John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Significant, often traumatic, events mark our place in the historical timeline of life in this country.  We love to play the memory game, "I remember exactly where I was the day--Lennon or Elvis died, the spaceship Challenger exploded,  9/11(all day),  Bobby Kennedy/Martin Luther King was shot, and especially the assassination of JFK." 

JFK's death was a seismic event in the lives in this country.  My husband and I were high up in the Rockies in Vail, Colorado at a time when Vail had no radio or TV reception.  A car, passing by on the highway, stopped at the Inn where we were living and told us,  "President Kennedy has been shot!"  Nothing else was known at that moment but speculation and dread raced through the small town with unbelievable speed. 

Who? Why? How serious was this?  At that time it was the middle of the Cold War and very soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis so a huge amount of fear centered on the Russians and a possible attack.  It took only a few minutes for us to pack and drive the 100 miles necessary to get TV reception enough to follow the horrifying events of that weekend.



Last month, before I left the Ft. Worth and Dallas area,  I wanted to make one stop that I had missed all these many years--Dealey Plaza and the School Book Depository.

JFK and Jackie's first stop in Texas was Ft. Worth where the reception was huge.  

There was a time before bullet-proof windows were on the presidential limo, before all the barricades, before bullet-proof glass shields were part of the podiums,  before the secret service stood between the president and his admirers--but all innocence ended that day.

Ft. Worth recently dedicated this small plaza to the memory of that remarkable visit to their city.  JFK stayed his last night in the hotel to the left across the street from this little memorial.

 

 The plaza memorializes a warm and welcoming city embracing a young, energetic president and his lovely wife.

 
Yet, just a few short hours after this photo was taken there would be bloodstains on Jackie's suit and the president would be gone.  

Next stop was downtown Dallas.....

And the Schoolbook Depository.  There is a museum on the top floor with photos and videos that take one through the weekend--a step at a time.



Once again, no photos were allowed inside the museum but there wasn't much to see.  The spot that Lee Harvey Oswald stood was roped off and staged just as it had been that day.  Boxes were stacked high behind where Oswald  stood at those two windows on the far end of the top floor. If someone had walked into the room at that moment they would not have seen Oswald standing there with a rifle in his hand. The boxes would have shielded him.  I stood at the next window over and tried to imagine firing a rifle at rapid speed at a motor vehicle passing by six floors below.



Trees would have been in the way until the car reached the spot where those three people are standing.



There are two X's in the street--where two bullets found their mark.  And the Grassy Knoll is in the photo above showing the vantage point from the opposite direction.

 

"X" marks the spot where the first bullet struck.  Look directly below the lamppost in the center of the photo.
Was Oswald the only assassin?  I am amazed at his marksmanship if he was.  
And if so, what was his motive?  Surely he could surmise that he would be hunted down if not killed on the spot.  And If it was a political killing then why didn't he leave behind some statement or even hint of his extreme viewpoint?  Was he a radical Communist? Not that I can tell.  If he was crazy then why wasn't that obvious at a much earlier time?  And if he was a paid assassin then where, and from whom, was the money?

 

  

  

"On November 22, 1963, the building gained national notoriety when Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy from a sixth floor window as the presidential motorcade passed the site."--Even the Historical Marker people are skeptical.

Am I a 'Conspiracy Theorist'?  I wasn't until I walked through the Depository and saw all the displays purporting to show Oswald as the only gunman.  Now I have questions without answers. I don't intend to start reading any of the hundreds of books on the subject because I don't think there will ever be a definitive answer to 'Who killed JFK?"
But I will never forget where I was on the day I heard the report, "The President's been shot!"

Ft. Worth Stockyards

What is a trip to Ft Worth without a visit to the stockyards?  Located in the very heart of Ft Worth this historic area is a reminder of why this city is affectionately known as Cowtown.
















 

The packing houses are now closed and the stock pens are replaced with  restaurants,  gift and souvenir shops.


The train station runs tours for sightseers--not stock cars for the slaughter houses.  But twice daily a herd of a dozen longhorn steers are marched down the street  so all us city slickers will get a feel for what it must have been like when cattle ruled.



Somehow I think these 12 fat lazy well-groomed bovines bear little resemblance to the dusty herds of thousands of animals that thundered down this street a hundred years ago.

I wish I could convey the sounds--hooves on the brick road, the jangle of tack, an occasional long low moo,  the clicking of tongues as the cowboys urged the indolent beasts down the street.  Somehow it all seemed unusually solemn and serious.  

The last of the horses and cattle disappeared up the ramp and into the temporary holding pen.  But in just a few hours they will make the march again--every day, rain or shine.  If I were a cow I think that would be a pretty good gig--it sure beats the slaughterhouse.

Aunt Louise and I strolled around for a while listening to cowboy songs on the speakers as we shopped.

We stopped for lunch and had one of those truly guilty pleasures--

FRIED PICKLES!  Ohh! the clogged arteries.

The picture taking business wasn't that brisk.




I remember back in 1981sitting in the Astrodome with my husband when Nolan Ryan pitched one of his no hitters against the Dodgers.  I must say, that was an incredibly exciting game.

  

This is a chair that only a Texan could love.

