411 Elm Street

 

Last Sunday the Mrs. decided to take us all out for sushi. But it couldn’t be any old sushi den. It had to be the hippest, trendiest sushi place in all of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. She is, after all, hooked into all the relevant Dallas Instagram pages and such. That’s just the way she rolls. The place she selected required days-ahead reservations, so we found ourselves heading south towards Dallas at 5 o’clock in the evening, sun still shining bright and high in the sky.

As we neared the city we saw this tower:

 

We’d been into the heart of Dallas two weeks earlier and the Mrs. remembered it vividly. “I need to know the story of that tower,” she said now.

So while seated and awaiting our sushi rolls I did some smart phone research. The tower struck me as an homage to Soviet-style architecture – klunky iron junk. But it does light up brightly in the night sky, with moving colorful images, as I remember from two weeks earlier. Turns out it’s called the Reunion Tower, and it was built in the late 70s, and it is an icon – but to the city of Dallas. It even appears every now and then in television shows, including, appropriately enough, that prime time soap opera from the early 80s, Dallas.

I also discovered the tower is 1,000 feet from the site of the JFK assassination.

Furthermore, a quick search revealed that Dealey Plaza was but two miles from the sushi restaurant in which we sat dining.

I announced an impromptu post-dinner destination. My wife would drive to Dealey Plaza, turn that left onto Elm Street, drive past the Texas School Book Depository, past the grassy knoll, and under the triple overpass. I’d be in the passenger seat snapping as many pics as I could on the cell phone. (I commissioned both girls to also take pics, but they were nursing engorged bellies in the backseat from overconsumption of raw fish.)

Here are the four best pictures I took:

 

1. The Texas School Book Depository

I didn’t catch it at first. We were driving along a canyon of somewhat rundown buildings when suddenly the street ahead opened up. My wife took a left (the Waze app was not clear on directions here) and stopped at a light. I glanced behind me and instantly and shockingly saw that famous façade: The TSBD! I had seen it hundreds of times in black-and-white photos, and here it was in color, framed by trees, behind us. I realized we took a wrong turn and were on Houston Street, so I told her to make a right onto Main. Elm would be parallel to our right.

I actually got shivers staring at this building, knowing the great transformative events that had taken place nearly a lifetime ago. It was very, very surreal.

 

2. The Grassy Knoll

I’d have to go back and check but I think there’s a wall in the center of the pic where the “Black Dog Man” – a darkened figure allegedly armed with a rifle – stood according to some conspiracy theorists. Zapruder would have been standing just beyond the right side of the picture when he filmed the assassination.

 

3. The Picket Fence

Witnesses say gunfire came from the direction of this fence, and some said they saw puffs of smoke. Another encountered a man on the other side who flashed some official credentials – the “Badge Man” – but who could have been an assassin himself. Afterwards investigators found cigarette butts and numerous footprints behind the fence.

 

4. The Triple Underpass

The famous underpass where the limo can be seen rocketing down at the tail end of the Zapruder film: Jackie Kennedy climbing on the trunk of the limo to retrieve parts of JFK’s head, a secret service agent hauling himself up on it to protect her, the vehicle accelerating from 10 mph to over 60 to get to nearby Parkland Hospital.

 

We went through the underpass and made a U-turn and drove back up, but couldn’t get onto Elm for a closer look with the way traffic is routed in the area (and which we were quite unfamiliar with). However I was satisfied with this initial run. A nice, neat, thrilling surprise.

I remember years back, a decade or so ago, wondering if I’d ever get the chance to walk through Dealey Plaza and see all the significant markers live and in person. Never would thought I’d be here now, but here I am. Still planning an extending visit here in the Fall, with more time to spend, walking about, and taking better photos. I’d also refresh my memory a bit better on the conspiracy angles, and if any information I’ve given here (most off the top of my head) is incorrect, it’s merely due to a rusty memory concerning my studies of that day in November 58 years ago.