50th Hits Close To Home

This post originally appeared in November 2013.

I am no different from many other bloggers in that you will see a variety of posts from me this month on the topic of the Kennedy assassination. And why not? Dramatic, compelling, mysterious, with significant political and historical ramifications - it pushes all my History Nerd buttons.

I also have a couple of extra buttons on this topic. I am a native Texan. Dallas is my hometown. I grew up in Oak Cliff, not far from many of the key events that unfolded that day.

We were not living in Dallas in 1963. After bouncing around the Milwaukee Braves farm system for a few years (Boise ID, Lawton OK), my dad decided professional baseball was not going to feed a family of four. We moved to Denver, where my maternal grandmother lived, and Dad got a real job. I was five when Kennedy was killed. I remember being highly annoyed that boring grownup news shows were interrupting Captain Kangaroo. Yes, I am embarrassed about that now, but that's my vivid recollection of that day.

Not long after that terrible day, my folks decided to move back to Dallas. Both had grown up there. They met in 7th grade, were high school sweethearts. The title of this post is not a cliche. After reading a great article in Slate magazine (which btw features my cousin Darwin Payne, author and retired SMU history prof), I realized several of that day's events were literally close to my childhood home as well as that of my parents, especially my mom.

This cheesy screen grab of Google Maps brings things into a little more focus. After Oswald left the grassy knoll, he returned to the community of Oak Cliff across the river from downtown Dallas. At the time of the assassination, he was renting a room in a boarding house on Beckley Avenue (purple pin). Beckley Ave. also happens to be the exit off I-30 one would use to get to the house I grew up in (pink pin). Much has changed over the last fifty years, but on my end of Beckley Avenue, it's still the home of Lone Star Donuts and Ripley Shirts.

Oswald's boarding house on Beckley was about a block from Lake Cliff Park. This park was the site of much enjoyable recreation in the 1950s. It had an enormous public swimming pool (long since filled in), which happened to be my mom's first job as a teenager. According to Mom, much adolescent hijinx occurred there. Part of me wants to know more. The other part has adopted a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.

The Slate article also says Oswald walked a mile or so south on Beckley from the boarding house to near W. H. Adamson High School (aqua pin). This is the first I have heard of an Oswald connection to that school. That's where my folks fell in love. That's where my dad played basketball and baseball and earned a scholarship to Sul Ross State University. That's where they made some lifelong friends who still get together occasionally for some of that classic Tex Mex you just can't get anywhere outside of Texas. I don't know if school was in session that day. It would have been the Friday before Thanksgiving. The thought of an armed assassin strolling along the sidewalk near a school filled with students gives me the chills.

After passing Adamson, Oswald had his fateful encounter with Dallas police officer J,D. Tippitt at about 10th and Patton (green pin). Reading that really rocked my world. My mom grew up on Patton Street (yellow pin). As the eldest of six, she was married and out of the house in 1963, but some of the family still lived in her childhood home then. They lived a few blocks north of 10th Street, close enough to have possibly heard the shot that ended Officer Tippitt's life.

Oswald's last stop in Oak Cliff was an attempted escape through the Jefferson Blvd. retail district. He was captured in the Texas Theater (blue pin). I don't recall ever visiting it in my 20-odd years living in Oak Cliff. For many years after the shooting, it was considered uncouth as a Dallasite to show morbid interest in anything related to that event. The closest I have been to Dealey Plaza is driving home from downtown through the triple underpass. Never, ever, walked the grassy knoll or pointed with finger or camera lens at the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. But as Oak Cliff residents, we certainly passed near or shopped at Jefferson Blvd. on an almost daily basis. It was home to many iconic Oak Cliff businesses, including Red Bryan's, the Charco Broiler, Skillerns Drug Store, and the Lamar & Smith Funeral Home (which I mention because the Smiths were our neighbors).

They say times have changed, that Dallas is no longer primarily known as 'the city that killed the President'. During this time of year when we are asked to pause and reflect on our blessings, that is certainly one of the many things for which I am thankful.

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