Marginalia And The Kennedy Assassination — 1 & 2

I have two small items that I think about every year around this time.

The two items are unrelated to each other and they are both kind of trivial and silly. But since I’ve never seen anybody else discuss these two little things in connection with the Kennedy Assassination—not in fringe conspiracy magazines, not in books, not on the internet (and that’s saying something!)—I thought I’d lump them together today and put them out there.

Maybe somebody will find them interesting, even if they are both kind of silly.

MARGINALIA AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION — 1
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“At the Houses of Parliament
Everybody’s talking about the President
We all chipped in for a bag of cement”

Those three lines are one verse from a song written by a very famous musician. The meaning of the lines seems reasonably plain: “Houses of Parliament” means it’s talking about Britain. They don’t have a president there, so it’s probably talking about the president of the US. And “bag of cement” is a fairly well known euphemism for killing someone.

And only one modern president of the US was murdered.

So, these three lines seem to be saying that powerful people in Britain funded the Kennedy Assassination.

As plain as these three lines may be, it is almost inconceivable that the lines are meant to be taken plainly. Yet how else can they be heard?

These lines come from a song called “Junior’s Farm,” written by Paul McCartney during his Wings years. Now Paul generally wrote silly love songs, silly nonsense songs, and some serious music. “Junior’s Farm” certainly seems to be one of his silly nonsense songs. Here are the above lyrics, in context:

You should have seem me With the poker man I had a honey and I bet a grand Just in the nick of time I looked at his hand I was talking to an Eskimo Said he was hoping for a fall of snow When up popped a sea lion ready to go Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go Down to Junior's Farm Where I want to lay low Low life, high life, oh, let's go Take me down to Junior's Farm At the Houses of Parliament Everybody's talking about the President We all chipped in for a bag of cement Ollie Hardy should have had more sense He bought a gee-gee And he jumped the fence All for the sake of a couple of pence

Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go Down to Junior's Farm Where I want to lay low Low life, high life, oh, let's go Take me down to Junior's Farm I took my bag into a grocery store The prices higher than the time before Old man asked me "Why is it more?" I said "You should have seem me With the poker man I had a honey and I bet a grand Just in the nick of time I looked at his hand Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go Down to Junior's Farm Where I want to lay low Low life, high life, oh, let's go Take me down to Junior's Farm Take me back Take me back I want to go there...

It’s one of Paul’s silly nonsense songs. But why would anybody include a verse about one of the most troubling political events of the modern era in the middle of a song about nonsense?

And, pointedly, why would Paul McCartney include a verse about one of the most troubling political events of the modern era in a nonsense song since Paul lived through the whole Manson era, when the nuts were saying the Beatles were slipping secret political messages into their songs, and Paul lived through the whole British Invasion thing, which tin-foil fringe Anglophobes have always built conspiracy theories around, saying it was really a British black-ops attack on American culture in general.

This verse always makes me shake my head. It is certainly not nonsense itself, yet it certainly is in the middle of a nonsense song. I can’t imagine why Paul McCartney wrote it.

MARGINALIA AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION — 2
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“...The bright sun began warming the car’s occupants as they approached the Texas School Book Depository. Atop the building was a large Hertz Rent-A-Car sign containing a digital time and temperature display. In front of the Depository, the limousine slowed to a crawl to make a 120-degree turn onto Elm Street, although turns of more than 90 degrees were prohibited by the Secret Service. The turn was so tight that Greer almost ran the limousine up onto the north curb near the Depository’s front door, according to Depository superintendent Roy Truly. The car continued a slow glide down the incline of Elm into Dealey Plaza...”

That’s a quote from “Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy.” My point is that Elm Street is probably the most infamous street name in US history. It’s the street on which Kennedy was shot. I think almost everyone remembers Elm Street from watching documentaries about that day in Dallas or from reading about that day.

I’ve always been intrigued that filmmaker Wes Craven wrote and directed one of the most popular horror films ever made and that film has the title, “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Now, the accepted back-story of the “Elm Street” title is that it is simply a personal reference from Wes Craven to a street on the east coast near where he, as a very young man, once made a student film.

However I am not sure I believe that.

Wes Craven is a politically-oriented guy. Wes Craven asked Bill Clinton if Clinton would allow him to film his final days in the White House and Clinton granted Craven access to the White House. Wes Craven gave numerous interviews when his film “The People Under the Stairs” was released in which he said he hoped people would understand that he intended the film as an allegory for the Reagan years in the White House.

It is inconceivable to me that anybody who is sensitive to politics could use “Elm Street” without that usage being a conscious reference to the Elm Street in Dallas. But no matter how carefully I look at the plot of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” I can’t decipher any political allegory there, at least not one that seems to be a reference to the Kennedy Assassination.

The title of the film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” makes me shake my head. Wes Craven is an intelligent, careful craftsman and a decent guy. I don’t believe he could have used “Elm Street” as a free-floating allusion simply to his own past or simply as a knee-jerk reference to a generically sad event. However, although I’m usually pretty good at ferreting out hidden meanings, I don’t see any in the film. But I haven’t given up looking.

I do have one kind of addendum to this item. One time I was talking to a Young Person about this. I described the issue, the street name in Dallas, the movie title. They thought about it for a second then said, “Well, you know, sometimes things in real life work backward in a silly way. Maybe the secret service guy who arranged the route of the President’s motorcade in Dallas arranged for the motorcade to go on that street because the guy was a big fan of the movie.”

I had to look carefully at the Young Person’s face. Not only were they serious and not joking, but they were kind of proud of themselves for offering a suggestion that apparently I hadn’t thought of.

Well, I liked this Young Person a lot, so I just smiled and nodded (and, as they say, sighed inwardly) and pointed out that the Kennedy Assassination happened in 1963 and the movie “A Nightmare on Elm Street” came out in 1984 so the secret service guy who planned the President’s route probably wasn’t a big fan of the movie.

The Young Person frowned, not sure whether to believe me. They said, “Are you sure? I thought that movie came out a long time ago...”

Yeah. Well, that’s one of the reasons conspiracy theories are fun to talk about. They are Rorschach tests, and very revealing, in every way imaginable.