Of Glocks and Books and Computers ...

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There was a memorial service here in Dallas earlier this week for the five police officers who were gunned down by a young black man who was reportedly upset over the shootings of black suspects by white policemen in Louisiana and Minnesota.

I wasn't able to watch the service on TV because I was at work, but I read the text of Barack Obama's speech online when I got home that night. And I have watched video clips on TV and online.

As I have acknowledged here before, I have never been an admirer of Obama, but even I must admit that the speech started out to be perhaps his finest oratorical moment — comparable, in my mind, to the speech Ronald Reagan gave to the nation the night of the Challenger disaster.

He was mindful of the fact that he was speaking at a service that was showing its respect for five public servants. But then he veered off into ideological territory. Such a thing would be inexcusable, anyway, but Obama made it worse by appearing to justify the actions taken by the angry, apparently mentally disturbed young man.

Obama lamented the fact that it was easier for a young black man to get his hands on a Glock than a computer or a book.

Now, to me, this said everything one needs to know about Obama's mindset. I have concluded that he believes racism only has a white face because whenever a white person kills a black person, he decries it as racism. But when a black person kills a white person, if the case gets any media attention at all — and, of course, the shootings here in Dallas were widely reported — Obama blames it on easy access to guns.

Someone needs to tell the president that guns are not cheap. A library card, on the other hand ...

My Mother's Day

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Today is an important anniversary for me.

Yes, I know it is Cinco de Mayo, the commemoration of Mexico's victory over French forces in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. It is also the anniversary of the flash flood here in Dallas that took my mother's life — an event that has had infinitely more significance in mine than the battle that was fought more than 150 years ago.

Now, I always think of Mom at this time of year — actually, she crosses my mind at least once every day — but, for some reason, memories of Mom have been especially plentiful for me this year. There is no particular reason for that, I suppose. This isn't what might be called a milestone anniversary. Last year was, but this year is not.

It took me a long time to come to terms with what happened — and, in some ways, I guess I still have work to do, but I have largely come to terms with it.

The time around my mother's death and funeral has been a blur for me for many years. The strongest memory I have of that time is how unusually green everything was. That was an indicator of the conditions that led to Mom's death. There had been so much rain that spring that the ground was saturated. When the rain began to fall on the night my mother died, there was no place for the water to go. Thus, the flooding. Nearly two dozen people died that night.

Now, it always gets green here in the spring as it does just about everywhere else. It is the intensity level that changes, depending upon how much rain we get. If we don't get much rain, the green can be kind of dull, bordering on brown — an almost sure sign of a scorched–earth summer to come.

But the green of the grass and the trees that spring was deep, rich, vibrant. I have lived here more than 20 years — and visited here frequently as a child — and I have only seen green like that around here one other time — last year, which, as I say, was a milestone anniversary. We had a lot of rain — and some flooding, too. Talk about deja vu.

The green this spring seems to be more ordinary, kind of an average green. There is nothing about it, really, that should make me think of Mom or the time when she died.

And it doesn't. In fact, it isn't a visual thing at all. It's the sounds.

We lived in the country when I was growing up, and the sounds of wildlife were all around us. Birds, mostly, I suppose, but there were also crickets — and sounds that I still can't identify. Those sounds were the sounds of home — like the sounds of my parents' voices coming from downstairs or the wind rustling the leaves in the trees outside my bedroom window.

When I was growing up, I guess I was what was called a morning person. I got that from Dad, I guess. He's always been a morning person.

Anyway, I remember many mornings when I awoke before the sun came up, and I sat next to my window and listened to the sounds around me. I remember hearing the birds. I never saw them, and I have never been very good at identifying birds by the sounds they made so I don't know what kind of birds they were. But the same kind of bird must have taken up residence near my apartment because the song I have heard in recent days is one I have heard before, and it brings back strong memories of being a teenager.

That brings me to another point. As I say, I was a morning person when I was a boy, and I guess I remained one through my college years, but I got a newspaper job when I was 24 that required me to work nights. It wasn't easy, but I finally made the transition that had to be made if a morning person by nature was going to work a job that kept him at the office until after midnight.

Then I made the decision to go back to graduate school, and I worked at the local paper, which was an afternoon paper. That meant I had to be at work at 5 a.m. I would put in eight hours in the newsroom, then I would work for three hours in the afternoon as a teaching assistant in the editing lab. Graduate classes always met at night so if I had a class on a particular night, that would take about three more hours.

I kind of lost track of whether I was a morning person or a night person under those 20–hour–a–day conditions.

I've been working jobs that had more standard daytime hours for quite awhile now so I kind of drift from morning person to night person back to morning person. Lately I've been more of a morning person — at least as far as when I wake up is concerned. As it was when I was in my teens, I am often up before daybreak, and I listen to the sounds around me. I live in a city now so the sounds are the sounds one hears in a city — car engines running, buses stopping at the bus stop in front of my apartment building, the occasional wailing siren from a police car as it goes speeding by.

But even those sounds, mingled with the sounds of birds, remind me of Mom. She was a first–grade teacher, and there were times when I visited my parents and I would drive her to school in the mornings while I was visiting. The sounds of the city and the sounds of the birds remind me of mornings when I helped her carry her stuff to the car, then drove her to school and helped her unload.

I had kind of forgotten those mornings, but I'm glad to be reminded of them. I guess there wasn't anything remarkable about those times, just that I shared them with Mom.

And that was enough to make them special.

Christmas Musing: Why I Write

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It is early on Christmas morning, and I am awake, but it isn't like it was when I was a kid. I'm not up because I want to find out what is under the tree. I have no tree in my apartment.

Actually, I am up because I have had a touch of some sort of virus lately that has me congested, unable to breathe. So I am awake before sunrise on Christmas morning, like when I was a boy — although, clearly, not for the same reason.

It is cold and clear this morning. The forecasters have said it will be warmer today (but very windy), which would make it one of the milder Christmases I have experienced in Dallas. I didn't grow up here, but I spent most of my Christmases here visiting my grandparents and my parents' old friends, and I have spent most of the Christmases of my adult years here, too.

That doesn't make me an authority on Christmas in Dallas, but it's close! And, more often than not, Christmas in Dallas is cool — even cold at times. I remember a few warm ones when I was growing up, Christmases when my brother and I could go outside and play in shorts and T–shirts. We could climb the pecan trees in my grandmother's yard unencumbered by winter coats.

A couple of times when I was growing up, my family drove to South Padre Island near the U.S.–Mexico border to spend Christmas there, and it was always nice and warm (today, for example, the temperature is supposed to be 71° in Brownsville, close to 80° tomorrow and Saturday).

Anyway, this morning I have been listening to Mannheim Steamroller. I don't know how long they've been putting out Christmas albums — decades, I suppose — but I have one that came out nearly 20 years ago. It is the only purely Christmas album in my collection. I have Christmas songs that various artists have recorded, but they are always part of more general albums.

I remember when I got this album. It was about six months after my mother was killed in a flash flood. I was teaching journalism in Oklahoma and commuting to Dallas on weekends to see about my father. On one of my weekend trips, I heard "Pat a Pan" on the car radio and decided I had to have it. It has been in my collection ever since.

Listening to it really can be an exercise in free association. When I hear it, I think of those days after my mother died, and then I think about her (although I am sure that she never heard this album) — and that leads me to thoughts of my childhood. Mom was my biggest booster, and I am sure she must have encouraged me to take the path I took in life — writing. I have worked at other kinds of jobs, but writing has always been at the core of who I am.

