That time I went to...Dallas, Texas

Howdy y’all!

Well I’m back from Texas, and I had a fantastic time! Let me tell you allllllll about it.
 

 

I started my day off awesome the day we left for Dallas, because before the trip even started the on board manager gave me a Recognition on Q letter, which is a kind of reward program the company runs. One of my colleagues from a previous trip had nominated me! I was pretty chuffed, even though the nominator was anonymous and they didn’t say why they’d nominated me. But still, I felt pretty spesh!

Just me and Abe Lincoln, waiting for the bus

So I was in a top mood all day as we flew across the globe to Dallas. The flight over wasn’t bad at all – I had been prepared for it to feel endless, but in reality it was only about 30 minutes longer than a Sydney to LA flight, of which I’ve done hundreds of times before. So I got to Dallas with my crew feeling much better than expected!

We arrived on Monday afternoon and on my way up to my hotel room I ran into Lizzie, a girl I knew who’d arrived on the flight from Sydney the day before with her crew, and together we decided to go to Target a few blocks away. Because I was feeling pretty good I pretty much got to my room, took off my uniform and my make up and put on some fresh clothes and went out again to meet Lizzie. We spent about an hour in Target, wandering up and down the aisles buying stuff we didn’t really need, but couldn’t resist because it was so cheap, and when we got back to the hotel at dinnertime only THEN did I start to feel like fifty shades of tired. I was asleep by 7:30pm.

Oh, and just quickly, remember a few entries ago I talked about the pumpkin spice obsession America has? Well in Target I found further evidence to prove this to you all with more things than I could have ever imagined flavoured like pumpkin spice. So of course I took some photos to share on this blog (I also may or may not have bought several of these items).
 

Jet lagged holding jet puffed!

 

 

 

 

 

Anyways, next day I caught the bus into downtown Dallas and went to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. This is where President John F Kennedy met his sad end on November 22, 1963 when he was assassinated from a sixth floor corner window of the Texas School Book Depository as he drove in an open top motorcade on the street below. Today the TSBD has been turned into an incredibly detailed museum that is a fantastic legacy to a brilliant president.

I was at the museum for opening – I don’t waste my time when I’m travelling…I like to fit in as much as possible, so I’m there when the doors open first thing! – and paid my $16 to get in. I already knew this museum would be great, even before I entered. I have been to many museums, memorials, presidential libraries and national monuments all over the US in my years of travelling and have always been very impressed by how fantastic they are. Those Americans, they do these things so well I tell ya! They are always so well kept, detailed, compassionate, clean, unbias and beautiful. And remembering America’s, and the world’s, obsession with the Kennedy family, I knew I was in for a treat. As I entered I was given a headset to listen to some audio commentary throughout the museum, and I was off.

To begin you take the lift right to the sixth floor – where Lee Harvey Oswald sat and waited at the corner window, in amongst boxes of books, for JFK and Jackie to drive past. You aren’t allowed to take photos on the sixth floor today, but you wouldn’t have had a chance to anyway – there was too much to read and look at and watch.

The infamous sixth floor corner window

The whole floor chronicled JFK’s life from even before he became president, and then onto his time in office, the challenges he faced as president – there was extensive detail about the Cuban Missile Crisis for example, and the positive things he made a reality during the presidency – the Peace Corps, space programs and the African American civil rights movement. There were an array of videos to watch, inspiring speeches to listen to. Much of the sixth floor was dedicated to that day in Dallas though, with unimaginable amounts of eye witness accounts, photographs – even the cameras used by some eye witnesses are on display here, videos, timelines, police reports and so much fascinating detail to read about the assassination, who did it, how they found them, what happened to them, the trial, the conspiracy theories, the heartbreak of Jackie, the swearing in of a new president. It was just beyond. I was captivated on that one floor of the museum for at least 3 hours.

 

Many of the photographs were stirring, to say the least. Because of camera technology back in ’63 the photographs that exist of the actual event are grainy at best, but the museum has still broken them down into slide by slide, second by second, and put them on display. There were also many pictures on the walls that we have all seen many times before – that of Jackie climbing over the back of the car, thinking she too was about to be shot and trying to get out of the way, or of JFK Jr, just 3 years old, saluting at his father’s funeral. One of the photos that gave me shivers the most though was one of Jackie Kennedy standing ashen faced next to Lyndon B Johnson as he was sworn in as the new president just hours after JFK was shot. The look on her face, I think, is haunting.

I took this picture not inside the museum, but later out
of the souvenir book I bought at the gift shop

The very corner window where the shots were fired from is glassed off on the sixth floor, and behind the glass is a recreation of how it looked that day. The original floorboards are still there, and the boxes of school books still stacked high and haphazardly. There are even shell casings on the floor. Inside one of the boxes is a webcam that looks out onto the street, giving anyone who visits www.jfk.org and views the webcam the exact same line of sight Lee Harvey Oswald had as he pulled the trigger. It’s chilling. And then you look out the window and see two X’s on the road – a yellow one showing where the first shot hit, and a white one a few metres up the road where the fatal shot hit. Later I went outside and got a closer look at the X’s (although didn’t stop traffic and take a picture with the X like I saw some tourists distastefully do) and of the Grassy Knoll, a nearby hill where some onlookers thought they heard shots from, it’s location now almost as famous as the Texas School Book Depository is. Seeing that X on the road and then turning around and looking up again at that sixth floor window of the depository was just amazing. I was standing on top of history. It is hard to describe – but it felt weird that I was standing exactly where a world changing event had happened just fifty years earlier. Crazy.

X marks the spot

I left the museum feeling quite drained, as there had been so much information to take in, but I was still so glad I went. Once again America showed me how well they do museums! In 2009 I went to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and thought that was the best museum I’d ever been to, but the Sixth Floor Museum comes very, very close to that one!

I wandered around a little bit after I left the museum. Downtown Dallas was not exactly what I expected it to be. I was there on a weekday, so I suppose it may’ve been a bit quieter than it would’ve been on weekends, but there weren’t even as many workers and businessmen around as I thought there’d be. It was very quiet. I was on foot so couldn’t go for miles, but thankfully a few other sights of interest were only a few blocks away from Dealey Plaza. I took in the John F Kennedy Memorial Plaza, which was an impressive, but not exactly pretty landmark and Pioneer Plaza, where 49 bronze steers are placed over a large area commemorating 19^th century cattle drives through Texas.

Pioneer Plaza

It was a big day downtown and I retired early to be up the next day to go to the Stockyards in Fort Worth, which I shall write about soon.

Until then, as they say in Texas…

Y’all come back now!

Jorgs