A Bad Day in Dallas

Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas is a haunted place.

Not haunted in the traditional sense--you won't see a phantom limo speeding past the Book Depository Building, nor a shape in the sixth-floor window holding an Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. But the atmosphere of the place--the weight of the history and sorrow and dreams that died that November afternoon in 1963--is oppressive.

This atmosphere isn't helped a bit by the men standing on each corner of the intersection, hawking commemorative magazines and replica newspapers like they're standing outside a sports stadium selling programs to fans--not at the site of one of the most famous and most public murders in history. And when the men see someone who is obviously a tourist--like, say, a tall, lanky guy with a camera around his neck--they descend like pidgeons on bread.

The area doesn't look that much different than what we've all seen in numerous documetaries, news programs or the infamous "Zapruder Film" (you know, the one that shows JFK's head exploding like a meat-filled balloon). There's the Book Depository Building, which now has a museum on the sixth floor and a plaque that lists Lee Harvey Oswald as the "alleged" assassin (somebody helpfully underlines the word "allegedly with chalk). There's the "grassy knoll," from which a second assassin could have taken a shot at the president. And, in the middle of the road, there's a permanent metal "x" where the third, highly fatal bullet struck the president.

Where that third bullet came from is, to this day, a matter of conjecture.

While visiting the site in 2002 with my hosts, Junebug and Praxx, and taking many photos of downtoan Dallas, Praxx told me about a theory he'd read. It goes something like this (at least as I recall it):

Oswald did indeed fire at the president from the Book Depository building, but only got off two shots--one than landed behind the limo carrying JFK, Jackie and Texas governor John Connally, shattering on the pavement and spraying fragments; and one that hit Kennedy in the back of his neck, passing through (and, in the process, doing more than enough damage to kill him without a third shot being fired) and subsequently hitting Connally, even though the bullet itself looked like it had just come straight out of the box (and hence has since been labeled "the magic bullet").

And the third bullet? The one commemorated by the metal "x" in the middle of the road? Where'd that bullet come from?

Well. See. Here's the thing. When the Secret Service guys hear the two shots and realize that the president has been hit, the limo speeds up while they draw their guns. And one of those guns discharges accidentally--right into the president's head. (Some variant accounts try to pin this on the driver, though both of his hands were right where they should have been--on the steering wheel.)

This, to my mind, makes way too much sense. Think about it: This would account not only for the odd way Kennedy's head reacts to that last shot, snapping back instead of forward (which has led to the "second shooter on the grassy knoll" theories), but also for the alleged coverup, which wasn't designed to hide the identity of the assassin (who was, in truth, Oswald), but to hide the fact that the Secret Service accidentally shot the president--not the kind of thing the government would want to publicize, even if Kennedy was already essentially dead due to the damage from Oswald's second shot. This theory also accounts for the missing evidence (unretouched autopsy photos, the remnants of the president's brain, etc.).

But this is, of course, only a theory--one of seemingly thousands swirling around the Kennedy assassination. And, when you get right down to it, none of us will ever know the truth. Oswald is dead, killed by Jack Ruby with remarkable ease on live TV. Ruby is dead, too. We'll never get to know what exactly happened, or why.

And does it matter, really? Knowing how and why wouldn't change the fact that it happened. Hell, I hadn't even been born yet when it happen (though Mom was three months pregnant with me, so I did technically exist). So why should I--or anybody else--care about what happened in Dallas 40 years ago this week?

Because the assassination of JFK and the lack of a satisfactory explanation for it peeled away another layer of innocence from the world, with many more events--Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, Iraq--lining up to do the same.