It is a path that has led me to the job I have today as editorial manager for a stock–trading oriented website. I am very happy to have that job on Christmas 2014. Of course, I guess an argument can be made that, after slogging my way through the last six years following the economic implosion, I would be very happy to have any job. And I suppose there is an element of that. But the truth is that I like the people with whom and for whom I work.

Not everyone can say that, and I really am thankful for my job. It allows me to write for a living. I know some professional writers who fret about a lot of things, including writer's block, and writing becomes work for them.

Not me. Writing has always been fun for me. When I have some spare time, I would just about always prefer to write about something. I write three blogs (one of which is this one) so I always have an outlet for any inspiration I may have.

That's what it is. Inspiration. That must have been what my mother encouraged in me when I was little. Mom was about creativity, which has a symbiotic relationship with inspiration. She taught first grade, and I think most of the people who came through her classroom and their parents would tell you she was the most creative teacher they ever knew.

After she died, my family received hundreds of letters from old friends scattered across the country, a few even halfway around the world. One friend who knew her when she was a teenager sent us a letter with some photos of Mom participating in a play in junior high or high school. In the photos, she was clearly hamming it up in her usual way, and the friend remarked in his letter, "I always thought that, if Mary had not gone into teaching, she would have gravitated to the stage."

A career on the stage might have satisfied her yearning for creative outlets. She found other outlets, one of which was encouraging me to write. I had other influences along the way, but I am quite sure she was my earliest. When I was in elementary school, she arranged for me to take piano lessons, which I did for many years. I haven't kept up with it, but all that practice made my fingers quite nimble, and I am sure it contributed to my typing ability, which has been valuable to me all these years. I have certainly found it to be an advantage since personal computers took over the workplace. Many of my colleagues still hunt and peck, but I took typing in junior high and I already had the advantage of several years of piano lessons under my belt.

Of course, typing alone is not the same as writing. Simply stringing words together in grammatically correct sentences is not the same as writing unless you explore related ideas and themes. That is something I have worked on for years, and I really think it has paid off. I have people who read my blogs all over the world. Some sign up as followers who are notified whenever I post something new; others just pop in from time to time to catch up on what I've written.

Occasionally, they write to me. One wrote, "I can't wait to see what you will write about next."

I suppose that sums up how I feel about writing. I often know what I want to write about; I just don't know what I will say about it until I sit down and write.

That is the pleasure I get from writing — discovering what I think or how I feel as a result of writing about it. Sometimes I honestly do not know how I feel about something until I start writing about it. Sometimes, I am as surprised as my readers at what I think.

And it is appropriate to think about that on Christmas — because that is a gift my mother gave me.

Thanks, Mom.

The View From Ground Zero ...

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I remember the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

That was a traumatizing experience for the whole country, but it must have been especially brutal for the folks who lived where those planes did their devastation. In fact, I often wondered, as I watched news reports from New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, what must it feel like to be at ground zero?

Now I think I know.

Well, the casualty rate isn't anywhere near as high as it was on that day — not yet, anyway. And no buildings have been destroyed. Otherwise, though, it seems to be pretty much the same.

I live a few miles east of Dallas' Texas Health Presbyterian hospital. The original Ebola patient didn't come to my apartment complex when he (knowingly? unknowingly? does anyone know for sure?) brought the virus to America ... but he could have. From what I have seen, there is little except geography that separates that apartment complex from the one in which I live or hundreds of others in this city, for that matter. His girlfriend happened to live in a complex that is south of the hospital so that is where he went.

But any of us could have been put at risk. It was just the luck of the draw that we were spared and the other apartment complex was not.

A similar thought must have passed through the minds of many New Yorkers in 2001. Clearly, people died at the World Trade Center simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Many victims worked there; if one's workplace is targeted, it's really more a matter of time than the luck of the draw for that person, even if that person doesn't know, but in a large facility like the WTC, there are always people on the premises who don't come there every day. They are just there conducting business of some kind. In the North Tower of the World Trade Center, some were eating what turned out to be their last meal in the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the tower.

Perhaps those who are in the wrong place at the wrong time only plan to be there a few minutes or a few hours, but they get caught in the event.

I was near another ground zero in the 1990s. I was teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma, which is located in Norman, about 25 miles from Oklahoma City, at the time of the bombing of the federal building there. I was about half an hour from the start of a class when that bomb went off that morning. Some people said they could hear the explosion from that far away. I couldn't. Maybe that was because I was indoors.

Anyway, on that occasion, I had that dodged–a–bullet kind of feeling. I had been to Oklahoma City many times. Frequently I went to do some research at the Oklahoma City library, which was just a few blocks from the federal building. I had walked past the federal building several times.

I thought of those occasions early on, when speculation centered on the possibility that a gas line had blown up or something like that, and I thought, that gas line could have blown up when I was walking past that building. Of course, we know now that it was a bomb — and that a young man named Timothy McVeigh was responsible.

That was the extent of my connection to the federal building.

Many of my students, though, came from Oklahoma City. It was much more personal for them than it was for me, whether they had been to the federal building or not. One of my students, who now works in the Dallas broadcasting media market, lost her father in the bombing.

Even so, I still had that ground zero feeling. There were many people in that building who lost limbs — or lives — simply because they were there, however briefly, for some reason that day.

And, as the unofficial adviser for the newspaper, I was proud of my students for putting their personal feelings aside and producing all their own coverage — their own articles, their own photos, their own graphics — in reporting on a once–in–a–lifetime news event. A journalist must find ways to remain detached from a story, no matter how difficult that may be.

And I know how difficult it was for my students. In addition to unofficially advising the newspaper staff, I was the unofficial counselor for many of them, too.

When you observe from afar, you have no idea how rough it gets, how raw emotions can become at ground zero. Perhaps that is why I hear so many speak so disparagingly of the fears of people here on the front lines — and I am angered and frustrated.

Those of us here at ground zero have never been through anything like this before. We've heard about Ebola, how so many people who get it die, and not long after the original patient died came word that two of the nurses who cared for him were infected. The news sent a wave of fear through this city; we turned to our "leaders" for reassurance, and we encountered what appeared to be an indifferent president — who appointed a political flunky with no medical background to be the Ebola czar — and an equally unconcerned director of the CDC, who could only keep repeating talking points like "we know how Ebola is spread" ad nauseam.

No one to whom I have spoken was the least bit reassured by any of that.

Well, now we're reaching the point where people who were isolated because they came in contact with the original patient have made it through the 21–day incubation period without showing any signs of infection and are free to resume their lives. I hope that continues and that no one else is diagnosed with this disease. Perhaps that will reassure people that it really is difficult to catch this disease, that perhaps we have contained it here.

Because the people who are supposed to reassure us at a time like this have let us down. Big time.

The Coronation of Ronald Reagan

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"Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty and, ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society."

Ronald Reagan
Acceptance speech
Aug. 23, 1984

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I wasn't a fan of Ronald Reagan when he was president. I had the opportunity to vote for him, but I didn't. I don't regret my choice. At the time, I was a Democrat, and I wouldn't have thought of voting for anyone other than the Democrat in any race. It's how I was brought up.

Even if I had not been brought up by diehard Democrats, that was age–appropriate for that time in my life, as I understand it. Winston Churchill reportedly said, "Anyone who isn't a liberal by age 20 has no heart. Anyone who isn't a conservative by age 40 has no brain." (Note: I say "reportedly" because I have found no proof that Churchill actually said or wrote those sentences. I don't know who did, but I do know that I have heard those sentences all my life, and they seem to be one of those unattributable truisms. Whoever said or wrote it was spot on in his/her evaluation of the progression of life.)

