What Dallas Was Like During the JFK Assassination

I had a dentist in Dallas when I was a kid. He used to hypnotize people and I, you know, he's going to drill a cavity for me and I said I'd like for you to hypnotize me and so it was, you know, your mouth is feeling like a block of wood. Your mouth is feeling like a block of wood. Nurse, I think he's ready. I said, no, I'm not. Give me the Novocaine. But then the only other time that I had what was kind of success in being hypnotized was in 1983. It was the 20th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and I had grown up in Dallas during the assassination. There was a story that was quite widely circulated that school children in Dallas had laughed when they heard the news. And I wasn't sure that I hadn't been one of them. I remember being astonished. I remember gaping. I remember, you know, did a ha ha ha come out of my mouth? I don't know. If it did, you know, but I think I smiled in amazement. I'm not really sure. I mean, you have to go back to what Dallas was like at that time. It was hysterical. You know, the politics were off the rails and Kennedy was hated, although not in my family. But, you know, there was this sense of Dallas as being a separate entity from the rest of the country and that Kennedy was the enemy. And I was anxious that maybe I had been one of those people that laughed. And so I had a friend who was a therapist who did hypnosis and I asked her to hypnotize me and see if she could take me back to the classroom and help me remember. So she put me under, regressed my memories to the point that I hear the ding ding ding PA system and the choked voice of our principal coming on. Did she tell you you're hearing these things? No. Did you just help? She's asking me. You know, what you could recall. Yeah, what do I recall? And I remember seeing the face of my friend Steve Zink, one of my classmates in the algebra class and I couldn't get it myself. And so she gave me a post hypnotic suggestion that I would have a dream and it would reveal to me what I what I had experienced. And so I did have a very vivid dream. And it was I was flying in a helicopter over the canopy of what I thought was Vietnam jungle. And you were looking for a child and I saw it in the top of a canopy just lying on top of the tree. And as we got closer, I realized it was actually just a doll with his little X eyes. And that was the dream. And I decided from that that I was that the me that I thought, you know, might have laughed was just a figment, you know, an effigy of some sort. And that, you know, I really hadn't laughed. You don't have to understand what a scarring experience it was to have been from Dallas at that period of time and how everybody in the world hated you. It's just a strange thing to try to remember what was your reaction. How old are you at the time? Thirteen, I guess. So, yeah, but it's a very strange thing. Did you feel like you felt guilt at the possibility that you had laughed? Yeah, I did. I didn't want to be one of those people. And I have friends from Dallas who do remember people in their classroom laughing. And my experience that I, you know, the real memory I have of it is that people looked around and just stunned astonishment. And part of the astonishment, I think, was that we just thought nothing would ever happen in Dallas. It was, you know, on the one hand, it was totally crazy. And on the other hand, it was totally paralyzed. You know, there was just a sense, the conformity was so powerful that, you know, you felt imprisoned by the sameness of every day, every thought, you know, just this very, very rigid environment. So some spectacularly unique occurrence, like the president getting assassinated in Daley Plaza, just seemed impossible. Oddly enough, no. I mean, that was the thing. You know, if it's going to happen anywhere, it seemed like Dallas would be the right spot. Because they hated Kennedy. And even that morning, I went out to get the newspaper and there was that famous ad, welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas, you know, just this bleak thing. And then there was, you know, it's just... How was it bleak? Oh, it made all these absurd charges about, you know, his aiding communists and so on. And race, you know, race, they had a racist undertone to it. It was... There was... Yeah, there it is. It shows up. You can see how it's... Can't read all that. Well, it says, welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas. You can see that it is saying a city, a city. It's about who we are. And we are not you. And it was almost... And then in the same newspaper, maybe your guy can find it, there is a wanted... Oh, no, wait a minute. It's separate. It was on top of the newspaper was a wanted poster for Kennedy with full face and profile. Somebody had placed it on top of that. And it's like wanted for treason or something like that. There it is. Wow, wanted for treason. Yeah, that was on our doorstep that morning. So that was the atmosphere of Dallas in 1963. There was a... Adlai Stevenson had come to Dallas in October, the month before, to make a speech about the United Nations. And he was the UN ambassador. And he was assaulted. And they went out to greet the crowd. He was booed down. And by the way, I think Lee Harvey Oswald was in the audience that night. But he went out and tried to talk to the crowd. And Stanley Marcus was his escort. And he said, don't try that, Adlai. You know, this is crazy. And people were really worked up. This woman was holding a sign and she whapped it down on top of Ambassador Stevenson's head. And the sign said, if you seek peace, ask Jesus. So that's... At some reason that always struck me as the Dallas... And I just want to say, as I'm talking about Dallas in the past, Dallas of today is a totally different place. And I think in some ways, it was so chastened and humbled by that horrible experience. I've said in the past, if Kennedy had to die somewhere, I'm grateful he did in Dallas because it made that city a far better place. And you remember the police killings a few years ago, nine cops? Yeah. The way it was a block away from the Daley Plaza, but the way in which that city handled that tragedy by comparison was so magnificent. You know, I just, I have a lot of admiration for the city that Dallas has become. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.