Sa does Dallas

We have a few days here at the Crowne Plaza where we've been assigned a gorgeous airy king suite. First day is a housekeeping day, reassembling luggage, posting things back to Australia, doing laundry, writing…chores needed on a six-month road trip.

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

by gunshot and where his killer later also would be pronounced dead by gunshot.

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

insights.

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

the city above the needs of the local people - that is, in terms of traffic. I can’t believe it when she slows the car to a crawl on busy overpasses and seems impervious to tooting drivers as she points out views and vistas and landmarks.

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

are up for grabs.

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

to do it all, says Rebecca. Professional arrangers come in with special potplants as well as pumpkins. One immense Tudoresque mansion has me intrigued. Who owns this, I ask. Rebecca does not know, but only for a couple of minutes. She pulls out her phone, pulls up the house address and then, heaven help me, the name and tax returns of the inhabitant. A resourceful, clever

woman is our Rebecca. We pat ourselves on the back for finding her.

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

jewel in the city's public arts crown, the cowboy cattle roundup - a mob of Texas long-horns galloping over and down a hill, across a watercourse and up to the street. Life-sized bronzes, complete with cowboys on horses. Yep. Too big to photograph, this one takes the breath clean away.

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.

Not only a wonderful collection of paintings and decorative art but a window into another time and a luscious expatriate lifestyle. Winston Churchill was one of the Reve’s closest friends and he stayed often with them. The museum has devoted a special room to his typewritten letters to them, his cigars, his paints and his paintings. It is an intimate insight. I’m in seventh heaven.

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 happened on the day we arrived. We'd no sooner unpacked than I noticed the bathroom was filling up with odd, flakey water. I called the desk and they rushed a maintenance man up. It took him a while, and not before the whole bathroom had been flooded, but he sorted it out housekeeping buffed up the room - and we relaxed for our Dallas adventure.

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.

Oh, that heartrending American Civil War.

And here we are, in the heart of Civil War territory.

Staying in the gorgeous Crowne Plaza Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, we can look out the windows to one of the great transportation corridors of the War, the James River.

It is the most exquisite, rocky and interesting river running through lovely Richmond. It has little islands and many rocks and its has rushing rapids and calm fishing spots. But here near downtown Richmond, it is not navigable. Further down, it enabled the Union army to move men and war material to places near Richmond throughout the war. I have been learning steadily about this great and terrible American war when the country was divided between north and south, Union and Confederate. Fellow countrymen slaughtered each other in the most vicious and systematic way in the favour of or opposed to slavery while the Confederate South sought recognition of its independence by Britain and France.

There is immense scholarship on this subject. Fortunately for me, Bruce is a respected expert and is my guide and we have been exploring and re-exploring some of the significant sites of the war. Richmond is one of the important places - and this lovely James river below us.

Great stonework stumps of old bridges jut out of the water in places, relics of the war.

And, right out the window we can see the Tredegar Iron Works where munitions for the South were manufactured throughout the war. It is now a Civil War museum and, despite the heat which in itself could probably melt the odd bit of iron, we walk down to visit and to learn.

The setting now is serene and lovely. The old canal area has been restored providing a scenic walk beside its shallow brown waters which dart with little fish. There’s a grassy island park where Richmonders play and have festivals. Beside the river, here are kayak rentals and, on little sandy river strands, children are playing. A couple of fisherman are perched on rocks. Approaching the museum entrance, a gaggle of young people are intently looking at their phones. Ah. Pokemon. What a strangely pervasive cult this has become.

The museum is really quiet. Apart from the Park Rangers who run it, there is only one other person. It is free admission. We are welcomed and advised to head for the top floor to see the videos.

We sit in a broad, dark corridor in front of a long wall where images are illuminated one at a time according to a string of narratives. A child’s voice tells of how the war impacted play and family. A woman tells of nursing the wounded and dying. Another woman tells of the excitement of battles around the town, of how the fire and fury of the distant conflicts looked like fireworks. Another tells of fire itself which was to consume much of Richmond toward the end of the conflict.

It is a compelling exhibit.

We walk through the big, airy showcases of Civil War relics - uniforms, doctors’s kits, canteens, muskets, and journals. The United States Colored Troops are honoured - a strong force by all accounts. There are mannequins wearing Richmond ladies’ fashions of the day, too. It is a rounded picture. Then we take our places in the screening room for a superb documentary on the unfolding of the war. Of course it brings me to tears.

We are sitting right in the Patterns building of Tredegar, right where the moulds for the weapons were made. Downstairs we see the huge cannons which horses towed across the country. We see the different ammunition they fired, so very, very cruel, able to mow down lines of men in one great boom.

This was a very close-fought war. It was largely fought on foot.

There are maps which show have much of the country the boys traversed. Incredible distances, marching to the beat of the drum, moving in vast numbers as pawns in a lethal game of strategy directed by the famous Civil War generals, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, Jubal Early, Ambrose Burnside, James Longstreet, A. P. Hill.

Those southern boys had the longest treks, on occasions short of food, barefooted, and in extreme haste. We already had visited the famous Maryland site of Antietam where 23,000 young American men were casualties in just twelve hours of fighting. Incredible September 17, 1862. The bloodiest day in American history.

It is a beautiful place. Lush undulating Maryland countryside. There’s a sophisticated Visitor Center and we pile in to see a documentary. The rangers are uncharacteristically lackadaisical and they don’t tell us about a guide speaking on the conflict right in front of the windows which show the battlefields and farmhouses of Antietam. We catch the tail end by luck. Stories of the suffering of the local farm families as well as the soldiers.

