6th floor

On red lights, people stand on the X. Some take pictures of the widow permanently propped half open, some have their pictures taken on the spot grinning stupidly.

On Saturday we went to The 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. A museum dedicated to the assassination, presidency and legacy of JFK. The museum is in the old Texas Schoolbook Depository Building. Yup, that TSDB. The window Oswald shot from is in a corner; the area is behind Plexiglas and the "shooters perch" is set up exactly as it was on 11/22/63. From the next window over, looking down at the two "X"s painted in the street it looks like an easy shot for a scoped rifle. The view is eerie, both from the window and at street level, having seen it countless times in countless films and TV shows and specials.

At first it felt weird in a "crime scene" kind of way, but thinking about it, it's much more like a scene from a recurring dream you've had a thousand times and suddenly find yourself in while wide awake; only the cars are different and the trees are taller, nothing else seems to have changed.

We spent a good 3 hours looking around at the displays, all the time hearing in the background competing sound clips of Kennedy giving various speeches and press conferences, the music and 21-gun salutes at his funeral, and the almost constant sound of Walter Cronkite announcing that Kennedy had been shot and was confirmed dead. Good old Walt. He'll be there reporting that sad news hundreds of times a day for a many decades to come.

The museum gives adequate time to the conspiracy theories, and the debate whether JFK had time to accomplish enough to have been a great president, or inspired such great things in others afterwards that more of his legacy lies there.
On a side note, I added to my shot glass collection Saturday at the museum, the Hard Rock Cafe, and House of Blues, both nearby.