We are still in Plano, TX, and wanted to let everyone know we survived the recent bad weather. We did spend a few minutes in the closet under the stairs while the sirens went off, but there was no local damage and the trailer, which is parked in a storage lot, survived, too.
Rich and Steve arrived in Plano on December 17. They had a nice, uneventful trip and discovered some interesting restaurants along the way. They came in on a Thursday and Rich wasn’t flying out until Saturday, so Steve, Rich and I went sightseeing on Friday. Although I think this is our fifth trip to the Dallas area, we haven’t done any sightseeing.
For people of our generation, Dallas will always be the sight of the assassination of President Kennedy. So off we went to the Sixth Floor Museum. The shots that killed Kennedy were fired from the sixth floor of the building that was being used as the Texas School Book Depository. The sixth and seventh floors of the building have been turned into a museum and the rest of the building is used for civic offices.
Here’s Rich smelling the roses on the way to the museum. (It was December 18th.)
In some ways it was a painful visit, stirring up memories from the past. I was eleven when Kennedy was shot and still have some vivid memories of that time. But even at eleven, I realized that the peaceful transition of power we experienced was an amazing thing. Our president had been killed, his assassin murdered, but there were no armies in the streets, trying to keep peace. Even though we were in the middle of the cold war, there was no attempting to invade; no power struggle.
I read and watched some of the conspiracy theories over the years. As someone was quoted in the exhibit at the museum, it’s hard to accept that someone as “insignificant” as Oswald managed to assassinate the president. But I watched a show that interviewed Oswald’s brother sometime in the past decade and he was certain that his brother had indeed done it. He said he was certain as soon as he heard Oswald’s name as a suspect that it was something he would do.
The museum is certainly worth a visit. You can look out the windows and watch all the tourists dodge traffic to stand on the x on the street, which I assume marks the spot of the fatal shot. Dealey Plaza, which the motorcade was driving through, is a parklike place with several roads running through it. It has several terraces and architectural features built by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) during the depression. I caught Rich hugging one of the old trees.
We next trooped over to Reunion Tower, where Steve took this picture of Dealey Plaza.
The Reunion Tower offers stunning views of Dallas. It was named after the Reunion district it sits in, which itself was the location of a 19th century commune, La Reunion. We managed not to take any pictures of the tower itself.
Christmas in Dallas is certainly not like Christmas in the Midwest. Besides the roses Rich found, pansies are popular and it’s not unusual to see pansies along side Christmas decorations. Maria really likes the yard decorations and wants to “pet” them all.
2015 was an amazing year for us. We saw so much of the country (and Canada) that I hadn’t seen. From the desert of west Texas to the beautiful coast of California, to the mountains, valleys, glaciers and waterfalls of Canada and Alaska, it was a trip of a lifetime. And we’d love to do it again.
We had our sad times, as my mother passed away in April, and our dog in August. But we celebrated Steve’s niece’s wedding in September and I welcomed a great-nephew in November. Two more babies joined our Indiana family. And Natasha became an American citizen in April.
Just a few statistics for the nerds following the blog: Since Thanksgiving 2014, we put 24,000 miles on the truck. The trailer went on most but not all of those miles. We visited 19 states and 7 Canadian provinces. In all we took 13,652 pictures (and I need to delete most of them).
We visited family and friends in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, Washington, Michigan and North Carolina (that was by plane).
It was an amazing year. I can’t wait to see what we’ll discover in 2016. We leave Plano on Tuesday, January 5. (Or at least that’s the current plan.)
Deb
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