We go out and gaze upon the neatly-mown fields and the crisp, white farm houses. It is a deceptively lyrical pastoral scene. Mind’s eye conjures up the bloody clamour of battle. Oh, my. It is so hot.

We take the car and drive the well-marked route, down lines of monuments, seeing stone generals gazing into infinity across the fields.

There were encampments here, advances there, generals moving their pawns across the board, messengers riding between the troops and the generals, messengers relaying orders, bringing news of enemy movements.

Corn is still grown as it was then. Confederate boys approached stealthily through a tall cornfield to surprise their enemy. But, caught in the sunlight, their bayonets glinted above the corn. They were spotted. They were mown down along with the corn by quickly deployed artillery firing canister.

Battles raged all over the landscape. In the woods, around the creek, in

the fields and rises, around the farms. Thousands upon thousands of men. They killed with cannons or their bare hands. Knives and bayonets were used in hand-to-hand fighting as well as the rows of muskets. Thousands. They died in incomprehensible thousands. Some so young. Tired and hungry and afraid. How many called for their mothers?

We go to the saddest place of them all.

Sunken Road. The Bloody Lane.

Here, a clever strategy backfired and the boys seemingly hidden in this sunken road died one atop the other, in layers. They were slaughtered like sheep in a sheep pen.

Today the trench is well-mown and well-trodden. There’s a big, solid memorial.

It seems so serene. The air is so fresh and sweet-smelling. Birds. Crickets.

And yet...

The boys were just mown down.

McClellan was the Union General. Lee the Confederate. Burnside also of the Union. We see Burnside’s Bridge, a stronghold attempting to hold the North at bay. Beside it stands an old sycamore tree which is the only living witness to that conflict. I had taken note of its existence at the Antietam documentary and was keen to find it. It seemed very special to me. The Antietam rangers were not a bit helpful. Odd. One man ringed a spot on the map but that ring turned out to be the whole bridge area. It was a really hot day and already we had hoofed around battle field sites. No tree bore any historic marker.

We looked at possible elderly trees all around and were feeling hot and frustrated. So I asked dear Dr Google who informed me it was right beside Burnside’s Bridge. And there it was, a big old raggedy thing. The bridge is undergoing renovations. We gaze down upon it from a viewing area above, wilting somewhat in the heat. It was not this hot on the day they fought here; one mercy, if one could call anything a mercy in that terrible war.

There was Lincoln back in Washington, appalled at what was going on, seeking only peace and resolution.

But the war had to play out. He sent directives. For the most part, his generals did as he bade, but much to the President’s disappointment, McClellan moved so slowly and cautiously.

Here in Virginia, we move around forever in the spell of that war. There are so many scenes of conflict. It is hard to comprehend the scale, especially considering that everything was done on foot, except for the transport of supplies which was sometimes done by train or river, but more often by horse and cart. Those hundreds of thousands of soldiers and the many animals needed a lot of food and water. They did not always have it, especially the Confederates. They often were hungry. Sometimes bare-footed.

We pass Sailors’ Creek, another terrible war site. We are en route to Appomattox following the line of retreat of Lee from Richmond. Here in April, 1865, Robert E. Lee with his brave and exhausted army of Northern Virginia, was finally to surrender to General Grant with his by then larger and better equipped Army of the Potomac.

Lee had been outmanoeuvred. Weather and luck were against him. His supply train was intercepted. His boys were starving. Paths of retreat were blocked.

As we arrive at Appomattox, a Park Ranger is beginning a guided tour. We latch on with alacrity. What luck. This man, Albert, is one of this world’s great story-tellers. We sit under a shady tree as he begins the description, pointing to this grove of trees here where battalions camped and this rise in the land where soldiers were masked from view.

He paints pictures of the protagonists,

of Lee and Grant, and of the troops converging from here and there. Of the weather and the clothes and the cannons and the trains.

He colours that last day with thumbnail accounts of of individual soldiers - the one who came from Appomattox and did not have far to go home, the one who had fought the entirety of the war only to die on the last day here. His descriptions are so vivid that tears well in my eyes.

He describes the desperation as circumstances closed on the Confederates and how an end to fighting was called as messages were carried to and fro between Lee and Grant.

The Generals met in the house of Wilmer

McLean adjacent to the Appomattox Court House.

Lee was a handsome man. I have seen so many images of him in my time in the South. He is still considered a hero for, indeed, he was a particularly brilliant and gracious man by all accounts. And he dressed in a new uniform for his surrender, giving this sad piece of history all the dignity he could afford it. Grant, on the other hand, had

quickly ridden miles over muddy spring roads to attend the ceremony, and arrived with his boots and field uniform splattered with mud.

After the signing, Grant ordered his Union boys to create a guard of honour and for the rest of that long, sad day, the Confederate units, one after another, filed down that guard of honour.

Union men shared rations with the starving Confederates.

We stand with our ranger on that path where the soldiers stood. A few unexpected drops of rain fall like a teardrops.

Lee sought that his boys did not disperse in humiliated defeat but that their travels and travails be respected. He organised that certificates be printed for those boys retreating to the south. They were entitled to free travel where possible. A printing press procured by Grant churned out thousands of these papers.

And it was over.

But never forgotten. It was a turning point in American history and in the country’s sense of identity. It was to spell an end to that shame of slavery.

Lincoln, who long had yearned for this outcome and had preached grace and civility to all his generals, was to be assassinated only two weeks later.

Everyone still mourns him and wonders how much better things might have been had he lived.