Well, I don't know what all that says about me. As I have acknowledged before, I am now an independent. I feel like Joe Piscopo, who recently wrote that he wasn't ready to embrace the Republican Party, but "[i]n good conscience ... I can't continue to call myself a Democrat."

That is reminiscent of what Reagan frequently told his audiences — that he had been a Democrat as a young man but became a Republican after the Democrats moved away from the things that drew him to the party in the first place. He would conclude his story by asking his audiences, "Did I leave the Democratic Party? Or did the Democratic Party leave me?"

I didn't understand Reagan's appeal to ordinary Americans. I suppose I bought the line of thinking that insisted Reagan was hopelessly nostalgic about a simpler time in American history and determined to revive that time instead of leading the nation forward into the future.

I couldn't understand Reagan's appeal. I knew people who voted for Reagan 30 years ago. Everyone did. He ended up winning 49 states and receiving more than 58% of the popular vote in the last real landslide in American history. Oh, I know that there have been times when candidates have won by "landslide" — even though they were no such thing. Historically, a landslide has occurred when one candidate received more than 55% of the popular vote and more than 400 electoral votes from 40 states or more.

Landslides were almost routine from 1964 to 1984. Three of the six presidential elections held in that time fit that description, but none of the seven elections held since 1984 have. Some have been called landslides, but none truly were. And, as evenly divided as America is today, I doubt that we will see a landslide like the one from 1984 in the near future — unless an extraordinarily charismatic candidate emerges.

To be honest, I never thought Reagan was all that charismatic, but, clearly, a large number of Americans did. In hindsight, I see some things differently than I did at the time, which is understandable, as I was quite young, but one thing that I have always known was that Reagan was an effective speaker. I didn't know why he was so effective at that time.

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I was always envious of that. He had a folksy kind of charm that made many people in 1980 realize that he was not the warmongering ogre his critics said he was. There were a lot of horror stories spread about Reagan that seemed less and less valid to people the longer he was in office. There is no doubt that many of the things his opponents said about him were true, but reasonable people look at the record and see that Reagan was president for eight years — and he never launched a nuclear attack on anyone. His detractors warned that he would have America in a nuclear war within days of taking office. Once they got past that image, they wondered how many other falsehoods they had been told.

As a Democrat, I hoped he would be replaced when he sought a second term, that his election had been a mistake that voters would redress. But, on this night 30 years ago, when I watched him accept the Republican nomination in Dallas, I knew he would win in November.

I don't know how I knew. But I didn't tell any of my Democrat friends the conclusion I had reached. I didn't want to discourage them.

Thirty years ago tonight, Reagan told his fellow Americans that the choice was simple — it was between "their government of pessimism, fear and limits, or ours of hope, confidence and growth.

"Their government sees people only as members of groups," he continued. "Ours serves all the people of America as individuals. ... Theirs lives by promises, the bigger the better. We offer proven, workable answers.

On the surface, that sounds good. No American disagrees with that statement, right? At least, as long as "theirs" and "ours" remain undefined. It's only when you go deeper into a candidate's philosophy on individual issues that he/she can legitimately be labeled conservative or liberal.

I knew people who voted for Reagan who probably disagreed with him 70–80% of the time, but they voted for him because they thought he was a strong leader. I understood that mentality in 1980, when Reagan ran against the discredited Jimmy Carter, who rode a populist wave into the White House four years earlier. Carter was widely perceived to be a failure. Again, in hindsight, I am inclined to believe that anyone who got the Republican nomination that year was destined to win.

I disagreed with the majority's assessment, but I honestly believed Reagan's victory in 1980 had been a fluke.

But, by 1984, Reagan had a track record. It was one with which I was not impressed, but it clearly impressed others, and his acceptance speech was filled with references that resonated with his listeners, both those in the convention hall in Dallas and the millions watching at home.

Such as the misery index, a calculation Democrats used in Carter's campaign against President Ford in 1976.

"[A]dding the unemployment and inflation rates, [Democrats] got what they called a misery index," Reagan said. "In '76 it came to 12.5%. They declared the incumbent had no right to seek re–election with that kind of a misery index. Well, four years ago, in the 1980 election, they didn't mention the misery index, possibly because it was then over 20%. And do you know something? They won't mention it in this election, either. It's down to 11.6 and dropping."

Reagan never stooped to name calling. His rhetoric was almost always positive; he tended to save his put–downs for himself. Perhaps that was what people found so appealing.

It may be why he could get away with blatantly emotional rhetoric, as he did near the end of his acceptance speech when he spoke of repairs that were being made to the Statue of Liberty.

"Just this past Fourth of July, the torch atop the Statue of Liberty was hoisted down for replacement," Reagan observed. I will never forget the cameras scanning the crowd of delegates and coming to rest on the face of a young woman, a delegate standing on the floor of the convention hall, looking up at Reagan, her hands clasped in a prayerful pose, tears streaming down her cheeks as Reagan said, "We can be forgiven for thinking that maybe it was just worn out from lighting the way to freedom for 17 million new Americans. So, now we'll put up a new one."

I thought that was astonishingly corny. I was even more astonished when I realized just how many heart strings Reagan had tugged with that tale.

Reagan was no fluke.

Television's First Live Murder

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Fifty years ago, plans were being finalized in Washington for John F. Kennedy's funeral the next day.

Back in Texas, churches in Dallas were holding their usual Sunday services under most unusual circumstances. At Dallas' Northaven Methodist Church, Rev. Bill Holmes gave a sermon that is still talked about half a century later. Holmes told the congregation that Dallas could not avoid its own responsibility for the assassination even if only one man pulled the trigger.

As Holmes spoke, the suspect in Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down while being transferred from police headquarters to Dallas County's jail. The TV networks provided live coverage so some folks who were watching their TVs instead of attending church to pray for the Kennedys saw Oswald get shot by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.

"The killing occurred in the presence of 70 uniformed Dallas policemen," wrote historian William Manchester. "Because NBC was televising the transfer, it was also television's first live murder."

That shooting left a gaping wound in the American experience that probably will never heal.

Because Oswald's death meant some questions will remain unanswered — no matter what kind of evidence is uncovered. There were questions that only Oswald could have answered. Investigators might have been able to establish whether he spoke the truth or not. But without Oswald's testimony — like the forensic evidence that was lost when the limousine was cleaned of blood spatter and John Connally's suit was sent to the dry cleaners — the case will forever remain unresolved.

Nothing that has been uncovered in the last half–century has definitively established the guilt or innocence of anyone.

The killing of Oswald short–circuited the American judicial system. Admittedly, it doesn't always work, but it was the only hope to get Oswald's side of the story. Maybe he would have told the truth. Maybe he wouldn't. That is the kind of thing that juries must decide, and, most of the time, jurors simply have to hope that they have seen and heard enough evidence to reach the right conclusion.

That hope was snuffed out by Ruby, acting as judge, jury and executioner, 50 years ago today — but that is only if one accepts what he said at the time. Conspiracy theorists cite Ruby's organized crime connections and speculate he was sent to rub out Oswald to keep him from talking.

In the words of John Pope of the New Orleans Times–Picayune, Oswald's death "opened the floodgates to a tsunami of speculation about Kennedy's murder." Is it any wonder that JFK conspiracy theories have found a welcome audience from an America still seeking closure for what happened here 50 years ago?

Three previous American presidents had been killed by assassins. The American public managed to achieve closure with two of them when the accused assassins were arrested, charged and eventually convicted. The absence of an assassin to convict, to hold responsible leaves a wound that does not heal easily.

