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Day at a Glance Spending an off-day catching up with history
Posted: Sunday June 04, 2000 02:06 PM By David Vecsey, CNNSI.com DALLAS -- So how do you spend an off-day in Dallas? You could go visit the Stanley Cup, the Conn Smythe Trophy and various other platters of silver at the Dallas Art Museum, where most of hockey's prized possessions are on display. Or if you grew up in a house where names like Roosevelt and Kennedy were spoken with religious reverence, you could go sit on The Grassy Knoll for a half hour, where one of America's darkest hours stretches on for eternity like Einstein's river of time. You may think you've never been to Dealey Plaza, where on Nov. 22, 1963, our 35th president was assassinated. But then you find that you have been there and that you know it well. The events of that day are so ingrained in our collective conscience that once you stumble onto the scene through Dallas' West End, you can trace the footsteps of history without the aid of the men selling maps and theories out of vans and hot dog carts on the sidewalk. If you're waiting for a hockey tie-in here, click elsewhere. The Devils lead the Stars 2-1 in the best-of-seven series, which resumes Monday night at Reunion Arena. John F. Kennedy was one of those unique figures in history. He stirred emotions so strongly that there was very little middle ground; he was either loved or loathed; he was either leading our country to a new age or leading it astray. Here, in Dallas, that all came to a head, and our country was sent tail-spinning into a decade of revolution and societal disorder. Sitting here, you can't help but be overcome by grief. It lingers here like a musty ghost, like at any spot where something terrible has happened. It is not hard to feel the confusion and fear that must have exploded at this spot and then mushroomed over the entire country within hours, minutes, maybe. The Texas School Book Depository looms over Dealey Plaza, a triangle of lawn divided by two diagonal streets and centered by a third stretch of road. When you stand on the downslope of road where Kennedy was shot and look back toward the sixth floor of the depository, it doesn't seem that unrealistic that Lee Harvey Oswald could have stood up there and taken the fatal shot. The road is so thin and so exposed and runs right under that window. Then again, it doesn't seem unrealistic that somebody else could have stood behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll. Or that somebody else could have been across the way in another building. But whether it was one bullet or four or eight or 12 doesn't really matter anymore. Kennedy's assassination taught us to question what we think we know, to not blindly follow. And there's nothing wrong with a taking a few hours in between games of the Stanley Cup to be reminded of that.
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