The Guns of Dealey Plaza

This is true: at the entrance to the Sixth Floor Museum, which is what has become of the Texas Book Depository in the years since President Kennedy was assassinated, there is a sign reminding people that they shouldn't bring guns inside.

And for some reason, I was the only person in the immediate vicinity who found that ironic.

My father and step-mother recently moved to Dallas for work, and I flew out for Thanksgiving. Shortly after reaching the airport I saw one of those red crawl-displays displaying the date, November 22, and realized that I was making my first visit to Dallas on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in that same city. So I had JFK on my mind practically from the first moment, and it's not such a surprise, really, that the one thing we all decided to do the Friday after Thanksgiving, before we all flew off to our different places again, was to visit Dealey Plaza.

Since the anniversary itself happened to fall on Thanksgiving, most people visited the next day, as I did, and there was a circus going on all across Dealey Plaza. (Here's a photo of the crowd on the grassy knoll.) There were guys selling things near the entrance, the same sorts of guys you'll see hawking t-shirts outside concerts or selling maps of the stars' homes in Beverly Hills. I leaned over to my sister and said "Hey, one of the great tragedies of American history happened here! Let's exploit it!" My step-mother politely declined to spend five bucks on one of their printed maps of the area.

We paid $13.50 per adult, which seemed a little steep, but it included an audio thingie that you hung around your neck. There really wasn't anything on the tape that added to the materials already on display, and the crowds were so large that the tape was moving way faster than I was; about halfway through I turned it off for good and explored at my own pace.

And yes, right at the entrance, where the young guy took our tickets, there was a posted sign reminding people not to bring guns inside. I asked if anyone found that ironic, and the young ticket-taker said "Well, this is Texas," and my dad pointed out that Texas is a concealed-carry state. All of which I knew perfectly well: it was the fact that in this place dedicated to perhaps the most notorious shooting of all time, people needed to be reminded that bringing a gun was perhaps in bad taste.

Apparently I hadn't sufficiently learned from the map-sellers outside that where money is to be made, bad taste really doesn't enter into the equation.

The exhibition itself strives for good taste by broadening its reach beyond the assassination: brief portraits of the Sixties, of Kennedy himself, and of his administration (prompting Dad to recollect when he was serving on an aircraft carrier during the Cuban Missile Crisis, right at the front line at what turned out to be the moment of greatest tension, almost entirely unaware of what was actually going on). But of course the museum doesn't have much in the way of artifacts to go along with these displays: the Kennedy Library in Boston, quite naturally, has all of that, together with the National Archives.

The plain truth, then, is that this is a museum about one event: an assassination. Here too the curators strive to be as tasteful as possible, given what the museum is: blown-up still frames from the Zapruder film don't show quite the worst moment, though they come close. There is a photo of President Kennedy's dark suit jacket showing the bullet hole, but not of his white shirt, which shows the blood much more obviously. And of course there are no autopsy photos or diagrams, for which many thanks. (Yes, you can find all of that on the internet, if you must.)

And there is plenty on the investigation itself, including the FBI's scale mock-up of Dealey Plaza. But what matters most, of course, is the window itself, from where Oswald fired. A giant glass box surrounds the area now, and empty book boxes seek to recreate the situation: boxes stacked high in order to conceal someone crouching behind, peering out through a rifle's telescopic sight, waiting for the right moment.

And I have to say, all conspiracy theories aside: if you were going to do such a thing, that was a perfect place for it. Coming along Houston Street, the motorcade made a sharp left onto Elm Street, which immediately curves back almost in the same direction they just came from before proceeding on toward the highways. This means the motorcade would have had to slow down to make the turn, then curved away from the Book Depository, a perfect shot getting better and better with each second. It's all perfectly obvious when you look down through those windows; there's a tree in the way that would make the shot harder now, but from the original photos that tree wasn't nearly so expansive in 1963. (Oliver Stone had it trimmed back when he filmed JFK there, but that was 16 years ago and the tree has filled out again.)

Of course, the grassy knoll would make a pretty good spot, too. There are actually three such pergolas on all sides of the plaza, any of which would have made a good sniper's perch. I won't go into the various theories, except to say that even though I do believe governments are capable of attempting most anything, I'm not nearly as convinced that they're actually capable of accomplishing such grand conspiracies.

But at least I know I can say this: now, in a concealed-carry state like Texas, I can rest assured that in this one place, the Texas School Book Depository, I am reasonably safe from getting shot. Good to know.