CATAGORIES: GENERAL NONSENSE — FloridaBill @ 11:57 pm

This is not our usual WIR folks. I’ve been in Dallas watching a trial all week after meeting up with ZappaCrappa on Sunday night. It has been going well for the good guys. It goes to the jury on Thursday. If there is justice, we should prevail. Since we are in Texas and justice works differently here I should not be, but I will still be very surprised if we lose. I’ll let you know.

After leaving the courthouse today, I wandered over to Dealey Plaza, only a couple of blocks from the trial. You can see a part of the plaza (some of which is under some kind of construction) from the 8th floor window of the State Courthouse in Dallas on Commerce Street. Saturday will be the 45th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. I made my way to the top of the grassy knoll and met the most fascinating man. His name is Michael Brownlow. He is a HUGE conspiracy theorist and I was rivetted to what he had to say.

He sells pictures of himself at age 13 that were allegedly taken 12 seconds before President Kennedy was shot. Brownlow can be seen next to his grandmother as the President’s motorcade made the left turn onto Elm street in front of the Texas Book Depository. He had a small audience of five or six people (one of which is the first commenter on the link above) and he was holding court. He claims he personally saw the puff of smoke that came from the picket fence on the grassy knoll on that fateful day. The link above disputes that to a degree. He claims to know the names of the four gunmen who allegedly shot the President and that the entire matter was orchestrated by the CIA, the Mafia and the Dallas PD. The mayor of Dallas at the time was also involved as he made a last minute change to the motorcade route and refused to say why until he died.

He was very eloquent and had a deep baritone voice. He is an African-American who used the N word liberally, claiming that Kennedy was shot, in part, because he was “nigger lover”. He seemed to know more than his share of facts, names of witnesses, what happened to them (28 apparently murdered within 6 years of the assassination) and details that only someone who has spent a very large portion of their life talking about this issue would know. He claimed that George H. W. Bush was also in the picture that he was selling. The fact that he wasn’t really pushing the sale of the pictures was part of his allure to me. The pics ar ecolor 8 X 10’s in plastic as if taken from a notebook and he had a small stack of them available. He answered questions directly, but with an obvious effort to shock and to try and set the records straight (as he sees and/or saw it). He knew many facts about Oswald, Jack Ruby and many of the members of the Dallas PD, one of whom he claims was his uncle, who was allegedly the first ever Black Dallas police officer.

I asked Brownlow a number of questions including why none of what he was saying was published and he claims to have written a book that is no longer in print called “Shatterred Friday”. I did a little checking can’t locate anything on it at all. Brownlow told his small audience that Dan Rather was present at the shooting (true?) and changed his story about what he saw three days later. It was soon thereafter that Rather became the Washington correspondant for CBS news. Brownlow also said that Rather and Walter Cronkite will both be at or near the Plaza over the next couple of days for the 45th anniversary of the event. I was mesmerized by Mr. Brownlow, but I think he may be loopy. He was certainly convinced of what he was saying and was very interesting. Apparently he holds court on the steps of the pergola on the grassy knoll if you ever want to meet him.

How was your week?