Jack in the box

 By Andrew W. Griffin

I have been reading H. P. Albarelli’s (who died not too long ago) Coup in Dallas: The Decisive Investigation Into Who Killed JFK and it is excellent – and I have read most of the conspiracy-leaning books on the JFK assassination over the past 30-or-so years.

As NYU media studies professor Mark Crispin Miller wrote of Albarelli’s book: “What occurred that day in Dallas was, indeed, a coup – a coup meticulously carried out by fascist zealots still devoted to the cause that was ostensibly defeated with the fall of Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany.”

I read that line and thought about what has happened in the past couple of years, as “Joe Biden” stumbled into the White House under a heavy cloud of suspicion and deceit. Cue the COVID-19(84) bug and the lockdowns and Orwellian Newspeak and Huxley and Orwell seem like prophets.

Driving down to Corpus Christi last week to spend some time with my folks, my very thoughtful and intelligent uncle was there and I was in the other room. The subject of what really happened on November 22, 1963 in Dallas came up. I knew if I came in the room and offered my opinion, it would not be popular with my history-loving uncle. And he is a guy who reads everything and yet he believes Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. How can this be with all of the volumes of information that have been released since the Warren Commission’s official cover-up? I don’t understand it.

Mom, meanwhile, took me by her old Catholic school she attended there in Corpus Christi on that fateful day and said the nuns were crying over the news and it was just awful. A turning point in America – and the world.

Funny. I was in Burkburnett, Texas a few weeks back, before a local election. And a guy was running for public office – a guy named Lee Harvey! And the tagline on his campaign sign? “A man who gets the job done.” Indeed.

It keeps coming up – the JFK assassination. And today, I pulled out my CD copy of Camper Van Beethoven’s excellent 1989 album Key Lime Pie.

Following the Eastern European-influenced “Opening Theme,” the song “Jack Ruby” comes on, one of my favorite songs the band ever recorded, back in the weeks prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Singer David Lowery (who later form Cracker, a band I really liked and saw once – but I was thrown out into the street two songs in ….) sings, his voice strained, guitars screeching with spooky menace: “I remember his hat tilted forward His glasses are folded in his vest And he seems like the kind of man who beats his horses Or the dancers who work at a bar We saw on the screen his face for a moment No time to plead or even ask why Jack Ruby appears from out of nowhere Then disappears in broad daylight 'Cause he's a friend of that cloven-hoofed gangster the devil He's been seen with the sheriff and the police Drinking whiskey and water after hours, saying "Let's do business, boys. The drinks are on me."

I listened to this song over and over in the car today. It was really triggering something in me. A feeling of dread. As I thought of the name “Jack Ruby” and who he was, I glance up and I see the word “Jack” in white on a big ruby-red background. What?!?! And then see it is a sign advertising a Jack In The Box hamburger restaurant. As I am driving past it, Lowery sings that next line: “So draw the box along quickly / Avert your eyes with shame.”

I mean, what is this? This sort of synchromystical shit happens all the fucking time now. All the fucking time.

The song closes out thusly, eerily echoing the feeling I and many others are feeling today, with the Ukrainian nightmare unfolding daily …

But it feels like this calm it's decaying It's collapsing under its own weight / And I think its your friend the hangman coming / Choking back a laugh, a drunkard swaggering to your door / Now do you feel that cold, icy presence ? In the morning with coffee and with bread  / Do you feel it in the movement of traffic And days are terrible, simply forget.”

Hearing this song. I was in traffic.

And days are terrible. Simply forget …