the start

Flight QF7

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step; or, in my case, with being stepped on as I try to enter the check in area at the airport. I paused to give the culprit a very brief free character assessment and then get in the queue. I seemed to be the only person travelling to Dallas without at least two children and a mountain of luggage; oh happy day!

By some oversight at Qantas I still have access to the First Class Lounge so I make my way there asap after the usual shambles at security and fighting my way through the shopping centre obstacle course that stands between passengers and their planes. I have lunch in the lounge to avoid having lunch (disguised as dinner or breakfast) on the plane and while I’m eating I watch screaming children running around; happily they all run off to get on the flight to Los Angeles.

The flight is 15 hours; but feels like a mission to Mars; I keep thinking my watch has stopped and the flight information on the screen seems stuck on “time to arrival is 8 hours”. I read a whole book on my Kindle, while keeping an eye on the bloke behind me who is covered in tattoos and looks like he is on parole for stealing from passengers on planes (I try to surreptitiously frisk him while we’re waiting to disembark because I can’t find my comb; inevitably things turn ugly and I have to distract him by accusing his girlfriend of making a pass at me).

Flying into Dallas I see suburbs full of houses that make the biggest Sydney houses look like toolsheds; I’m sure that one of the houses had its own polo ground, or maybe they play croquet on a grander scale in Texas. The plane lands on time but it takes 15 minutes to find the key to open the door and for everyone to get their 40kgs of hand luggage down and block the aisle; then the children start screaming.

A quick 2km walk and I’m in the queue at immigration, which is at least 400m long and snakes back and forth half a dozen times across a hall the size of the space shuttle hanger. We all get to watch a jolly ‘welcome to the USA’ video; almost jolly the first time but after being in the line for 30 minutes I want to climb up and punch the smiling faces beaming out from 20 screens up and down the hall. As usual the immigration official looks treats me like the sole purpose of my visit is to install a Marxist dictatorship in place of the current administration. He finishes his interrogation by saying ‘welcome to the United States’ in exactly the same tone of voice that you’d use talking to someone who admitted that they’d just run over your dog. Then I line up for 10 minutes so that another official can stop picking his nose long enough to take my customs declaration form and confirm that I have no farm animals concealed about my person. The only bright spot in this whole procedure is that I see the guy who stole my comb being taking aside for special questioning.

On to the free shuttle bus (one couple got on with six suitcases; all full of cheap garish clothes if what they are wearing is any indication of their sartorial taste) to the rental car building which is about as big as Sydney airport; Hertz alone had 500 cars waiting for collection; mine was in the furthest parking bay. I’m now the proud owner for 13 days of a Chevrolet Impala, which steers like a poorly loaded boat and embodies everything that made the US automobile industry what it is today. But it is an anonymous colour and has a cavernous boot (would fit at least 4 bodies and that’s probably the principal design criteria in this part of the world). The satnav voice was exasperated before I’d even left the airport; I think she will be swearing at me tomorrow.

Dallas

My hotel room at the Hyatt Regency Dallas (currently undergoing renovations 7 days a week and therefore rooms can be had for a reasonable amount) overlooks, at a distance of about 500m, the building that used to be known as the Texas School Book Depository.

If you’re my age then there have been, in my mind at least, five “I can remember where I was when this happened” events; 9/11 World Trade Centre; London Tube bombings (more memorable for me because I was in London that day); Princess Di finding out that driving in Paris isn’t always safe; first man landing on the moon; and President Kennedy being shot in Dallas at 12.30pm on 22 November 1963.

1963 was before 24 hour news and the internet; in those days the ABC news at 7pm was read by a man who looked as if he wasn’t sure he should be telling you all these things and if he did tell you that you probably wouldn’t understand what he’d said. News moved slower to the far corners of the world and I certainly lived in one of those corners. Friday 22 November 1963 at 12.30pm in Dallas was very early Saturday morning in Australia and all right thinking people in Australia in those days were asleep in their beds and dreaming of how wonderful or awful Robert Menzies was (depending on your political viewpoint). [younger readers should note that Mr Menzies was prime minister of Australia forever from the late 1940’s to the middle 1960’s; the only thing that changed in all that time was that his eyebrows got bigger]

At this time my father’s parents were staying with us and this was always a source of pleasure for the grandsons because grandma could cook anything and would happily accommodate three different dinner requests from the three grandsons; and grandpa was a world champion at making things out of bits and pieces that others considered to be rubbish and watching him in the shed was like watching a magician; we’d never guess what something was going to turn out to be until the last piece had been attached. 

Grandpa had been to the post office (open every Saturday morning in those days) and came back with the news that President Kennedy had been shot and killed. We usually had a radio on in the morning but for some reason hadn’t that morning; the newspapers didn’t arrive from Sydney until the afternoon. So we all looked at each other in amazement that such a thing could happen and then waited for the evening news to tell us about it. There were no live crosses to a reporter on the spot in those days; the newsreader held a bit of paper in front of him and read what was written on it; when he’d finished he put down that piece of paper and picked up another one and always had just the right number of pieces of paper to take 30 minutes to read; if we were lucky there might be a blurry photo of something pertinent to accompany the reading.

Dallas police quickly arrested Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of President Kennedy and also for having a very silly triple name. In 1963 killing the President was not a Federal offence (surprisingly as several previous presidents had been assassinated) , so Oswald remained in the hands of the Dallas police; who in an unrivalled feat of law enforcement managed to allow him to be shot dead, by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, in a police station in front of fifty news reporters.

Oswald worked at the Texas School Book Depository; his rifle was found at a window on the 6^th floor. There has been considerable and continuing controversy about whether Oswald acted alone; and whether Oswald didn't do it and was killed to cover up a conspiracy by the Russians, Cubans, Mafia, right wing nutters, left wing nutters; or some or all of the above.

So with that background I couldn’t be in Dallas without going to the 6^th Floor Museum to see the exact spot where Oswald allegedly crouched and, in an extraordinary feat of marksmanship, shot President Kennedy. Unfortunately no photographs are allowed inside the museum. You also can’t bring firearms into the museum; presumably to stop visitors taking shots out the window at the traffic below to try to reproduce the fatal shots from 1963. I thought that would have been an added attraction that could have commanded a significant premium on the current admission price of $13.50. Hopefully this will happen by the time you visit.