The first presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was killed before he could be brought to trial, which was another supposed link between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (a list of such links has been making the rounds almost since the day Kennedy was killed, but many of the items on the list have been discredited). And, to a degree, I suppose, the assassination of Lincoln by a Southern sympathizer led to more than a decade of abuse, known to history as the Reconstruction era. Was that because there was no formal trial for Booth? I don't know.

No one disputed that Booth shot Lincoln. There was a theater full of witnesses who saw Booth leap from Lincoln's box after the shooting. I have heard of no credible witnesses who could identify Oswald as the man who fired at Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

"It would have been easier for the American people to accept any enemy, any conspiracy, any plot and then avenge John F. Kennedy," Theodore White wrote. "But what they had to face was an act of unreason, avenged by an individual act of obscenity."

That "act of obscenity" was witnessed by millions and captured on film. There was no doubt about who killed Oswald.

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But doubts about who killed John F. Kennedy have lingered now for half a century.

I believe they will linger forever.

JFK Assassination: Still No Answers

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I honestly cannot recall any anniversary being as anticipated as this one.

Well, perhaps with the exception of the American bicentennial in 1976 (for consistency's sake, perhaps this should be called the JFK semi–centennial). And maybe it only seems that way to me because I live in Dallas, and the city has been preparing for this anniversary all year (the behind–the–scenes preparations have been going on longer, I'm sure).

I suppose part of the reason it was so anticipated is the sense that, even after 50 years, the Kennedy assassination is an unsolved mystery, a cold case. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the president, but there were enough loose ends that conspiracy theories flourished, especially after the American public got to see the Zapruder film for the first time.

Doubts persist. A recent Gallup poll shows that more than three–fifths of respondents do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Gallup acknowledged that the number is the lowest in nearly 50 years. What Gallup did not point out is that a majority of Americans accepted the Warren Commission's findings until the Zapruder film became public.

Since then, a solid majority of Americans has believed that Oswald did not act alone — if he acted at all.

By modern standards, I suppose the Zapruder film is almost primitive in its quality. But it is the most detailed visual record of a presidential assassination that we have — and, after they saw it, most people had to conclude that the Warren Commission's findings were not supported by the photographic evidence. By the time the Zapruder film was released (more than three years after it was made), the Kennedy assassination was already regarded as the most photographed assassination ever.

(LIFE.com focuses on a different image, one that sums up the global reaction to what happened here 50 years ago today.)

I hope we never have another attempt on a president's life, but if we do, I have to think that will become the most photographed assassination ever, given the number of cell/camera phones that are sure to be in use.

Today in Dealey Plaza — where the shooting took place — there will be a crowd of people holding tickets for a special program planned to commemorate the exact moment on this day in 1963 when the first shot was fired. As it did on that day in 1963, the day has dawned with rain — but it is considerably colder here today than it was then, and the rain doesn't seem likely to clear by midday.

Regardless of how cold it is, these tickets have been as hot as Willy Wonka's golden tickets, and I'm sure there will be few if any no–shows. A monument commemorating the assassination will be unveiled at that time (an "X" already marks the spot in the street where Kennedy suffered the fatal head wound). My understanding is that the program will be televised locally. Portions of it will almost certainly be shown on the national newscasts tonight.

It seems that so much has been said and written about the Kennedy assassination that almost nothing more could possibly be said, but the 50th anniversary is an invitation for all kinds of things — even if they aren't entirely relevant, such as Professor Nicholas Burns' piece in the Boston Globe on the three lessons of the Kennedy presidency (which is a separate topic from his death — as it is and should be for all presidents — and would be a dandy topic on the 100th anniversary of Kennedy's birth, which will be in less than four years but isn't necessarily appropriate on this occasion).

Relevance (or lack thereof) hasn't kept publications like the Los Angeles Times and others from running eyewitness accounts that are interesting but really add nothing to public knowledge of what happened.

For that matter, we know what happened. We continue to obsess over the who (which is also irrelevant). We're still asking the same questions. United Press International, for example, ran a piece a few days ago wondering who was responsible for the assassination.

Such things are to be expected, I suppose, but it has always struck me as inexcusable that so much time and energy should be wasted on speculating about who was responsible without determining why Kennedy was killed. I am certainly not a criminal investigator, but it seems to me that, if you answer the why, the rest should fall into place.

Larry Sabato, of whom I have written here before, wrote last week about five persistent myths about Kennedy. Most, like his points that the 1960 Nixon–Kennedy debates did not propel Kennedy to victory in the election that year or that JFK was not the liberal he is perceived to have been, come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in history.

Likewise, Tricia Escobedo's piece for CNN.com purports to tell readers five things they don't know about the assassination.

But I've been studying the assassination for a long time, and I knew that Oswald wasn't arrested for killing Kennedy. I also knew that the TV networks suspended all other programming for four days to report exclusively on the assassination and related events. And I knew that Judge Sarah Hughes, who swore in Lyndon Johnson on board Air Force One that afternoon, was the first woman to swear in a president.

I also knew that, earlier in 1963, Oswald tried to kill General Edwin Walker, a critic of the Kennedy administration and integration, while Walker was inside his home.

I'm not sure, though, that I knew that assassinating a president was not a federal offense in 1963. Interesting to know — at least from an historian's perspective — but of no real value when trying to answer the still unanswered questions.

Fred Kaplan of Slate.com, a onetime believer in conspiracy theories, recently devoted his energies to debunking them even though he acknowledged that "[t]here's no space to launch a full rebuttal" — apparently not even in cyberspace.

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For a long time, whenever the Kennedy assassination has been the topic of conversation, the focus has been on whether it was the result of a conspiracy and who really fired the fatal shot.

America should have been asking why, not who. After half a century, I think it is too late.

Will We Ever Know the Truth About JFK?

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President and Mrs. Kennedy disembark in Dallas.

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In a little more than two months, it will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy here in Dallas.

It goes without saying that it was a traumatic event for this country — particularly so for this city (my grandmother always regarded it as a black eye for Dallas) — and I suppose many people have lived for years, probably decades, with a desire to know the real story of what happened that day. Perhaps they, like my grandmother, believe that whoever pulled the trigger couldn't possibly be local because, well, everybody knew that folks from Dallas wouldn't do that kind of thing — even though Dallas in general was known to be hostile to the administration.

Initially, I guess, a majority of Americans accepted the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. That was how most Americans were raised in those days — to respect authority and accept its word on everything (the deceit of the Johnson and Nixon presidencies would go a long way toward eroding that inclination).

At the dawn of the 1960s, conformity was in fashion in America, just as it had been (and still was) in the European cultures from which many Americans' ancestors had come — and they, like all other immigrants before and since, brought their values with them.

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After the home movie that Abraham Zapruder made that day went public a few years later, suspicions rapidly grew among Americans that the Kennedy assassination had been part of some sort of conspiracy. America had been souring on the Vietnam war, and the pump was primed for conspiracy theories to flourish.

A general consensus arose that the true story had not been told, either by omission or commission, and that view gained some momentum in the mid–1970s when a special congressional committee evaluated the evidence from prominent assassinations in the 1960s — President Kennedy, his brother Bobby and Martin Luther King — and determined that it was probable that there had been more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza that day.

I guess that is the only thing that many Americans agreed on — and, I will admit, I was one of them. There is little agreement about who was responsible — some say the CIA, some say organized crime, others say Cubans, still others say right–wing extremists. Some of the more elaborate scenarios combine two or more.

I use the past tense — was — for myself not because I now believe the Warren Commission (I don't), but because I believe that, whether the Warren Commission was right or wrong, it doesn't matter now. Too much time has passed, too many material witnesses are deceased or suffering from dementia, and we will never know what the truth is.

