Dealey Plaza: Smaller Than You Think

The grassy knoll is modest. The street curves gently. The sixth-floor window looks like any other window. The ordinariness is the horror. The X on Elm Street marks where the first shot hit. Cars drive over it continuously. Most drivers don't notice.

The Sixth Floor Museum audio guide walks through the day with restraint refusing both sensationalism and sentimentality. The corner where Oswald positioned himself: preserved behind glass, boxes as they were, window half-raised. The view from behind the glass to the street below is the view that changed the century.

Dallas carried this weight for decades. The museum is the city's answer — not excuse but accounting, meticulously researched, honestly presented. Stand on the sidewalk and watch traffic pass over the X. Daily routine and historical catastrophe in the same frame. The city doesn't ask forgiveness. It asks you to understand what happened and consider what it means that history can turn on a curve and an open window.