Edward McPherson - The History of the Future

Copyright 2017 by Edward McPherson

Cover design by Carlos Esparza

Book design by Rachel Holscher

Author photograph Carly Ann Faye

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: McPherson, Edward, 1977 author.

Title: The history of the future: American essays / Edward McPherson.

Description: Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2017.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016039380 | ISBN 9781566894760 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesDescription and travelAnecdotes. | United StatesSocial life and customs1971Anecdotes. | McPherson, Edward, 1977Anecdotes. | BISAC: HISTORY / Social History.

Classification: LCC E169.Z83 M37955 2017 | DDC 973.924dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039380

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of these essays have appeared in the following journals: Echo Patterns and Open Ye Gates! Swing Wide Ye Portals! in the Paris Review Daily, Lost and Found in the American Scholar, End of the Line in Catapult, Chasing the Boundary in the Gettysburg Review, and How to Survive an Atomic Bomb in True Story.

24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

For Penny

... how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on.

W. G. SEBALD, AUSTERLITZ

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.

FLANNERY OCONNOR, WISE BLOOD

Table of Contents

Contents

Between 318 and 271 million years ago, the ancient continental core of North America butted against what would become South America. Land folded and faulted; mountains were born. Then what would become the Gulf of Mexico opened, and inland seas washed the peaks away. It pays to remember there are mountains beneath Dallas. The tops might have eroded, but the roots remain buried deep.

Some 165 million years laterin 1841John Neely Bryan built a shelter on a bluff and called the area Dallas.

One hundred and twenty-two years laterin 1963John F. Kennedy was shot on that bluff, now named Dealey Plaza.

Seventeen years laterin 1980J. R. Ewing was shot on TV.

Dallas came from nothing. Unlike surrounding areas, it was not a camp for Native Americans or prehistoric men. Dig and you find few artifacts. The Trinity River formed a boundary for ancient tribes: farmers to the east and hunters to the west. The Trinity is a true Texan; it begins and ends within the state. Its 710-mile path slices through what is now downtown Dallas, making Dallas a city on the cusp, on the boundary, in between. It wavers between being and not being. Dallas wasnt there untilsuddenlyit was, called forth in the minds of white men.

John Neely Bryan, the founder of Dallas, was born in Tennessee in 1810. In 1839, he arrived at the three forks of the Trinity River with a Cherokee he called Ned and a dog he called Tubby. He was twenty-nine. He wrote his name on a piece of buckskin, affixed it to a stake, drove it into the soft ground of an eighteen-foot bluff, and went back to Arkansas. Two years later, he returned to his bluff and built a lean-to. In another two years, he was married, a union that brought five children. Dallasas he called his claimwas on its way.

John Neely Bryan took to the bottle. In 1855, he shot a drunken man who might or might not have insulted his wife. Bryan fled to Indian Territory and hid for six years. He drifted west, looking for gold. It was a time of paranoia (I do not write to anyone at Dallas except you, for I cannot place my confidence in any of the rest), privation (I was in a storm sometime since and a tree blowed down on my horse and broke him down in the line. Since which I have had to borrow), and fantasies of revenge (I am surprised at Colonel Stone and the other attorneys in Dallas for turning against me and I shall meet them when they least expect it and will then know the reason why they do so). In 1861, he came back to town after hearing the man he shot had lived. His children didnt recognize him. He joined the army, buta physical wreckwas discharged a year later. He died in a lunatic asylum in Austin in 1877.

Today, John Neely Bryans bluff is called Dealey Plaza, after civic leader and newspaperman George Bannerman Dealey. Built in 1941, Dealey Plaza was dubbed The Front Door of Dallas. In other words, all roads to Dallas run through Dealey Plaza.

Of course, thats not entirely true. Born and raised but no longer living in Dallas, I rarely have found myself there.

The original Dallas TV show aired 357 episodes from 1978 to 1991. It is a soap opera that often runs on the logic of farce: no one tells anyone else anything, and these often pointlessly kept secrets cause great misunderstanding. But from its swooping opening helicopter shotwith its swelling French horns and syncopated beat scoring a shifting triptych of skyscrapers, cattle, oil wells, football, ranchland, and EwingsDallas is surprisingly compelling television: a bunch of beautiful people making disastrous choices at a spectacular rate. My wife remembers watching the show with her family growing up in Missouri. Rewatching the series now, when a shirtless Patrick Duffy surfaces dripping from a pool, she says, I think thats the chest I imprinted on. There passes an uncomfortable moment, but, in a way, shes rightthe rest of the country imprinted on Dallas, too.

While locals derided the shows inaccuracies (all those California cowboys stepping gingerly about in their ropers), the original series was rooted in a sense of place. It was a dream of a certain expression of wealth, taste, and desire that always drove back to one thingfamily. How quaint all those communal meals seem now, with three generations meeting at the table for breakfast and dinner (making sure to phone when they plan to be out all night on their nefarious errands). The shows constant refrain, Youre a Ewing, meant, Act like one. Southforksuch small potatoes to the McMansions of todaywas a prison. The series was a journey into the claustrophobic dark heart of familial dysfunction. The central, often paranoid, concern: us against them. And that is how the show got Dallas right.

Former Dallas Mayor R. L. Thornton, on December 4, 1963, less than two weeks after Kennedy was gunned down: Ive heard people talking about erecting a monument in their sadness. For my part, I dont want anything to remind me that a president was killed on the streets of Dallas. I want to forget.