Sunday Morning Walk in Downtown Dallas

Headington (oil guy with taste) eye sculpture that he placed on a property on Main St. that he wanted to develop and the city council was worried it would be an eye sore.... Nothing is more Dallas.

I bought my mom an air pistol and ammo. I got it on Amazon. I gave her instructions on how to use it and the loaded gun sits in a drawer next to her chair at all times. She’s about 75. To avoid trips to the emergency ward or even more fatal accidents I mades sure the gun and the ammunition were made out of plastic. It's still hurts but it's not life threatening which is important. The gun is to be used in cases only that involve a political conversation between my step father — her husband of 35 years — and me. To say that we are opposites of the political spectrum is a bit mild. He is a retired and pensioned fire captain. I am a semi retired entrepreneur in dot-com. Our dialog gets a bit heated at times but we both love it and love each other to death. When the arguments get too heated and loud my mother simply takes the pistol out of he drawer and shoots us in the rear-end or gonads, whatever she can find in the cross hairs.

I thought about this on my walk about Dallas this morning, two days before the very heated mid-term election. It's redundant to say that the country is divided and “Resistance” is the new battle cry.

I walked down Main St. thinking about this.

We have become a society of poor critical thinking skills I thought walking. Or maybe it’s the echo chamber of social media where most posts are anonymous — someone has to win, the other lose.

Winston Churchil said the best argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter. I had to chuckle at that. Robert Quillen, a journalist during both wars said, “Discussion is an exchange of ideas; an argument is the exchange of ignorance.”

I continued to walk down Main St. and stopped at the intersection near the community college. These columns are in front of El Centro College where the policeman was gunned down during a #BlackLivesMatter parade. The actual footage from 2016 is still on YouTube. Civil conflict and argument over police shootings was streamed daily through the media.

There’s nothing of the incident left to see. Of course it made national news.

There are no blood stains. No plaques. I looked across the street and could see the building where the gunman eventually holed up and the police detonated a robotic rover once they found him instead of negotiating. The gunman was black, as was the chief of police, the Attorney General, and the U.S.President. The fallen police officer was black too. I was on a few blocks away watching the parade in 2016 which was very peaceful and even happy from the curb wondering why people running away.

I kept walking only a few blocks further where Main St. and Commerce converge. This is the site of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The administration building that he worked is now a museum and they have done an excellent job of keeping it exactly as it was during globally shocking day. You can see on the second to the top window on the corner that they left the window open and the boxes where he hid is rifle and took his aim. The museum is worth seeing even if there is a line. They have a lot of pieces that and history to describe the political tension that existing back then between conservative and liberal idealists. Also its hard to call Oswald politically motivated as he if anything was a communist. It seems he used the heated tension of the political climate in November 22, 1963 to simply get attention to his view of how government should be run.

The second photo of Main St. show the marks on the road that signify the first and second shot. They are ‘x’s painted on the street that is still used. In the background you can see the grass knoll where conspiracy theorists believe the second or third shot came from.

I walked back to Main St. to look at where Oswald was kept and he himself assassinated by Jack Ruby.

The corner of Lamar St. is where Oswald got a taxi and rode to Oak Cliff a few miles away before being pulled over by Officer Tippit and fatally shooting the officer.

He ran to a movie theater that is still there running movies with a small plaque on one of the chairs where he was found by a mob of journalists and police officers and arrested.

The court house that Oswald was held at didn’t have glass doors then and Jack Ruby easily walked in with a gun.

I continue to walk now towards Klyde Warren park in the middle of town and next to the Dallas Museum of Art which is a fantastic art museum by any standard.

I begin to think about a speech that Franklin Roosevelt wrote but unfortunately died of polio a few days later and it never got delivered. In fact it has largely become forgotten but I think it is so important and poignant today that even in 1945 when he wrote the speech well-knowing the trauma of global political conflict and devastating capabilities of new technologies like the Atom Bomb. Here is that speech:

“We seek peace—enduring peace. More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars—yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman, and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.

[..]
“But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough.

“We must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.

“Thomas Jefferson, himself a distinguished scientist, once spoke of "the brotherly spirit of Science, which unites into one family all its votaries of whatever grade, and however widely dispersed throughout the different quarters of the globe.”

“Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another.

“Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to

survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace.” 

We certainly aren’t doing a very good job of it I thought as I continued to walk.

And then I got to the park. There were no protests. There was not a single pervasive view of gender, race, age, or background. Everyone was simply enjoying being alive and loving the family and friends they were with.

My mind turned back to the huge eyeball in the lot that Mr. Headinger paid for and placed. That was his way of dealing with government conflict — a sense of humor. He absolutely loves downtown Dallas.

I have no idea Headinger’s politics or the politics of the people and families here at the park. But...

They seem to get it.