The Lone Star State

San Antonio

From Denver I got the bus down here to Texas. Late on Thursday night I reached Amarillo for a brief layover, much to my disappointment there was no sign of Tony Christie. Presumably he's still not found it.

The bus was pretty empty so I was able to get some sleep before reaching Dallas at dawn yesterday. After a reviving breakfast in the greasiest of greasy spoons for $3 I headed along to Dealey Plaza where John F Kennedy was shot back in 1963. The first thing to notice is that it looks just like it does on the telly. The familiar dark red former School Book Depository building overlooks the area and there's a very tasteful 'X' on the road where the fatal shot hit the President. I'll admit the Grassy Knoll is something of a let down, it's barely more than a small incline, but then I suppose that's not exactly surprising. I didn't see any snipers hiding behind the white fence, but maybe it was too early in the morning for them.

The Sixth Floor museum is great though very sycophantic in its historical judgement on Kennedy. At the window Oswald fired from they've reconstructed the stack of boxes as it was, although the best exhibits are the TV and radio broadcasts from the day. They've got the first garbled UPI wire report which I found fascinating, although most of the American visitors were too busy cooing over pictures of the extended Kennedy family.

The museum also has a temporary exhibition of all the Presidential campaign adverts ever made which I spent ages looking at. It's blindingly clear that whoever has had the best TV ads has always won the election. Not much beats the wonderful "Eisenhower Answers America" spots from 1952, with Ike in a white suit and bathed in ethereal light giving winningly brief answers to the problems of confused looking yokels. Kennedy had a series of decent if baffling ads in 1960, including one with Jackie speaking in Spanish and another with Harry Belafonte. Much better was Johnson in 1964, I saw the famous "Daisy Girl" ad which hinted none-too-subtly that his Republican opponent would lead America into nuclear war. Jimmy Carter hanging around his peanut farm in 1976 was another highlight but the prize for greatest campaign ever has got to be Reagan's "Morning in America" stuff from 1984. Everything in soft focus, lots of matey backslapping with Bush and people looking hopefully into the distance, marvellous and somewhat reminiscent of those Stalin-era Communist posters. It was pretty amusing watching the ads from 2000 again, the one where Bush says Gore's policies would "wipe out America's surplus" is particularly ironic. As for the worst campaign ever, the clear winner is Michael Dukakis from 1988, the ads were boring, weak and confusing. At least Kerry's avoiding most of the mistakes his old boss made.

No hostels in Dallas so I headed down here in the afternoon to get a bed and was very impressed to find myself staying in a hostel with a pool. Having come the length of the country on the bus to emerge into sticky Southern Texas a lengthy swim was the perfect way to spend the evening, followed by a huge and very cheap meal at the Mexican round the corner. As for today I've got shorts on again, so I'm off to take a look around the city.