Floating Above The Footprint Of History

     I was there once.
     As part of a family vacation to Texas in 1968 to see the World's Fair (HemisFair) in San Antonio, we made a stop in Dallas to see where it happened.  I remember seeing it but not much more than that.   They told me something important happened there, probably in a few simple words that flew past the short attention span of a seven year old.

      Dealey Plaza was immaculate as I recall, bright and green with lawn sprinklers at the ready and running to keep "The Site" civic-wise as palatable as possible to visitors and residents alike.  And I'm sure it was and is a difficult task for Dallas:  Part of their city is a world-famous place of infamy, and it's not like they can plow the thing under and start over.  The best they can do is keep it neat and dignified, and let it be what it is.
     I don't know if that visit started my life-long obsession with the Kennedy assassination (The Elder) but it probably kick-started it, or at the very least planted a seed.  The whole thing has always fascinated me, from the characters involved to the momentous turn of history that resulted from it.  And then I bought my first book on the subject, "Six Seconds In Dallas" by Josiah Thompson at the old supermarket just south from the old Lincoln General Hospital.
     From then on, I was truly hooked.

     I purchased an abridged copy of the Warren Report and got most of the way through it, along with almost every kind of literature related to the assassination from books on the Secret Service being involved to one about Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, Marguerite, - and the completely unique world she inhabited -  which I devoured while riding Amtrack back from Denver one summer.  You name it, I've probably read it.
     The problem with all that information is this:  It's almost completely contradictory.  One seemingly credible source has Oswald (you can see a 24/7 view here from the alleged sniper's window) as somehow alone planning and pulling the whole thing off; the next has conspirators behind every bush and under every street drain.  One has Lyndon Johnson involved while the next brings in the Mafia, the FBI and some hybrid combination of intelligence agencies led by the CIA.  It's almost intentionally maddening and designed to throw people off the track of the truth.
     I've kind of gone back and forth on what I think happened so long ago in Dealey Plaza.  At first I got caught up in the flurry of conspiratorial media and believed that Oswald was completely and totally framed.  Now, however, I think that while certainly not alone in the act, Oswald was in some way totally up to his neck in the whole thing.  Did he actually pull one of the triggers?  That I'm not sure of.  But did he know and was he part of it?  Yes.

     Now Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has come out and said that his father told him that he believed that while at the same time publicly supporting it he thought others were involved and that the report issued by the Warren Commission was a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship."  Shoddy and quick, I think.  They started with a conclusion (Oswald) and wrote from back to start with that ending already in hand.  But does any of this make any difference nearly fifty years down the road?  Probably not.
     I'd love to one day again visit Dealey Plaza, this time carrying the weight of adulthood and the accompanying sense of history and of things important.  The 50th Anniversary of the murder will happen this fall, and how I'd love to be there along with masses filling the plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum on the site of the former Texas School Book Depository.  We'll see.  I know it's a place I've always wanted to see again, although were I to go back I know instead of revisiting an old haunt it would be more like seeing it for the first time.