Some people will never believe that. They will keep searching for the truth, and I do hope they find it, but I have strong doubts that anyone ever will.

Some people will insist that they already know the truth. I have dealt with such people all my life — on some subjects, I must admit, I am one of those people — and I have learned that it is usually futile to attempt to change their minds.

And who knows? They might be right — as one of my favorite journalists, H.L. Mencken, liked to say in letters to angry readers.

Perhaps Lee Harvey Oswald did shoot Kennedy. Perhaps he did act alone. I don't know. What I do know is that there have been unanswered questions from the start. Granted, some of the questions eventually received plausible answers, but it has often seemed in the Kennedy case that, whenever a single question has been answered, it has raised two new questions, and we seemed to drift farther from the truth than we were before.

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Not even the best mystery writer could invent as many red herrings and dead–end leads as there have been in this case over the years. It is alleged that many of these were the results of sloppy investigative work or human error or even coincidence.

If Oswald really did act alone, it is hard to imagine the investigation into the murder of any president being handled as sloppily — or as many coincidences occurring. There has been plenty of doubt about the number of shooters — heck, even the number of shots — in Dealey Plaza that day, and it did take the Dallas police an inexcusably long time to seal off the Texas Schoolbook Depository after the shots were fired and the consensus among witnesses was that at least some of those shots had been fired from that building.

Maybe there are simple explanations for things that appear to be so clearly sinister. I am a defender of our legal system in spite of its flaws, and I know things are not always how they seem — but, really, so many? It defies logic and common sense.

Suppose Oswald had not been killed but had lived to face trial. America's legal history is filled with cases where juries acted differently than many observers expected. How many times in your life have you heard of a verdict that was contrary to public opinion? That was one of the things I learned during my days on the police beat. You can never tell what a jury will do, but you can be sure that someone won't like it.

No one knows what a jury might have said about the case against Oswald. The closest we came was the case brought by Jim Garrison in New Orleans that was re–enacted in Oliver Stone's "JFK." That trial was only a few years after the assassination, when the trail presumably was still warm, and it resulted in an acquittal.

In 2013, it is a decidedly cold case, and I believe it will remain so.

In (almost) the words of a once–popular TV show, the truth may be out there. I just don't think that, at this stage, anyone will find it.

The Mysterious Death of Warren Harding

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President Warren Harding and his wife, Florence

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Today is a milestone anniversary of a presidential death that is still shrouded in mystery.

No, I am not speaking of the Kennedy assassination.

Here in Dallas, we know (or most of us do) that this year is the 50th anniversary of that assassination — which is, of course, still a subject for debate, but this year it seems to be even more of an industry than usual (until just recently, the city was taking applications for free tickets for people who want to be in Dealey Plaza at the precise moment on November 22 — 50 years later, of course — when the president was shot).

Before we turn our full attention to that anniversary, let us pause for a minute or two to think about another presidential death that happened 90 years ago today.

I'm speaking of Warren Harding, America's 29th president, of whom H.L. Mencken wrote

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"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

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Based on what I have read of President Harding, he was an amiable, well–meaning individual, but he was also someone who was easily manipulated.

He was a journalist by trade and had a relaxed management style as publisher of a newspaper in Marion, Ohio. It has been said that, in some 30 years as the newspaper's publisher, Harding never fired anyone. He seemed to like people, and they liked him. But, as I say, there were those in his administration who took advantage of him.

On Aug. 2, 1923, President Harding died of an apparent heart attack in San Francisco. But there were suspicions at the time of other causes — and those suspicions have lingered. It might have been a stroke, some thought, or it might have been ptomaine poisoning.

Or it might have been a deliberate act.

Harding had been on a speaking tour of the western United States that summer. It could have been anything, people said at the time — heat, food, whatever — and an autopsy would have clarified things considerably. But, as Kennesaw State professor Russell Aiuto observes at Crime Library, there was no autopsy. The president's widow, Florence Harding, would not allow it.

"Within an hour of [Harding's] death, he was embalmed, rouged, powdered, dressed and in his casket," Aiuto writes. "By morning, he was on a train, headed back to Washington, D.C."

That got suspicious tongues wagging. Think the Kennedy assassination is awash in conspiracy theories? For nearly a century now, Harding's death has variously been attributed to natural causes, negligent homicide, suicide and murder. There is a solution to suit every taste.

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President Warren Harding and
Vice President Calvin Coolidge

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Natural causes is supported by the knowledge that, as Aiuto observes, Harding "lived the fat–filled, tobacco–infused and alcohol–drenched life of early 20th Century America with gusto." There are indications that Harding suffered from coronary artery disease that went undiagnosed and, consequently, untreated.

Negligent homicide had its defenders, too — like one of Harding's physicians, who believed Harding could have been saved had it not been for medical treatment he had been given, treatment that would have been effective if Harding suffered from indigestion but not effective for angina.

Then there have been suggestions that Harding may have killed himself.

It seems to be beyond dispute that Harding was despondent, presumably about Cabinet members whose conduct was under fire, during his tour of the West. And his behavior during that time prompted questions at the very least. He had made out a new will before leaving Washington in June. He sold his newspaper, which he had owned and published for decades, a few weeks earlier — and for far less than its value.

But suicide seems less likely when one considers that the signs pointed to his intention to seek re–election the next year.

That brings us to the last prospect, murder. Like the current occupant of the Oval Office, Harding's administration was beset by numerous scandals, any one of which could have led to homicide.

Even Mrs. Harding has been mentioned as a suspect. A book that was written by a man with a checkered past and published several years after her husband's death alleged that Mrs. Harding had two motives: 1) to save his reputation by having him die while he was at his most popular, and 2) to get even with him for his extramarital affairs, especially one that supposedly produced an illegitimate child.

Mrs. Harding died a year after her husband so it wasn't possible for her to defend herself against the charges — which don't seem to have been given much credibility.

Aiuto describes Harding's life and presidency as both comic and tragic. "Harding had many admirable traits — kindness, charm, generosity — but he was basically an inept man, without many talents," Aiuto writes.

"Besides the buffoonery of his days in the Senate and the White House," Aiuto goes on, "there is the tale of a man in over his head, trusting of untrustworthy associates, trying to do his best."

It's possible that one of those untrustworthy associates — with unguarded access to the president — poisoned him. It's just as possible — maybe even moreso — that Harding's lifestyle or medical malpractice hastened his demise.

After 90 years, though, it seems highly unlikely that the truth of the matter will ever be known.

Death at Six Flags

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A Dallas woman was killed while riding a roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas last Friday evening.

The investigation into the case is ongoing, and I prefer not to jump to any conclusions before all the facts are in, but it sounds like the woman's safety belt was not fastened correctly.

I have rarely been to Six Flags Over Texas — only once, in fact, since the Texas Giant, the ride on which the incident occurred, made its debut — and I do not know what kind of security precautions are in use on that or any other ride today. Seems to me that the last time I was there, people were held in place by some kind of metal bar, but published reports today suggest that something akin to a seat belt is in use now.

A photograph I found on the internet (at right) seems to show some kind of modified bar with some sort of padding around it, perhaps to protect the park goers from the bar.

Maybe there were too many complaints about how hot those bars were in the summertime. I don't know.

What I do know is that witnesses said the woman tried to tell whoever it was who seated her and fastened her safety apparatus that she wasn't secured correctly. The attendant's behavior was described as nonchalant, kind of dismissive.

Reportedly, it was her first trip to Six Flags, but she apparently knew enough about the ride's security features — perhaps from watching others while standing in line — to know that something was not right.

