More Dallas Pictures

by John Kelin


Throughout A Trip to Dallas, there are references by the narrator (me) to taking pictures. But if I had included every picture I wanted to include, the file would take even longer to load than it already does. So, at the suggestion of a reader, I'm showing some more here.

I don't know whether any of these pictures are worth a thousand words, or a hundred, or even two or three.

Here's another view of the cenotaph, and the granite slab within.

After I took a picture of Steve Jameson, one of the guys selling JFK newsletters in Dealey Plaza, he asked me to send him a copy. I had just moved, and it was more than a year before I got my darkroom set up; once I did I printed the picture and sent it along. It came back a few weeks later, stamped "Not Deliverable," or something like that. As Steve suggested, I'd used an address on the inside of inside the newsletter.

I feel bad about that, but my hands are tied. Steve, if the gods of fate lead you to read this, get in touch with me and I'll send you the picture.

That same afternoon, I took a picture of Doris Crawford, who was selling the newsletter JFK Today. This is her picture:

A Trip to Dallas is pretty accurate in terms of relating my three day visit there, but facts have a way of getting fudged along the way. Usually this is in utterly meaningless ways. A case in point is that I did not mention the first picture I took of Warren "Butch" Burroughs. Before we got off the bus to check out the Texas Theater, I was trying to get a picture of its dilapidated marquee, when Burroughs came sauntering into the frame. I snapped the picture, not knowing who the guy was, and this is the one used in A Trip to Dallas. I took a couple of portraits, too; here's one of them:

It was wrong of me to refer to him as "an elderly man." He was in his early fifties at the time. (In his April 1964 Warren Commission testimony he gives his age as twenty-two.) I guess the cane fooled me.

And I was wrong in stating that Burroughs "probably never even saw" Oswald on the day of the assassination. Our assumptions always kill us. As Burroughs told Warren Commission attorney Joseph Ball,

Mr. Burroughs. Well, he didn't seem --- he seemed like he was mad at everybody.
Mr. Ball. He was?
Mr. Burroughs. Yes.
Mr. Ball. Did he shout in a loud voice?
Mr. Burroughs. Yes; like --- "I demand my rights" [witness holding up both hands above his head.]

More than two years later, I could still kick myself for not taking Burroughs up on his offer to go into the then-vacant Texas Theater. The bus tour was pretty much over at that point and I could easily have taken a cab back to my car. Ah well. Live and learn.


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