CHAPTER 15 The Fat Lady Sings

The enormity of the assasination never really settled in on me in those days. It has come in large, unexpected doses in the later years of my life, sometimes causing incredulity and sometimes tears. JFK was not just assasinated, he was sacrificed to the gods of an alien religion. All the entities that are corrupt, petty and insane were fed that day.

We live in this country even now, like a child who has awakened from a nightmare where a brother has been snatched from the bed beside us and devoured by some obscene monster lurking just above the bedcovers. We live in cold, horrified fear of that monster but haven't the courage to pull down the covers and look. We want it to go away. Maybe if we ignore it. Maybe if we convince ourselves that it doesn't exist, it won't. Maybe we can live every day next to something that is so huge it can't be seen. Maybe we can forget our fear if we don't try to understand it.

I called the radio station and asked my boss what I should do. Where should I place myself as a news feed? I was told to stay the hell put and not to go anywhere. Don't call anyone and don't call the station again. Stay by the phone and wait for instructions. I was quite content with that. I was on the edge of the biggest news story of the century, but I had no stomach for it. Off in the distance later, I heard a lone jet taking off. It seemed to not fly the regular takeoff pattern. It was Air Force One.

The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald was just as numbing. The grandstand play by Jack Ruby was like something rehearsed. What better way to distort the truth than to kill the only suspect? That the Dallas police - any police anywhere, could be so lax with security was just plain sinister. And what of the "Lady in red" who claimed many years later that she saw Jack Ruby running from the grassy knoll that day? What of that testimony? Who do we ignore? Why do we ignore them? I was told years later that my grandfather who was a laborer at Rose Hill Cemetary, had been a part of the crew that buried Lee Harvey Oswald in a hurried rush. Grandpa died in 1969. Whatever he had remembered of that event was never shared with me. That and the evidence shown in the Zapruder films was as close as I got to the events surrounding the assasination - except for one thing. I had become friends at KVIL with Tom Matts who was one of the finest newsmen in the country. He knew something about everything and a good deal more than most anyone had any idea of. Since I worked the night shift and he worked days, there were shift overlaps and other rare occasions when Tom and I could visit. I ran into him a month or so after the assasination at a bank near Lee Park, in fashionable Turtle Creek. I asked him point blank if he didn't think there was some kind of cover-up going on and his response was; "You ain't just a-shit'n there is". That's a definitive Texas slang response for "Yes" and probably originated in the days of the two-hole outhouse.

A month later Tom was dead. Heart attack, they said. High blood pressure. Those of us who knew Tom were saddened. This thin, wiry man of about 5'6" must have gotten really emotionally upset to have had a heart attack. Or perhaps, something disagreed with him. I didn't need to know about it all to understand. I was very aware of being in a world that did not belong to itself. Remain dumb. Stay alive. Off in the distance behind all this somewhere, was the dark cloud that was Vietnam. Newspaper pictures of Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson somehow all seemed to be made by the same camera. They all had the same expression. It was desperation born of too much responsibility. I've seen the same looks on the faces of prisoners and unfortunate persons captured by their jobs or a bad marriage. I began to face the possibility that those faces may have plans for me.

Comedian Robin Williams made a terse statement about the 1960's twenty years after they passed; "If you remember the sixties, you weren't really there." It is one of the most profound summaries I have ever heard. I reflect occasionally about the nostalgia crazes surrounding the music and styles of the fifties and sixties. I would have enjoyed those years much more had I realized we were having so much fun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2006 UPDATE/REVISION
Over the last few years writing for a couple of news websites, I have garnred information that I will have to label here as "Rumor" or "Hear-Say"

Having a distant cousin Gus Wortham who is reported to have been the
money behind LBJ - and having posession of a picture called "The Wink" [which MAY have been Photoshoppes] and having been given information of over 16 defined bullet strikes in the limo, buildings and pavement at Dealy Plaza--- I have to conclude that Oswald was indeed a patsy. His antique italian rifle MIGHT have been fired once or twice or even three times but at that... maybe one hit. Definitely NOT the JFK kill shot,

I believe there wer SEVERAL guns used at Dealy Plaza, more than one of them fired perhaps from a train on the viaduct. ALL OF THEM USING SILENCERS. Except one. The kill shot and MAYBE Oswald's. The kill shot was a Dum-Dum. An explosive bullet used in African big game shooting. It enters the target, then explodes.

The players? LBJ. The Mafia. J. Edgar Hoover. George H.W. Bush. Richard Nixon. Many others.. Probably Gus Wortham. Members of The Federal Reserve Corporation, Rothschilds/Rockerfellers, etc. Did I leave anybody out? Oh, Possibly Marilyn Monroe. Not as a conspirator but as an unwilling, coerced accomplice.