As Billy Joel once sang, “JFK blown away! What else do I have to say?” Read on to find out!
About a year ago, I found myself passing through Dallas, Texas. So obviously I was going to Dealey Plaza.
As I drove south on N Houston Street, I missed my turn into the lot for the Sixth Floor Museum, where I intended to park while I visited both the museum and the plaza. It was a busy area, so I figured the best option was to just take the next right turn so I could loop around and try again. At this point, I had been in Texas for a few days and had developed more than a few gray hairs navigating its roadways. Texas highways had proven mind-bogglingly stressful, and as a bonus, approximately 105% of the roads that I tried to drive on were closed and/or under construction but not noted as such in Apple Maps. Siri was constantly directing me into precarious situations that left me understandably paranoid that I had done something to offend her and she was now using her powers to extract her sweet, sweet revenge.
So, when I missed my turn in Dallas and had to reroute on the fly yet again, I was so flustered that I remained completely oblivious to the fact that I was now driving down the very road that Kennedy was riding along when he received the fatal gunshot. Or that the infamous grassy knoll was immediately on my right. It didn’t even click that the book depository building was the book depository. I had just drove right into the scene of one of the most famous, conspiracy-theorized events in America history and had no idea, even though it was my intended destination. Driving in Texas will fry your brain, people.
So, anyhow, after some rerouting, I found my way to the parking lot and headed to the Sixth Floor Museum. After purchasing my ticket on the first floor and being handed an audio guide, I took the elevator up to the eponymous Sixth Floor.
I’m going to be honest. I didn’t love this museum. In fact, of all the Presidential history sites I’ve been to over the years, this is one of the visits that kind of leaves me cringing a bit when I think about it. That being said, there were a couple specific things that were very much worth seeing. So, even as I reflect back on it a year later, I’m feeling a lot of ambivalence.
So, what’s not to love? Just the whole design of the museum. That’s all.
This museum was very audio-guide dependent. The museum relied heavily on exhibits that were wall displays with pictures and text, the kind where you follow them in sequence, punching the appropriate numbers into your audio guide to hear the narration. My problem with this was three-fold. Scroll on to enjoy my rants on each of these folds.
Rant 1: Audio-guide-dependent experiences suck. Period.
I don’t mind audio guides as an optional add-on to enhance a visit to a museum or historical site; I really don’t. But I am not a fan of experiences that depend on all visitors being plugged in for the entirety of their visit like a hoard of headphone-clad zombies. The point of visiting somewhere is to experience being there, not to mentally check out and lose sense of place so you can listen to pre-recorded narration.
While this doesn’t apply to this museum, multimedia audio guides with a screen are even worse. While this is not related to a President (just a King), I visited Graceland for the third time last year, going in with fond memories of previous visits from years ago. But these days they hook you into an iPad and, as a result, touring Elvis’s mansion has become a completely different and worse experience. Even if the narration is done by John Stamos.
Rant 2: There wasn’t much to look out.
With a couple notable exceptions (I’ll get to that in a minute), most of the visual aids at the museum weren’t that special. In fact, most of what you were supposed to look at were display boards mounted on the wall, basically just fancy versions of what a middle schooler might come up with for a History Fair project. Just text and pictures. There wasn’t much, if anything, in the way of actual artifacts on display. So…really these boards, plus the audio narration, didn’t offer me anything I couldn’t get from watching a YouTube video from the convenience of my own home. Why did I need to come to Texas to see this?
Rant 3: The timing was way off.
While I clearly wasn’t a fan of the format, I’m not complaining about the content. The information on the boards and in the audio narration was interesting and I did appreciate what I did experience of it. The problem was, the audio bits were kind of long and people just kept coming in. So let’s say ten people could tap into the audio guide in front of Board #1 without it feeling too crowed. By time the narration ended, 20 additional people would have walked in and crowed in on them. It was just uncomfortable. And this is at a museum that has timed tickets so they have the power to regulate this better. I gave it my best shot for a few boards (like I said, the content really was interesting), but they I just gave up and skipped ahead to the few non-board-centric exhibits.