The woman who died was named Rosy Esparza. She lived in Dallas. I don't know how old she was or how many children she had. According to reports, two of her children were on the ride with her, and they were, as you might expect, in hysterics when the ride came to a stop, and they tried frantically to get someone's attention.

By the time their mother was located, it was not possible to resuscitate her — if it ever was. The Texas Giant has been known as the tallest wood–steel hybrid roller coaster in the world, more than 150 feet tall. That's roughly the height of a 14–story building.

It's hard to imagine a height from which a person could be thrown from the ride and be expected to survive.

Ever since I heard about all this, I have been thinking about the last time I went to Six Flags. It was right after I had moved to this area, and some friends of mine came to visit me from Little Rock. One of my friends, Mike, was an absolute nut about roller coasters. The three of us went to Six Flags one day, and Mike made a beeline for the first roller coaster he spotted.

And, I swear, he rode that ride over and over and over again — must have ridden it 10 or 12 times before he had finally had his fill (temporarily). My other friend, Steve, and I sat on a bench near the ride and watched him in utter amazement. After about the third or fourth time, we started joking about Mike and his infatuation with roller coasters.

He wasn't riding the Texas Giant. The Texas Giant didn't exist yet. But I have been thinking of that day so long ago — and wondered what I would have done if I had seen my friend get thrown from a roller coaster.

Roller coasters, of course, appeal to thrill seekers, but always in the backs of their minds is the assurance that roller coasters really are safe, that they are fast and exhilarating but not really dangerous.

For the most part, that's true. Friday's fatality was only the park's second in more than half a century of operation. And the website for the national organization of amusement parks has been running a message reminding people that the chances of anyone being killed while riding a roller coaster are extremely slim.

But, no matter how slim that chance may be, the fact is that there is that chance. It is not impossible, and no one seems to be pretending that it is — unlike the promoters of the Titanic a century ago.

It is my hope, however, that the investigation will be thorough, that no shortcuts will be taken. Public safety should be the top concern — if not the only one.

Certainly, if there was negligence on the part of anyone on Six Flags' staff, it should be uncovered. But that is not the only thing that investigators should seek.

If there is any kind of problem that caused this and can be corrected, it should be identified and corrective measures should be suggested.

Blame is not the only thing that needs to come from this.

Caught in the Cross Hairs of History

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A picture is worth a thousand words, the old saying goes.

And some pictures are worth a lot more than that. Some pictures are iconic. They are the images that come springing to mind when one thinks of an important event — like the 9/11 attacks or the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Or the JFK assassination.

As you may or may not know, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. It's a big event here in Dallas. For months now, the Dallas Morning News website has been featuring a special link to an observance of the anniversary. A local commemoration is planned around the anniversary.

I expect, when the anniversary is only days or weeks away, many TV stations/networks will run retrospectives on the assassination and the Kennedy presidency. Schoolchildren may write essays on the Kennedy presidency and/or the assassination.

Since January alone, I've already seen part or all of Oliver Stone's "JFK" more times than I can count.

Some of the images from that event are iconic — shots of the Kennedy motorcade as it approaches the killing zone, shots of the Schoolbook Depository, the shot of Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office on board Air Force One, shots from the day JFK was buried.

I've heard some people say that the photo of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, being gunned down in the basement of the Dallas city jail two days after the assassination by Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby is an iconic shot for them — and, to a certain extent, it is for me, too. A photo of that moment won a Pulitzer Prize.

I suppose the iconic part for me is the way the cop on the left is kind of pulling away at an angle, as if he wants to be sure he is out of range of the bullet — with his mouth contorted in that sort of semi–grimace.

The gun, of course, was aimed right at Oswald's belly and at close range. There was no conceivable way that the cop could have been shot. Must have been an instinctive thing — like when the folks in Dealey Plaza hit the deck when shots rang out. I suppose no one could be expected to process so much information that efficiently in a second or two.

Back in November, when the sacrifice of Officer J.D. Tippit on Nov. 22, 1963 was commemorated with a state historical marker, former Dallas homicide detective Jim Leavelle was there and said, when asked about his response to the shooting of Oswald, "You don't have time to let things go through your mind, you react. You do what you got to do. You don't stop to think."

That second or two has taken on a life of its own.

For 50 years, that second in Leavelle's life has been in the cross hairs of history. And today that moment brought the 92–year–old Leavelle more notoriety. Dallas' police chief gave him the Police Commendation Award and renamed the department's Detective of the Year Award in his honor.

"Police Commendation Award" must be something akin to a lifetime achievement award — because Leavelle has been retired since 1975. And I suppose this year was chosen to give it to him because it is the 50th anniversary of the assassination.

And not to be too indelicate about this, but Leavelle is 92 years old. There is certainly no guarantee that he will be around in six months when the actual anniversary comes up. If he is, I'm sure he will be among those who are recognized for the roles they played, however minor, on that day. Can't be that many of them left.

While I readily admit that the image of Leavelle at the moment that Oswald was fatally wounded is dramatic and memorable and will always summarize the shock and confusion of that time in American history, I have to feel Leavelle's role in the assassination was minor.

He was the first to interview Oswald in custody and may have been the last to speak to him — at least when he was conscious. As they were making their way down to the basement and their rendezvous with history, Leavelle said, "Lee, if anybody shoots at you, I hope they're as good a shot as you are."

Oswald replied, "Nobody's going to shoot at me."

But, of course, someone did.

Other than that, other than being handcuffed to Oswald when he was mortally wounded, I know of no other accomplishments in Leavelle's career as a detective. I'm sure he had some in a quarter of a century of service. Most people have accomplishments in their lives.

But few have the photographs to prove it.

Nothing Can Go Wrong ... Go Wrong ... Go Wrong

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Big Tex in happier times.

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Back when I was in high school, I attended a weeklong journalism workshop on the SMU campus. Several non–journalism activities (more of a social nature) were scheduled that week as well, including the showing of the movie "Westworld" after the workshop concluded.

I was reminded of that movie when I first saw video footage of Big Tex in flames at the Texas State Fair — or, to be more precise, I was reminded of Yul Brynner, the evil robotic gunslinger, and "Westworld"'s tagline — "Westworld — where nothing can go wrong ... go wrong ... go wrong."

These days, I teach journalism in the Dallas community college system, which includes advising the students on the newspaper staff.

The paper is published weekly, and each edition is completed on Friday. (The paper is then distributed the following Tuesday.) The advisers have to be there until the last page is done, which is actually a lot of fun for me. It reminds me of the days when I used to work on newspaper copy desks.

It also reminds me of what working for a newspaper is like, the nightly challenge of playing beat the clock. There are things you expect — like deadline pressure — and things you don't expect — namely, the news.

Well, of course you expect news! It's your business, after all. But it is often a reactive sort of business. Sometimes you do know what to expect, albeit in a general sort of way, like when a trial is scheduled at the courthouse or a big game is about to be played at the high school. You don't know what the outcome will be, but you know the trial — or the game or whatever — is coming up.

Much of the time, though, you cannot anticipate what the news will be. You simply react to whatever happens.

Which brings me to yesterday.

I was driving to the campus Friday when I heard on the radio that Big Tex, the iconic figure from the Texas State Fair, had burned.

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I didn't grow up here, but I know many people who did, and I knew Big Tex was special to them. He's been greeting visitors to the Texas State Fair with his robust "Howdy, folks!" since 1952.

Any journalist in this area — and, for that matter, in neighboring areas — ought to know that. And I was pleased to find out, when I walked into the newsroom, that the student newspaper staff was on top of it. A photographer was on the scene (and came back with some great photos), and one of the reporters was trying to reach a professor on the faculty who is something of a Texas State Fair historian (and has written a book or two on the subject — or so I am told).

