So - this left me free on a Friday evening in Dallas, TX. Everyone that I know here is otherwise preoccupied. I had to make my own fun!
I drove down to the city from Arlington -- fun to pass the signs for Texarkana (the birthplace of moi) ... it seems as if everyone is wanting to go there from the line of cars I saw going and coming...
My aim in going downtown was actually to see the book depository where JFK was shot at. In all the times I've been in Dallas I've not been able to get down to see the grassy knoll.
I paid my $5 for parking and my $15 for entry and recieved a set of headphones and recording of the tour and was ushered to the elevator going to the 6th floor. I climbed on with five other guests and we glided up to the 6th floor where the doors opened into a packed picture museum full of meandering tourists. The pictures were large boards placed on the walls and traced everything from the birth and life of JFK to the political climate of the nation at the time of JFK's assasination. There were the famous step by step photos of the assasination - from the first hit to the frame where Jackie was climbing over the back of the convertible. You rounded another corner and you were faced with a glassed off section which contained old cardboard book boxes (incidentally, they were labelled from a manufactured in Chicago, Illinois) stacked in the corners and framed around the corner windows where Oswald had shot from. Another aisle had a presentation of all kinds of camera which were owned by spectators along with the shot they got of the assasination and an explanation of where they were standing and who the photographers were.
Going up a flight of stairs to the 7th floor, there was a special presenation of photographs taken by the Dallas journalist photographer, Bob Jackson. Jackson is the one who took the famous photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot outside of the police station. There was a section with the JFK event and Jackson talking about what had happened. Jackson was actually following in the motorcade in a convertible with several other journalists and photographers. They really weren't able to see much until they turned corners and could see the president's car. When they were turning onto Houston by the grassy knoll, Jackson had actually taken a roll of film out of his camera, had placed it in a red envelope and was supposed to pass it to another guy who would take the film to the newspaper. As they were turning the corner and Jackson threw the envelope, the wind picked it up and the runner had to chase it a little. Jackson says that they were all kind of laughing about it when all of a sudden they heard a pop and then two more quick pops that sounded like gunfire. By this time, they had turned the corner and were in front of the book depository. Jackson looked up at the building at that point and, on the 5th floor, he saw two "black men" who were looking up to the window above them. At that window, on the 6th floor, Jackson could just then see the end of a rifle disappearing in the window.
All in all, I would say that the Jackson part was the most interesting part of the tour and that the rest was overcrowded and overrated and was not really worth the $15 (plus $5 parking) unless you just wanted to say that you had been there. I spent $20 and can now say I've been there!
Looking across to the book depository - count six floors up and thats where Oswald fired from.
Where the last car at the back is, is about where JFK's car was at.
Across the street, in the park at Dealey Plaza, there are two brass plates for the assasination. This second one depicts where things occurred.
The motorcade turned off of Houston on to Elm which is the street JFK was shot off of.
Here's the irony. The book depository is across the street from Dealey Plaza park, where this white pillar is. Right across from Dealey Plaza park is the county courthouse and the jail where Oswald ended up and was shot by. Kind of funny that they didn't have to take him far.
This is Dealey Plaza park looking towards the book depository.
So, as I was touring the book depository, I was thinking how it was kind of sick that people plan a day based on this horrific event. There were high school students meandering around and giggling and not even paying attention to things and you just think how they don't even really understand what had happened. No matter who he was or how there were people who didn't agree with some or any of his politics, etc, he was still a president and someone killed him and thats just a horrific, life-changing, nation-changing event. And now we pay $15 to relive it. Crazy!Since the Sixth Floor Museum closed at 6pm, I got back in my car and was about to start it up, when I looked across the DART tracks and saw a large old warehouse with "BODIES" written across it.
So, this is another exhibit that I've run into in a 100 different places that I've been and I've always been revolted by the thought and passed it by, but now, that it was 6pm, I decided to see if the Bodies exhibit was still open and, if so, what it was all about.
Another $22 later (good thing I got to just leave my car parked at the $5 lot instead of moving and paying again), and I was inside an touring exhibit that has been on a lot of people's radar for a while.
The whole idea of it has been a basic sticking point with me. They take bodies and peel the skin off and then put them in different shots so that people can see what the insides look like.
You enter the exhibit and they have this classical guitar music playing. Under any circumstances it would be beautiful and relaxing, but I must admit, it was a little creepy listening to it with human bodies splayed out. Some parts I didn't have problem with. There were actual organs that were kind of dried and displayed. It was okay just looking at the organs, even interesting. The heart, the brain, hands and bones. I found the knee and femur interesting as I got to visual mom's predicatment a little better.
You round and corner and you're greeted with a body... It was in the pose of someone playing soccer. The muscles were exposed and the nerves. The head was fully there, intact with lips and eyes. I think the eyes are what made it so wrong. I kept on thinking about that saying "the windows are the eyes to the soul". It just made it seems too alive to see the eyes. You could see it was a person.
It made me think of some freakish sci-fi book by Robin Cook or some other weird medical author. Made me envision these people who were killed just for "science" and for their bodies. There were probably about 10 bodies in total, the rest of the exhibit was just body parts in display.
There was a body that was displaying different implants like knees and hip and screws in the head. That was slightly interesting, but I kept on feeling the eyes as I looked at it and I just felt like I was peeping in on something I shouldn't be looking at.
Another body was cut into like three sections and showed body fat and where women gain body fat. It was this fully preserved body with the skin still on and the boobies just hanging there. The very front of the face was sliced off of this body so you couldn't see the features - it was just the body. You went around the back and there was a saggy, white butt. And then I looked up the back and I saw the head. It was a fully in-tact, back of the head, skin included. And then I saw the hair -- the hair that had been shaved off and was still evident in little stubs and I actually started to cry a little because it juat made me thing of Auschwitz and those people and I felt totally wrong for looking at someone's dead, naked body.
The back of the exhibit had this sign that said you might want to consider coming in because it had "fetus" and other exhibits. They said the babies (as I choose to call them) had resulted from natural death in the womb, etc. I figured I could handle that because I had grown up going to Chicago Science and Industry Museum and had viewed, a 100 times, the baby exhibit there. There were only about 5 babies in this exhibit. It wasn't bad as they were in liquid. I didn't like the teens that were standing around them laughing and saying they looked like "jelly beans" and other things. Totally disrespectful. I DID mind just before you leave the exhibit, they had two babies (age 24 and 32 weeks) in a case. They were just lying there, not in liquid, just lying there naked and cold. That was terribly sad.
I finally decided, after about 15 minutes, that I had had enough and that I had seen the exhibit and that now I could say with experience that I don't care to view people's bodies for education or fun or whatever people chose to visit them for.
I walked back to the car and took off back for good old Arlington and a quick dinner - and bed. I have to get up to work on Saturday so its not a typical Friday night!
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