Walking west down Pacific Ave from downtown Dallas, you leave the glass-and-angles forest of skyscrapers and enter another world. It's like going back in time to the early sixties. A world of sandstone and windows with panes and Dealey Plaza. November 22nd 1963.
There's a long reflecting pool and a bronze plaque overlooking the underpass through which JFK's limo sped on its way to Parkland Hospital. The plaque shows, with arrows, the route of the motorcade as it turned onto Houston (behind you as you face the plaque) and made a hairpin left onto Elm (on your right)
I thought the plaque itself was worth showing you because, as you can see, the route has been worn down into the metal by the thousands or millions of fingers that simply had to trace it out. My fingers did, too.
They've turned the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository into a museum with the usual audio guides and blown-up photos behind Plexiglas. I remembered almost all of them. I remembered the initial fear in those chaotic minutes when the radio was reporting Vice-President Johnson was dead, President Kennedy was dead, Governor Connelly was dead --no wait--that last report was in error--Johnson isn't dead. Connelly is--no wait. Has anyone talked to the Speaker of the House? Is he okay? Who's number four? Secretary of State. No, that's wrong. For about a half-hour it was genuinely scary because it looked like a coup d'etat.
When we knew it wasn't, the sadness set in. I walked down Cumberland Ave in Knoxville to my plant pathology class, knowing classes would all be canceled but not knowing what else to do. Strangers passing on the street whispered, "Have you heard?" Small nod. "Have you heard?" Small nod.
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