The professor couldn't be located, but the reporter uncovered some interesting facts that I didn't know.

I didn't know, for example, that Big Tex started as Santa Claus in a town southeast of here called Kerens.

And then a mayor of Dallas, R.L. Thornton — whose name adorns a stretch of road here that is always jammed. It is always mentioned whenever the TV or radio stations report about traffic problems — purchased Big Tex, and he's been greeting visitors to the fair ever since.

The folks at the fair swear he will be back next year, presumably with a more current wardrobe and some new boots, but it didn't look too promising when he left Fair Park in what looked an awful lot like a body bag.

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As the afternoon wore on, I felt more and more like Murray, the news writer on the Mary Tyler Moore Show who kept coming up with sick jokes about a colleague at the TV station, known only as Chuckles the Clown, who had been killed at a circus parade when he dressed as a character named Peter Peanut and a rogue elephant shelled him to death.

(When Lou Grant observed that it was a good thing more people weren't hurt, Murray agreed and said, "You know how hard it is to stop after just one peanut.")

Since I first saw that episode back in the '70s, I've discovered that there was a lot of truth in it. I spent many years working in newsrooms, and they are breeding grounds for gallows humor. Virtually nothing is sacred.

And I've lived in Texas long enough to know that Big Tex is sacred — or, at least, semi—sacred — to many.

But I really had no idea just how sacred he was until yesterday.

In the reporter's article, there was a quote from a girl who said she had been to the fair just a week ago and shot some video footage of Big Tex for a project on which she was working in school. "And now he's gone," she said to the reporter.

As I read it, I could imagine her eyes welling up with tears.

Then, as I was driving home from the campus around 8 p.m., I heard someone on one of the radio stations doing a tribute program to Big Tex.

"We've lost a friend today," the host said somberly as the song "My Heart Will Go On" (from "Titanic") played in the background.

Maybe it was all done tongue in cheek, but it sounded deadly serious to me.

Half a Century of Six Flags

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It isn't unusual these days to see a "Six Flags" amusement park in several places across this country — from coast to coast.

You'll even find them in foreign countries.

Some have always been "Six Flags" parks. Others began their existences with other names and under different management, but they were later absorbed into the "Six Flags" corporation. In all, there have been nearly three dozen "Six Flags" amusement parks.

But the very first one opened to the public 50 years ago on this date in Arlington, Texas, about 25 miles west of where I live today. It officially opened for business on Aug. 5, 1961 (the day after Barack Obama was born).

That theme park was known then — and it's still known — as "Six Flags Over Texas," a name it took from the fact that six different nations ruled Texas in its history — Spain, France, the Confederacy, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the United States.

It was modeled after Disneyland's concept of dividing the park into several sub–sections (theme parks within a theme park, you might say) — but Disney focused more on general themes like Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland.

My grandparents lived in Dallas, and my family visited them often when I was growing up. Outside of the Texas State Fair, there really wasn't much to bring families to Dallas when my parents were children, and I don't think things were all that different before I was born, but "Six Flags Over Texas" changed that.

My mother and my grandmother could hardly wait until I was old enough to take to "Six Flags," which was constantly adding new things in the 1960s and 1970s. When the day finally arrived that we went to "Six Flags," I think they were more excited about it than I was.

And, after they took me the first time, it became a regular thing for us every summer.

(Incidentally, although its primary days of operation have always been from late spring to autumn, "Six Flags" is open for seasonal events today, like its annual Spring Break kickoff, which got started in the 1980s, and its Christmas programs.

(I can't remember if it was open during the Christmas holidays when I was a child. We didn't pay attention. We were busy with other things.)

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I loved the rides — some more than others — and I loved the food. And, on especially hot days, I loved the cool of the park's theaters, where song–and–dance shows (often featuring area college students as performers) were repeated frequently every day.

It really was a wonderful combination of entertainment and a crash course in history. As a child, I was attracted by all the things that attract children, but, in hindsight, I have often wondered if maybe the seeds of my interest in history were planted on those day trips to "Six Flags" — an interest that, I am confident, led me to study journalism in college.

Sure, there were the kinds of rides you expect to find at an amusement park. There were roller coasters and bumper cars and a miniature train that went all the way around the park, but there were also several theme–specific rides.

(I remember that the Oil Derrick Tower, which represented the 20th century oil boom in Texas, was the first thing you could see as you approached the amusement park from any direction, looming as it did high above everything else.

(It was visible for miles along that relatively flat terrain, and it was the landmark I watched for — because I knew, when I saw it, that it was really happening. It wasn't an abstract concept.

(I've only been to Disneyland once, and I was a teenager when I did that, but I presume that is how kids feel when they catch their first glimpse of Sleeping Beauty's Castle.)

Many of the rides featured guides who provided an historical narration. OK, sometimes it was modified a little to give the guests more of a sense of being in the moment — a little jam on the bread, as Andy Griffith said once on his TV show.

Sometimes, as I say, the narrators took a little poetic license, but that was all right. The stories they told — to borrow a line from Mark Twain — were mostly true.

And I wasn't going to quibble — because I was only a kid, and I was having fun the way kids do.

I never stopped to think about how the tour guides' stories might be subtly influencing how I thought and what I knew — or what I thought I knew.

But they did — in ways I am still discovering. Even today, when I'm watching, say, The History Channel and something is said that contradicts something I heard in one of those narratives, I do a kind of mental double take.

I don't mind, though. I had fun, and I am thankful for the memories — and whatever actual knowledge I picked up along the way.

How Hot Is It?

It's been nearly 20 years since Johnny Carson left The Tonight Show, but, if you can remember when he was the show's host, you can probably remember many of his ongoing routines.

I'm thinking of one in particular that was usually likely to surface during Carson's monologue, but it could happen at any time. It frequently popped up when something really extreme had been happening — for example, a lot more (or a lot less, for that matter) rain than usual.

He would say something like, "It was so wet (or dry) today that ..." and, before he could finish the joke, the audience would roar as one, "How wet (or dry) was it?"

As I say, it could be anything extreme — or anything, at least, that was perceived to be extreme. It could be "Dan Quayle is so dumb" or "Al Gore is so wooden."

Weather was always a good source, but it could be anything. Carson and his writers could be very creative at times.

(All together now — How creative were they?)

Lately, as the nation has been enduring the kind of heat wave that usually seems to be reserved only for Texas, I've been missing Carson.

Well, actually, as far as I am concerned, late night TV has never been the same since he left — so missing Carson is not a new thing for me — but, when there's something in progress like this heat wave, I really miss him.

These times cry out for an opportunity for heat–weary people to shout in unison, "How hot is it?"

Jacy Marmaduke of the Dallas Morning News has been keeping area residents advised as local temperatures have cracked triple digits daily for four straight weeks now.

Recently, this summer's heat wave claimed the second slot on the historical list. It overtook the summer of 1998 a few days ago.

I was living in Dallas in the summer of 1998, and that was, indeed, a brutal summer. I was working for a trade magazine and I had to cover a trade show in Chicago that July. While I was there, I encountered quite a few people who had come from places to the north — and some were complaining of the heat.

Personally, I didn't find the heat in Chicago nearly as severe as the weather I had just left. The difference was noticeable upon my return.

I don't think that would be true this summer. Nearly the entire country has been sweltering. It's been easing lately in places where it usually doesn't get that hot, but much of the country remains in the heat wave's grip.