 

 

 

 

The weather was starting to show signs that winter was close and the last thing I needed was to get into a bad winter storm.  So I knew it was time to start up the engine and head further south.

 I am now back in Tucson where I will headquarter for the next two months but I will be posting a few more on Texas. 

Wounded Veterans in St John USVI

The number one job description for a mother is to become obnoxious in bragging on her kids. I take my job seriously and I can assure you, I have good reason.  No kids are more brilliant, more generous, more loving, more interesting, more industrious, nor better-looking than my three.

Tom, the youngest, is a twenty-year veteran of the Coast Guard. He and his wonderful wife, Amy, live on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands and own and operate a charter boat called Sadie Sea.

Last month I received the following email from Tom....

Hi Mom...Did you hear Obama's Veterans Day speech? If not check it out at the following link.  Half of his speech is about Taylor Morris. Taylor and his girlfriend are part of the group of 24 we sponsored down here and I spent all week with him. He was supposed to be at the White House for Obama's speech and instead came down here. When Obama mentions Taylor could not make it because he was kayaking, that's because he was with us.   Open the attachment and you will see a pic of Taylor and on the second link you will see a group pic of everyone and Taylor is in the red shirt to the left being supported by his girlfriend.

(I challenge you to look at the following picture while listening to Obama's speech and not be moved to tears. What a truly brave young man--his mother must be so very, very proud of him.

2012 President's Veterans Day Address "We Take Care of Our Own"

And here is the VI newspaper report on the event.

News Article from the "St John Tradewinds News"

Tom works hard to raise money for this group of wounded veterans and he is rightly proud of the response this activity has received. If any of my readers would like to donate to this group you may contact Tom at  the following email address and he will tell you how:

sadieseacharters@gmail.com

And should you get to St. John anytime soon, please look Tom Larson up (he's easy to find) and give him a hug (or handshake if you're a guy) from his Mom. 

Glen Rose, Tx

When we were kids my sisters and I would sometimes travel to Fort Worth to spend  a good bit of the summer with Aunt Louise.   Those holidays were always an adventure and one fun activity was a trip to Glen Rose on a hot summer day to swim in the Paluxy River.

The river is shallow during the summer and there are lots of places we could wade across on the smooth hard stones of the riverbed.  And in those stones we would see footprints--of dinosaurs!  Great leviathans of all descriptions walked in that same river millions of years before us. 

But those footprints are pretty much gone now.  Some have eroded away but many were chiseled out and moved to other places like the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.

And some like the one above have been removed by the locals.  This one was reseated in the base of the bandstand in front of the Glen Rose courthouse.  There is a plaque next to the stone that reads...

"This footprint, assigned the ... name Eubrontes Glenrosenis, was originally excavated in 1933 from the main track layer in the Paluxy riverbed in what is now Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glen Rose.....The footprint is that of a three-toed, bipedal, meat-eating dinosaur...whose skeletal remains are found mostly in Texas and Oklahoma....Dinosaur Valley State Park boasts the ancient shoreline of a 113-million-year-old sea and is renowned for some of the best preserved dinosaur footprints in the world."

  Dinosaur Valley State Park educates everyone on that prehistoric era and, even though any tracks are now hard to find,  we can imagine what those creatures must have looked like as they roamed here over 100 million years ago.

I am of two minds on the removal of the tracks.  If they were left in the river they would eventually disappear due to erosion, or vandalism, or from kids like us walking on them. Certainly, by moving the prints to a museum, more people have a chance to see them plus they will be preserved for many more years.  However, can't the same be said about so many ancient artifacts?  It truly bothered me to see a relic from the lost city of Pompeii on display in an art museum in Florida.  That didn't seem right.  Much of the aura of these windows-into-the-past lies in the surroundings where they are found.  And I was very disappointed when those great dinosaur footprints were no longer in that cool, clear riverbed.

Parked along the river I met this couple traveling in an RV much like mine.  They were also remembering and lamenting the demise of the river of long ago. We spent a 1/2 hour comparing rigs.  I have discovered that conversion van people are instantly friends.

Just outside of the town Aunt Louise and I came upon these abandoned buildings....

I love the old stone structures from the early settlements but so many are being deserted, destroyed and dismantled to make room for new strip shopping centers or wider highways.

As I got up close to explore these structures I discovered that many of the stones were petrified wood!

Great chunks of it!

I couldn't help but wonder-- where did all these pieces come from?  I found stones with fossils of shells in them, too, and kept expecting to find one with a dinosaur track as well.

But, I didn't.

 

The petrified wood looked so wood-like (?) I had to keep touching it to reassure myself that it was actually rock hard.
    

 

Then next I wondered why it was all still here and not in someone's rock garden--alongside stepping stones with dinosaur tracks in them.
  

  There is no doubt--these buildings have been abandoned for years (note the tree growing on the inside)....Yet, no one has carried off the stone wood.  Maybe I'll give the Smithsonian a call.

 

It was a beauty, just sitting on that wall waiting for me to take its picture.

In the face of all the contradictory evidence that has been unearthed near here we spied this business....

and though the sign indicated they were open, there was no evidence of customers anywhere.

 

 Even Pat Robertson no longer says the earth is only 6000 years old.

Are the creationists going the same way as the Flat-Earth-Society?