Across The USA by Dodge
Chapter 18
Friday July 31st 1992
I woke early and drove about 40 miles to San Marcos where there's an amazing VF factory outlet complex -- this contains a huge collection of "name" shops selling all manner of good, particularly clothes. I got a pair of Nikes, some shirts, CD's and a few books all at very cheap prices.
From there it was a short trip to another cave -- the San Marcos Wonder World where they have a Wonder Cave Tour plus the Tejas Observation Tower, an anti-gravity house and wildlife park.
A trip down a farm road to soak up the local atmosphere then back to I-35 to Round Rock, Georgetown) where I visited a candle factory) then to Inner Space, yet another cave system.
After that I drove north to Temple where a violent storm came up at around 6pm and lasted until 7pm when I reached Waco, a town with real western heritage.
There was a story on the front page of the Dallas Morning news while I was there about an Australian guy who was trying to get his two children out of a cult in Waco called the Branch Davidians led by some jerk called David Koresh. Just over eight months later 82 people died at the compound in an FBI raid gone wrong.
Saturday August 1st 1992
After a trip to the motel laundry (I was starting to run out of clothes) it was on to Fort Fisher and the Texas Ranger Museum and Hall of Fame.
After stops at Loves and Hillsboro it was on to Dallas. I didn't see J.R., but I did visit the Sixth Floor (actually the Dallas County Administration Building) which was formerly known as the Texas School Book Depository back in the sixties. They still reckon Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman but I find that very hard to believe. As an aside, have you seen "JFK"?
They won't let you take photos inside the building -- in fact a lot of places I visited ban photos. I remember one museum in Albuquerque where a guy ignored the signs and started snapping away at a conquistador exhibit. All of a sudden a guard appeared out of nowhere and grabbed his camera -- "You can't take photographs inside the building sir." -- and marched him away. He probably got dragged off to the electric chair...
In the corner of the building there's a caged off area with a wax figure of Oswald, rifle in hand aimed out the window.
It's pretty amazing to stand there and see all those places you've always heard about or seen in grainy black and white films and then walk along "the Grassy Knoll", through Dealey Plaza and past the Red Court House.
My vote for the worst memorial in the world goes to the JFK Memorial in Dallas. It consists of a concrete slab about the size of a swimming pool with a slightly raised white concrete wall on all four sides. That's it! No plaques, no statues, no nothing.
One strange thing happened in Dallas. After coming back from seeing the Sixth Floor I decided to walk to a nearby shopping centre which was only one block from the motel. I went into a K Mart to have a look around and as I walked through the front door the theme from Twilight Zone started playing in my head. That should have been warning enough.
Anyway, I looked left at the 500 checkouts -- every single checkout chick was black. Uhh. I walked down the main aisle and looked at the CD section. Hip hop, rap, house music and Whitney Houston sections. Uhh. Black sales assistants, black shoppers, black behemoth-sized mothers dragging black snotty-nosed kids and black shop-lifters being nabbed by black store detectives. Uhh. I walked down another aisle -- black black black. OK, I don't think I should be in here. I made my way back to the front of the shop and bought a packet of aniseed tic tacs (the store policy was that you couldn't leave without buying something). The large checkout mama gave me a what-are-you-doing-in-here-you-white-honky-bastard look, took the quarter from my sweaty palm and I skulked out the front door and then dashed back to the safety of my motel.
Hey, they should have signs: "Warning, warning, you have just entered a black neighbourhood. If your skin is the same colour as Michael Jackson do not enter."
Chapter 19
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