Enough of my complaining. Here’s the good stuff.
First, the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald was when he fired at Kennedy (side note: I’m sticking with the standard interpretation of events here rather than any conspiracy theories). As much as I love visiting historic sites, it’s pretty rare that I ever get an eerie feeling from actually being in the place where history happened. But I have got that at multiple assassination sites, especially when seeing things from the view of the assassin. I didn’t get as strong of a feeling in the book depository as I did the first time I visited Martin Luther King’s assassination site and saw James Earl Ray’s view from the boardinghouse bathroom to the Lorraine Motel, but I did feel something.
I will note, however, that you can’t actually look out the window Oswald shot from and see Kennedy’s route. The whole corner is set up like it was the day of the Kennedy assassination (with stacks of book boxes) and blocked off with glass panels, so you can’t get to the window. But, there are some options. You can look through another set of windows a few yards to the right, or head to the 7th floor to see the view from a few yards up. If you absolutely have to see the view from the exact angle of the assassin, the museum does have a camera set up in the window that streams live footage on their website.
The other cool thing that made the museum a must-visit besides its shortcomings was the model of the Dealey Plaza used by the FBI during their investigation, on long-term loan to the museum from the National Archives.
After I had seen what I was going to see at the museum, I headed down to the plaza itself.
One thing that’s cool about knowing me is that if I know you are traveling somewhere, I will offer up (completely unsolicited) guidance on what Presidential history sites you should visit during your trip. Rather than typing up a whole paragraph describing the key features of Dealey Plaza here, I’ll just share this (definitely unsolicited) annotated photo I texted my boss a couple months ago when she was in Dallas for a conference.
It might not be completely clear from the photo, but on the road there are three Xs marking the spots where Kennedy was when he was shot. So, of course I was going to get my photo taken by the Xs marking the 2nd and 3rd shots, one of which was the fatal shot. And of course, as I had in many similar situations, I contemplated how much smile was appropriate for such a picture and ended up going with something kind of neutral.
And now the part of my visit that still befuddles me, even over a year later. Right before I posed for the above picture, I came across an older couple attempting to take a selfie in the same spot. It wasn’t going well. I offered to take their photo and they agreed.
“I assume you want the Xs in the street in the picture?” I asked.
“No,” one of them replied. “We want the red building.”
With that, they gestured to a building about a block away. You can see it in the photo above (it’s the one with the turrets).
At first I thought they were being sarcastic, but quickly determined that they meant what they said.
I didn’t get it. We were at the site where a US President was assassinated. All the other tourists taking pictures there seemed to get that. Heck, I was standing on the freakin’ grassy knoll as I took their photo! But they wanted a pic of them with some other building. One that, by the way, was covered in scaffolding on the side facing us, partially blocked by a memorial to JFK, and, as I mentioned earlier, a full block away. If they really wanted a pic with that random building, there were much better vantage points available.
Afterwards, they returned the favor by taking the photo of me above. I made sure to emphasize that I did want the Xs in the road in my photo.
I’m still kicking myself for not asking why they wanted a pic with that building. I looked it up later and it turns out it is the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History and Culture. So that…explains absolutely nothing. Part of me wonders if they were confused and thought it was the book depository…??? Oh well. I guess for some people, events at Dealey Plaza resulted in years of analysis and research about different conspiracy theories, but for as for me, I’m destined to spend a lifetime wondering why some random couple wanted photo with a random building.
Once I finished up, I returned to my car, and once again made the right turn on to Elm Street and drove along the path that Kennedy took during his assassination. This time, as I was actually cognizant of where I was, I made sure to take it all in and felt a bit of the eeriness of being in the place where something happened.
All in all, if you possess even modicum of interest in Presidential history, visiting Dealey Plaza is a must. I would also begrudgingly concede the Sixth Floor Museum is also a must, due solely to the assassin’s location and the FBI model, although a single visit should be sufficient. Personally, I plan to stop by plaza itself anytime I visit Dallas in the future.