The Grassy Knoll

Some places have to be experienced. It's not enough to hear about them or see someone else's photos. You have to go and stand there and know it for yourself. That's how I felt about the Grassy Knoll. I was six when President Kennedy was assasinated and I remember it like yesterday. I remember the psychic blow that was dealt the American people that day. It was the kind of feeling I've only ever felt twice since, when Diana died and on 9/11. I am the same age as Caroline Kennedy and have always felt plugged into the Kennedys. I had to go to the Knoll.

And it's a knoll, a grassy one. There are no huge monuments. Just a softly curving knoll, surrounded by live oaks and backed by an Art Deco pavillion. There are two red x's in the pavement of the road that mark the spots where the car was when the shots hit. Payson tells me that no matter what time of year or what kind of weather there are always people at the knoll. One goes and stands where Zapruder shot his 8mm film. I stood there and took a photo. Everyone does. One wanders around the knoll, looking up behind at the Book Depository. You realize almost immediately that at least this part of the conspiracy theories is correct: Oswald couldn't have acted alone. You know that there is no way that the position of the building, the placement of the cars and the direction of the exit wounds are consistent with Oswald being the assasin. You might not know who's conspiracy theory is correct, but you know that the story we've been told is false. Was it the Mafia? Was LBJ involved? Was it the CIA or the guys in the Federal Reserve? (That was the theory of a chappie we talked to who was selling his book on the subject. A very articulate, not-wild-eyed guy. He didn't fit the profile of a conspiracy theorist.)

We'll probably never know. What we do know, and what keeps people coming day after day to that little spot of downtown Dallas, is that promise was cut short that day. Forty years ago we mourned because JFK was cut down young. We make our pilgrimage to The Knoll now because we mourn the lost legacy. We don't know how America might have been shaped had he fulfilled his term. And because the loss was so tragic it is our instinct to assume that it would have been better, that the promise fulfilled would have been a good thing. We'll never know.

So I went to the Grassy Knoll and remembered and wondered and then I heard Richard Harris sing, "Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot".