance from the fence to the sidewalk is not that great, and seems to me to be further in the films I have seen. Time also seemed to be somewhat frozen in this small area -- almost, but not exactly. It is almost as if everything is condensed into that space and I could feel its weight pressing in on me from all sides. I could easily have been standing in a sealed environment, if not for the constant flow of traffic to remind me that it is not 1963 and that life goes on in Dallas, and people have places to go and things to do, and probably pass this place routinely without giving it a second thought. If they thought about it all the time, every time they had to drive by here, they would surely go mad. So I was aware that it was 1994, not 1963, and that the motorcade was not passing, and that the Texas School Book Depository was no longer the Texas School Book Depository, and that the city of Dallas was larger than just this tiny area. Still, if Dealey Plaza was not frozen in time, perhaps a part of me was when I stood there. It was difficult not to see some trace of the ghosts of that day, whether in fleeting images in my head, or in the actual sights and sounds that surrounded me. I realized that I had been there before, in Dealey Plaza, on the sidewalk and on the grassy knoll and behind the picket fence, that every American has been there to some degree, in some shape or form. It is deeply imbedded in our hearts and minds, from numerous showings of the Zapruder film and other films, so much that it has become part of our collective and shared national psyche.
One thing remained to be done before leaving. And it was almost an afterthought. I was compelled to stand where I thought Zapruder had stood on that day to film the motorcade. And, standing there, something strange and bizarre caught my eye in the bushes below me. I looked down and was startled to see a gym bag resting among the bushes. The bag was open and there were several items in it. On top of them, clearly visible, was a newspaper. I could not see the date on the paper so I don't know if it was actually from 1963 or if it was a reproduction, but the headline said something about JFK having just been assassinated, and there was a photograph of JFK to the side of the headline. This very event was eerie and more than a little disconcerting. I wondered what this gym bag was doing there and who it belonged to. I glanced around but saw no one that I could connect to it, yet I was afraid to bend down and touch it, to look more closely at it.
Later, after returning home, a friend asked me to describe in one word what it was like to visit Dealey Plaza. The word that came immediately to mind was "eerie," followed closely by "spooky." When I responded I was thinking of that gym bag in the bushes, and the newspaper in clear view, placed there with care so that the headline could easily be read.
I came away from Dealey Plaza with no revelations, no sense of closure, no sudden and certain understanding or insight. If anything, I may have felt with more certainty than ever before that we will never know the truth about what happened there in 1963. Still, I felt more connected to November 22, 1963 than I had ever felt before, and what's more, I felt genuinely haunted. I realized that every person in America, whether they are aware of it or not, regardless of whether they were even born in 1963, will always be connected to that event. The whole event -- the motorcade, the shots, the people running to the grassy knoll -- is still going on in Dealey Plaza, a small area in which history is compressed and a continuous loop is being played in our heads. Dealey Plaza cannot help but touch the minds and hearts and souls of every one who visits it, whether they come there out of idle curiosity or looking for answers, trying to make sense out of an event that defies comprehension.
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