Trying to Figure Out Oswald
So, I've been spending some time trying to get my head around this whole Lee Harvey Oswald deal. You hear the name, and boom, it's all Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. But his own story ended so fast, and so damn publicly. Jack Ruby just walks up and shoots him. Made me think, what's really going on there, you know, under the surface?
I started poking around, really. Just trying to build my own picture of it all, like doing my own 'autopsy' on the whole mess. Not a medical one, mind you, but more like taking apart the story, piece by piece. History, man, it’s a real tangle.
First thing you hit is the official stuff. The Warren Commission guys, they said Oswald did it, all by himself. Then Ruby comes along and shoots Oswald, also supposedly on his own. Sounds tidy, almost too tidy, if you ask me. That’s what really got me digging.
So, what I did, my 'practice' if you wanna call it that, was just trying to lay out the timeline.
- Okay, Oswald fires from the Texas School Book Depository. Sixth floor, they say. Nails Kennedy, and Governor Connally gets hit too. They even said he got that fatal shot from like 260 feet away.
- Then he just bolts. Imagine the chaos, huh?
- Bit later, he runs into this Dallas cop, J.D. Tippit. Things go south, and Oswald shoots him dead. Another one gone.
And then, just like that, two days later – November 24th. They’re moving Oswald, from a jail cell to some other room, and this nightclub fella, Jack Ruby, just steps right out of the crowd and bang. Shoots him. Right there, for everyone to see, cameras rolling and everything. Crazy stuff.
I read somewhere that Ruby got convicted, March 14, 1964, found guilty of murder and got the death sentence. Don't think he ever made it to execution, though. It’s like one thing just crashes into the next, then the next.
It’s wild, you start looking into one tiny part, and it just explodes into this massive web of stuff. You think you're just looking at one guy's 'autopsy,' but you end up trying to pick apart a whole sequence of events, a lot of decisions, and man, so many questions that just kinda hang there. My 'practice' was just me trying to follow all these different threads, see where they went. Wasn't about playing doctor; more like being a detective inside my own head, going through old news and what people said. You know, they say when Kennedy first got to the hospital, Parkland Memorial, around 12:43 p.m., the first doc to see him actually heard a heartbeat for a second. Just shows you how quick things flip, from alive to… well, to being a chapter in a history book and something people argue about forever.
Trying to make sense of Oswald’s end, it really shows you how a person can turn into a simple line in a book, or a giant puzzle, all depending on who’s telling the story. My big 'takeaway' from all this poking around? History’s a heck of a lot messier than the clean versions they try to sell you.
