Sonya Wilson's Blog

Spring 2011

I’d already decided that traveling alone is a fascinating way to explore the world, but this past trip to Dallas brought me a few pleasant surprises that substantiated this conclusion of mine.

I began by attending a conference at the Dallas Hyatt which planted me smack dab in the middle of downtown Dallas.  With an afternoon free, I decided to do what I love to do most when in a new city—meander around in a semi-aimless fashion and stumble upon cool discoveries along the way.

I left the hotel, which was throbbing with clusters of laughing, talking people, and wandered away for some solitude only to encounter more clusters of people exploring Dallas together.  For some reason, I was starting to feel that traveling alone was kind of a lame idea.  Then I ran into a really cool castle-like museum called the Old Red and forgot about it, being as I was wrapped up in trying to get a photo shot from the right angle, which as you can see never really happened.

After that I wandered over toward a small crowd of people on a little patio next to a little grassy knoll.

I came closer to see what was going on, and in turns out that this was THE grassy knoll, the grassy knoll from which a shot allegedly rang out on November 22 of 1963, which alleged shot may have been THE shot that killed President Kennedy.  An ex-US government investigator was hawking his books laden with photos, and his glib sidekick was talking up a storm through a microphone. I joined the crowd to listen to how Lee Harvey Oswald may not have fired the shot that killed Kennedy, how other guns were found in other surrounding buildings, and how smoke was captured on camera as coming from this, the, grassy knoll.

“Glib Sidekick” continued to discuss more graphic details including the injury that Kennedy sustained and how it was covered up, as it gave clues as to the direction of the bullet and pointed to the very possible conclusion that contrary to previous thought, the Kennedy assassination was actually a conspiracy.

“What kind of group would conspire to kill the president?” someone asked.

“Well, the mob and the CIA, you know, they were in cahoots over other deals too,” Glib Sidekick replied.

“The CIA?” the guy next to me says.  “What interest would the CIA have in it?”

“An excellent question.  Are you two together?”  He looked at me.

The guy and I looked at each other.  “No.”

“Would you like to be together?  Cuz you should, you’d make a really cute couple.  So people in the CIA could’ve had several reasons; they thought he was a threat to national security, he closed down anti-Castro training centers that had links to the CIA, he was pulling out of the Vietnam War…” he rambled on.  A slight breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees above us.  It was quite a pleasant, serene spot.

“You see that tiny white X on the road?” Glib Sidekick pointed to a small mark in the street just beyond us.  “That’s where the bullet hit the street.  Yeah, who would know, right?  And this grassy knoll isn’t a distinctive landmark either, I mean most of you didn’t expect to find us here, you were probably just wandering around and saw us…like this lovely couple, who just met, by the way…” he gestured toward me and the guy next to me.

The people around us laughed.

“I’m serious dude, if you don’t ask her out, I will.   So folks, the photos you see here are all not released to the general public until 75 years after the assassination, which means they won’t be available until 2039, but you can get it all here in this magazine….”

He talked rapidly and engagingly, rattling off interesting bits of information just a bit too fast for me to file them all in my brain.

“So the government has actually agreed that it was a conspiracy, but surprisingly, most public school textbooks aren’t updated to reflect this.  Interestingly enough, all home-school textbooks are.”  He looked at us.  “Are you going to home-school your kids?”

More chuckles.  This guy was not letting up, but it was kind of funny.  “We haven’t discussed that yet,” I replied.

When he was done with his spiel, Glib Sidekick stepped over to us.  “So what are you both doing in Dallas?” he asked.

“I’m at a conference down at the Hyatt,” I said.

“I’m going to a wedding tonight across the street at the Old Red,” said the guy, who looked to be about my age.

“A wedding; great!  You taking her?  No?  Would you like to take her?”

We smiled, but this was getting sort of ridiculous.

“Seriously dude, if you don’t ask her out, I’m next in line, k?”  He finally walked off.

So after he had left us alone, we introduced ourselves because it seemed like the only polite thing to do after such a setup.  As we walked away from the crowd, Glib Sidekick called, “Hey!  You going off together?”

“Yeah.  We’re just going to explore the city.”

The look on his face seemed to be an amusing combination of surprised, pleased, confused, and wistful.  We left him to sort out his emotions.

So an awkward meeting, truly, but the guy and I had a great time wandering the streets of Dallas, encountering unexpected gems like an aviary tucked into an obscure street corner and the most hardcore cowboy store either of us have ever seen.  He also loves to travel, so we had a great time talking about our favorite ways to explore new cities and what we liked about the different scenes of Dallas unfolding right in front of us.  (And no, we didn’t get to the topic of home-schooling our kids.)

As we parted ways, I realized that had I not been alone in the first place, I wouldn’t have gotten to know Random Dallas Friend (which is what he called me in his email.  He said I should definitely blog about our little adventure but not use his name; the internet is a small place, you know).  So here’s to new and unexpected travel discoveries, to a glib comedian, and to an unnamed half-Italian engineer—a fun fifty-minute friend to have while exploring downtown Dallas.

This entry was posted on May 17, 2012 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Travel. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.