Side Dish: Dealey Plaza 5/21/07

It had always been leading up to this. Here, the site in Dallas, Texas where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, was the place I wanted to visit more than any other. I pined for it. Craved it. Needed to bear witness before I died. It was the top, bottom, and middle of my bucket list. All that and more. And, like little else in a life that breeds the underwhelming, it met and exceeded expectations. Of all the historical sites I have ever seen, this one places the visitor firmly in the past better than any other. No leaps of imagination are necessary, as this is the spot. Nothing has changed. It could be then, or the day before. It's eerie, transfixing, and monumental, all in a single gulp of awe. What could ever hope to compete?

It's all there - the grassy knoll, the Book Depository, the very spot where Abraham Zapruder shot the most important piece of film in American history - and none of it has aged a day. The moment one turns the corner and enters the realm of Dealey, it is an instantaneous time warp. More than that, it's surprisingly smaller than one would ever imagine. Perhaps the clips, news programs, and even Oliver Stone's brilliant (if hopelessly dishonest) film made it larger than life; an impossibly grand stage on which history changed in an instant. But here it was, so contained, so bizarre in its insistence on being ordinary; it seemed almost laughable that one of the most viewed, studied, and debated events - at bottom, a crime scene - of all time took place on a brief stretch of road that could be Anytown, USA. Quite simply, it takes your breath away.

What can one do, then, but take it all in? My god, there's the "x" where a life ended and unending controversy began, and the exit to nowhere that took a dying president into oblivion. All extraneous sights and sounds fall away, leaving a visitor to walk along each touchstone in turn, whether standing on the overpass or peering from behind the fence where so many claim a second gunman did his worst. And what would the experience be without a genuine lunatic selling "the truth" through conspiracy-soaked newspapers? It was all so official - the motorcade route, archival photos, quotes from every nook and cranny of officialdom - yet, in the end, nothing more than a way for the usual nuts to make the usual easy money. Of course I laid my money down. Not a word rang true, but here, everyone has an opinion. Even the plaque designating the Sixth Floor Museum as a national landmark had been defaced with the declarations of the fringe.

But it's all much more than walking the ups and downs of an American murder scene; one must make a stop at the museum, which costs a mere $13.50 ($10 in 2007) and leaves visitors even more immersed in the crime of the century. It is both a sanctuary and a working exhibit, and though no one is allowed into the very area where Oswald fired his way into infamy (Oswald and Oswald alone, you dopes), one can peer out a nearby window, locate the spot on the pavement, and see that yes, the shot was more than doable. Appallingly doable. While the evidence itself (especially Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History) affirms a lone gunman again and again, a brief glimpse out that window lays to rest all doubt. It happened the way we've been told after all, even if many of us will never admit it. There are many theories as to why Americans continue to insist on a shadow conspiracy, but one idea always seems to rise to the top: we are not a people who can accept that a barely employable, anonymous loser could take down a king. Our history is destiny, not the random workings of the rabble. What security have we if it can all come crashing down at the behest of a fool?

Come to Dallas. Have some BBQ, see a ball game, and yes, shop if you must. But it's all about Dealey Plaza. It will haunt even the most seasoned traveler, and you'll never see the assassination in quite the same way again.