Depending upon the cloud cover we have, our streak of triple–digit days may come to an end around here tomorrow — but, even if it does, the immediate forecast suggests that a brand–new streak is likely to begin on Sunday, and that one seems certain to continue for awhile.

Besides, as a meteorologist told Marmaduke, there isn't much difference between 99° and 100°. The difference is almost entirely psychological.

If the streak does not end tomorrow, the summer of 2011 may well go down as the hottest on record — at least in terms of consecutive 100° days.

To accomplish that, it will have to exceed the triple–digit streak of 1980 — and it just might do that, but it will never match the intensity of the summer of 1980.

I remember that one, too.

I wasn't living in Dallas in those days, but my grandmother was, and I remember coming here with my mother to visit my grandmother, who was starting to experience symptoms of dementia.

Daytime highs in 1980 seemed to get past 100° before noon and just kept climbing through the afternoon. I remember several days when temperatures flirted with 110° (the worst actually exceeded 110° a few times) — and I remember driving on the streets of Dallas and hearing the asphalt squish beneath the tires.

In 1980, a daytime high of only 100° was seen by some as a sign of an imminent cool front (it never was, but hope sprang eternal. Those triple–digit temperatures were daily facts of life for more than six weeks).

Needless to say, you could do a lot more than fry an egg on the pavement.

This summer's heat wave has been a scorcher, but the summer of 1980 (if it possessed human characteristics) would scoff. I can just imagine the things it would say. "Amateur!" it would sneer. "In my day, I gave 'em heat they're still talking about three decades later."

If some have their way, though, that consecutive triple–digit streak will tumble, and the summer of 2011 will be atop the list when all is said and done.

Marmaduke quotes a 15–year–old from Plano who wants a streak he can tell his grandkids about.

All I can say is, be careful what you wish for.

Foresight in Hindsight

I taught journalism on the college level for awhile in the 1990s, then I was sidetracked by other things.

(I liked the way Robert Redford used that word to describe, in "The Natural," why he had been away from pro ball for so long. I think it frequently applies to life in general.)

Nearly a year ago, I returned to the classroom. I've been teaching journalism again, and I've also been teaching developmental writing, which focuses on the fundamentals of written English (subjects, verbs, prepositional phrases, dependent and independent clauses, etc.), at the local community college.

As the start of my second year there approaches, I've been thinking about what I learned last year and how I can improve what I've been doing.

That isn't quite as easy as it may sound because there are many differences between being a professor at a four–year college and being an adjunct professor at a community college. I can't always apply what I learned in the classroom then to what I'm doing now.

Last year, I spent the summer preparing to teach classes that wound up being canceled just before the school year began because enrollment in those classes wasn't sufficient.

It wasn't that way when I was teaching in the 1990s. In those days, I knew what I would be teaching long before the semester began. My classes were never canceled because enrollment didn't reach a certain level.

Anyway, I hope I'll be teaching journalism again this fall. It remains to be seen if I will.

I do know, though, that I will be teaching developmental writing again — because it is required unless incoming students meet or exceed a certain grade on their placement tests — and I've been thinking about what I learned from teaching that class last year.

I think one of the most important things I have learned has to do with expectations.

Some of my students are foreign students for whom English is a second language, and they compare the rules of their native language to the rules of their acquired one. That is their frame of reference. It is how we human beings process information. We compare new knowledge to that which we already have.

For others, I think it's a simple matter of applying logic — if something is true in one usage, it must be true in all usages. Same sort of thing, really. It's all based on past experience — and the knowledge of previous outcomes.

I was thinking about this the other day, and I was reminded of an old episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy, who was expecting the couple's baby, decided that everyone who came in regular contact with her child — Ricky, Fred and Ethel — had to speak nothing but perfect English.

Ricky, whose native tongue was Spanish, resisted, but Lucy made her point by asking him to read out loud a story that worked in several words that had similar spellings but different pronunciations — all in just a few sentences.

The spelling was o–u–g–h. It was pronounced differently, of course, depending upon which letter(s) came before.

Anyway, the story Ricky read was about a woodsman. It spoke of how he cut boughs (pronounced bows) from trees.

All this cutting made his hands quite rough (pronounced ruff). Also, apparently, all this cutting released a lot of junk into the air, which gave the woodsman a hacking cough (koff).

There were other sentences that contained words like enough (enuff) and through (threw). I'm sure you get the idea.

Ricky mispronounced each word and got increasingly frustrated. Spanish isn't so complicated, he protested. A sound is always the same. It sounds the same. It is spelled the same.

Many of my students last year (and, I am sure, many of my students in the coming year) would sympathize with Ricky. Why must written English be so complicated?

Well, the main reason is that the British Isles were occupied by different conquerors over the centuries, and elements of those languages were absorbed into the evolving English language. In English, you will find words with roots from all corners of the globe — primarily from the civilizations that actively occupied Britain at different times but also from cultures that were more like bystanders.

Each contributed words (and whatever linguistic peculiarities came along with them) to the language.

As a result, you have to work a little harder to make sure that you do things correctly in English. One must apply, as fictional detective Hercule Poirot put, the little grey cells. One size does not always fit all.

I tried to make this point with my students last semester by contrasting written English with other subjects — and I unexpectedly learned a couple of things about the shortcomings of the modern educational system.

In math, I told my students, when you learn the multiplication tables, you know that they will never vary. The answers will always be the same. Two times three will always equal six. Three times three will never equal six.

You can count on it.

In chemistry, I told them, H₂O is always the chemical formula for water. It is never the chemical formula for anything else.

You can count on it.

Those examples made my point, but I wanted to add one more for emphasis. In hindsight, I should have stopped when I was ahead — and launched into my discussion of the peculiarities of the English language.

In history, I told my students, events always happened whenever they happened. When you commit an important date to memory, it doesn't change. The years in which the American Civil War was fought will always be between 1861 and 1865. The year of President Kennedy's assassination will always be 1963.

To drive home my point, I said to my students, "If someone says '1776' to you, what do you think of?"

I was shocked that no one, in a classroom full of people, raised a hand to indicate that he/she knew the answer. I thought everyone knew the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

I still think it is a good point — even if the modern education system doesn't seem to be producing high school graduates with adequate appreciation for their history. I mean, even if those students don't know those dates, they are facts that you will find in any history book.

English is much more ambiguous. It isn't as certain as a mathematical equation or a chemical formula or a date in a history book.

But that is what makes English, both spoken and written, a living, vibrant thing.

My students want written language to be a simple, fill–in–the–blank proposition, like the mathematical formulae they learned when they were younger. Logically, they know that only three times two will equal six so if they are asked to complete something like this — 3 X ___ = 6 — they know that 2 is the only possible answer.

But the rules are different for language. My students seem to have trouble understanding that the very same word may be a noun in some uses — and a verb in others.

For example, take the word run. Ordinarily, that is a verb — They run in the park.

But it can also be a noun — for example, when it is used as part of the names of events or when it is used to describe the act of scoring (particularly in baseball). Under such circumstances, it becomes a noun.

The same thing applies to spelling, punctuation, all that stuff. You've gotta use your brain.

If I can get my students to use their brains, I feel we're moving in the right direction — even if there is still much to be done on the basics.

That's the way I feel about the people who are in charge of the debt ceiling negotiations in Washington these days.

Creative solutions are required. Everyone — the president, the speaker of the House, everyone in Congress — needs to put the interests of the nation ahead of everything else.

I'd like to get all of them to look beyond their limited horizons.

They might not be able to resolve the situation once and for all — but, at least, they could deal with this crisis and move beyond the roadblocks.

Our problems, as John F. Kennedy said, are man made. Therefore, they can be solved by men.