Day 2 we have booked a tour of Dallas. This time, by serendipity, we have secured an exclusive, private tour with Dallas’s preeminent guide, Rebecca of Discover Dallas Tours. We are to meet her on the steps of the Old Red, the stately courthouse now a museum and visitor centre opposite Dealey Plaza. As we stand there in the bright, warm morning light, we recognise that notorious building on the corner - the Texas Schoolbook Depository. And there, in an upstairs window, is a clear marker showing that it was from there, right there, that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
It seems very immediate. I am not ready for this awful landmark to be right there in front of me. It casts a shadow over the day.
When Rebecca pulls up in her Lexus 4WD, the day takes a dazzling turn. Rebecca is a strong, solid, vivacious, informed and engaging personality and for the next five hours we are her willing captives, her students and her new friends.
She walks us over to the place where it all happened and explains the Xs on the road, where the first bullet hit and the second. She shows us the grassy knoll and places where people stood and watched and filmed and heard on that dreadful day, and where the convoy rushed off to the hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead
A stray Chinese tourist interrupts Rebecca in her descriptions asking a question about the X on the road. Rebecca gives him a curt answer and when he tries to ask more, she will only say she is on a private tour. We are hers and she is ours. Exclusively. Phew.
A few minutes later she fends off assassination conspiracy theorists who approach us as they are setting up their display. You are not legal, she snaps at them, steering us well away. They undermine the right and honest portrayals of history and they abuse copyrights, she explains. She points to an African American guy who is handing out brochures by Dealey Plaza and pats him on the arm as we pass by. He, on the other hand, is not exactly legal in the tour business but he is a good guy, she says. Ah, the inner politics of the tour world.
She takes us to the Kennedy cenotaph behind Big Red. It was commissioned of architect Philip Johnson, he of the amazing Glass House in Connecticut, by Jackie Kennedy. Rebecca says Jackie loved it. We hate it. Great, impersonal square of white walls and inside, a black marble slab surrounded by a shallow dry gutter.
Oh, no, those Chinese tourists are standing on top of the cenotaph and posing for photos. Rebecca is very upset. It is a shrine. It is consecrated ground. I wave to the tourists and gesture that they should step down. They get the message. With Rebecca I approach them and she tries to explain. They don’t speak English.
Privately, I am thinking that it is a pretty tough call to expect foreign visitors to get the nuances of this ugly and inept shrine. What was Jackie thinking?
We pile into Rebecca’s Lexus and for the next few hours we are driven all over and around Dallas with Rebecca giving us torrents of
The arts district is just stunning.
The new theatre complex, a silver box which holds the treasures of the stage. Inspired. The opera house. The symphony orchestra’s new digs. All brand new, squillion-dollar structures with adjacent sculpture terrace. Philanthropy rules. Dallas is rich, says Rebecca. It is so rich. It is growing, growing. The population is soaring and the city is expanding. It is fourth largest city in the USA when combined in the metro area with Fort Worth, she enthuses. She loves her city to bits and her passion is infectious.
She also puts the business of showing visitors
Picking up on my love for the theatre, she delivers us to a theatre designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is still in use and it still looks sleek and cutting edge. Oh, yes, just another little Dallas treasure. The theatre company is having a garage sale of its props department. Thrones and statues and all sorts of old bits of set
We see millionaire mansions. Oh, my. Opulence, much? Over the top? Dallas rich are absurdly rich. Their wealth does not necessarily buy good taste. Then again, some are graceful replicas of English and European mansions. Many of them are beautifully adorned with pumpkins and lavish decorations for Autumn. Of course, they have staff
She shows us also where the poor used to live and how the new bridge brings gentrification to this old downmarket part of this great city. The new bridge is gorgeous. And people's parks have been created beneath it - just as they have been created in the city and complemented with the food truck fad.
Beautification, urban sculpture, a wealth of commissions for artists is another feature of the modern Dallas. Rebecca loves so many of the public art works and so do I. Wildly varied from zany sculpted people climbing perilously up the side of buildings to austere kinetic works. And, the
Rebecca rounds up our adventures at the Dallas Farmers’ Market where we have a late lunch at the new food hall. Vietnamese cold noodles for me.
We leave our tour guide with hugs and a strong feeling of warmth for her beloved city.
