Saturday, August 18th
Our day started with a huge breakfast, unlike any that we have cooked on our little camp stove. Katie and Charla made pancakes, fried potatoes, and bacon. If you couldn’t tell by the Chick-Fil-A, we are back in the South!
After breakfast, we ventured downtown with Chris to visit Dealy Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum at the former Texas School Book Depository. While in our travels, we have both experienced some incredible museums, this one was outstanding for its ability to arouse both questions and emotions. As we exited the elevator on the sixth floor, we began our audio-guided tour with some background on the political and cultural climate of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, including some original movie posters, newspapers, and novels. After that, we toured through the sections on John F. Kennedy’s campaign, election, presidency, and Dallas tour and then arrived at the window where Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly sat as the motorcade rounded the hairpin turn from Elm Street, which was recreated with school book boxes. The rest of the museum included videos and displays about the world’s reactions to JFK’s death and his legacy as well as the investigations into the events of that day in November 1963—from evidence, the Zapruder film timeline, and further conjectures about possible conspiracy theories. The tour ended with a short film featuring Walter Cronkite, the famous voice of CBS news, that left the three of us pensive as we left the museum.
We planned to walk around Dealy Plaza a bit more, but a thunderstorm had set in for the night. The rain poured down as the National Weather Service repeatedly issued flash flood warnings for our area. Trying to work our way out of downtown was difficult, as all the traffic lights were out of order and many roads were impassable due to standing water. Dallas’s sprawling infrastructure and insufficient highway systems weren’t helping the matter either, but we somehow made it back to the apartment in time to grill up the rest of the tilapia in the rain, as well as enjoy corn and potatoes. We ended off the evening with a healthy dose of MarioKart 64, the go-kart driving game from the 90’s on Nintendo64. During college Chase and Chris spent the a significant portion of time playing all of the racetracks in “Versus” mode, so it was great to rekindle old rivalries and again speed towards the checkered flag.
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