She drops us at the Texas School Book Depository where we wish to make the Sixth Floor Museum tour. So do a million other people. We join a snake queue to buy tickets. It is not quick. There is another snaked queue of people who have bought tickets. And, eventually, when we get our tickets, we find another massive waiting queue winding right around the outside of the building where it is rather hot. The ticketing girls assure everyone that they will be admitted within half an hour and so we are. Photographs are absolutely prohibited, they warn. Everyone is equipped with headsets which give an extensive narration on the details of the history from the spirit of the Swinging 60s through the 1960s presidential election campaigns through to the fateful day. The commentary is unhurried and it relates to walls of photos and written accounts. People are expected to read as they listen. I wonder at the wisdom of this. There are too many people in the space and they are clogged all over the place. Bruce and I are well informed on most of this so we find out how to jump our headsets and leapfrog some of the jams. And there we find ourselves, standing beside that window… looking down on the road where the motorcade drove. And, even though the trees outside have grown, it is clear that Kennedy was an easy mark. It is closer than ever it looked in any of the films and documentaries we have seen over the years.
It is eerie and profoundly sad.
And we see tourists down there playing chicken in the traffic to stand for photos on the X which marks the spot in the middle of the road where the first shot hit Kennedy.
What can one say?
Exhausted by this fantastic day, we have room service again in our divine room and plan our next day.
Back into Dallas we drive for a culture fest. Firstly we join families and grackles in the new people’s park in the centre of the Dallas highways in the museum district. It’s a charming park set up with tables and chairs so that people can sit and eat from the long rank of food trucks. Oh yes, food trucks are the big culture here, too.
We find a pleasant little table in the shade of a tree. I have a quesadilla of Maine lobster. Bruce has pork, beef and chicken tacos from a Mexican truck. It’s OK food. It is food truck food. I am not a devotee of this cult.
The fabulous art museum wherein Rebecca had recommended seeing the Wendy and Emery Reves collection has free entry. This is uncommon in the US. One only pays for special shows.
It is a magnificent, vast, airy empire of a museum and the Reves collection is its diamond - the best part of a Riviera chateau transplanted into specially-designed replica rooms.
Living room, library, bedroom...as if their occupants had just stepped out for a moment.
Bruce’s heaven is down the road at the Perot Science Museum - another impressive new work of prestigious architecture, this one with a light carbon footprint and much external exquisite use of great stone slabs and soft native grasses. We explore the world of outer space and the world of microbes. We see fantastic fossils and fascinating extrapolations on wildlife. We see magnificent minerals from the Smithsonian - gob-smacking great jewels. The Hope Diamond was not there. The Perot is called Perot because Ross Perot initiated the museum and footed the bill for most of it. Of course, Dallas being Dallas, other philanthropists chipped in and the vast place is set to expand, all with private money.
We’ve walked a good 10,000 steps and climbed a zillion stairs by the time we get back to the Crowne - to find the bathroom floor is flooded again. The loo is an odd-looking clear black water puddle.
Expletive!
This is worse.
Two maintenance men attend this time, bringing a huge, loud pipe vacuuming machine. Do we want to change rooms? Oh, dammit. We are entrenched here. If they can’t get it sorted, yes, we will have to move. Let’s see how they go. We trot down the hallways to use the public rest rooms again. The men work furiously. Nice men. The noisy machine sends out a chemical smell. They think the earlier workman worked on the wrong pipe. There is much testing of pipes downstairs, banging and listening, two-way radios, sucking, pumping, gurgling… It is not looking good. I ask the housekeepers in the hall if the room next door is vacant, perhaps we could just open the connecting door and use its bathroom. It is occupied. Sigh. Moving rooms will be a monster operation.
Then the men say it is fixed. They send in the housekeeping girl to buff the bathroom up again. The room is a bit stinky. I spray madly. We have lost several hours. For the second time. Bruce is sure the hotel will make it up to us one way or another. Maybe comp us a night or a meal. It’s the Crowne.
Sad to say, next morning when I check us out, there is not so much as an apology for the inconvenience. I am extremely surprised. I comment to the receptionist that I thought they may have made a gesture. Sorry about that, she says without a hint of regret. And I am dismissed. Oh, Crowne.
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