Where Were Nov. 22? You

D 2007: The Coalition on Political Assassinations always makes an appearance on the anniversary. Plus, Richards and Barton say, the media is always there to do a little blurb about what was going on.

E 2007: After visiting the grassy knoll in the morning, Barton attended a showing that evening of “Oswald’s Ghost” in the Texas Theatre, where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended by law enforcement.

F 2003: “Sometimes you hit on something that is even more poignant,” Richards says, such as the photo of this woman paying her respects to the late president. (Sign says “Thank you for the gift of you, President Kennedy. We Love You.)

G 1998: Richards caught this dog rest- ing on the stone structure where Abraham Zapruder stood to shoot his home movie footage of the motorcade. “We didn’t treat his coming here like events are covered now,” Richards says. “The press was eight cars behind. They were not stationed along the route. No one was filming ahead of the car; no one was even filming the car. Here was Zapruder up on this little stone — and now there’s a dog.” the longtime Dallasites who were present at the shooting and return to tell their stories; the conspiracy theorists seeking new converts; and the vendors hawking JFK gear.

H 2003: Beverly Oliver was dancer for a club near Jack Ruby’s and was across the street Nov. 22, 1963. “She had borrowed a camera and took some pictures, and a few days afterward, there was a knock on her door and people who presented themselves as government officials asked for her film, which she never saw again,” Richards says. “She does not believe one person did it.” Oliver wrote a book called “Nightmare in Dallas”, and every year at the time of the assassination, she sings “The StarSpangled Banner” and “Amazing Grace”.

“It’s just surreal,” Barton says of the circus-like atmosphere. “It’s comical on one hand, and then some people are just as serious as they can be. We’ve seen people crying and devastated to this day over the whole thing.”

In one of Richards’ advanced photography classes, she required her students to join Barton and her in the annual ritual.

“It’s a perfect place for them to hone their skills because these people want to tell their stories, they want to be listened to, they want to be photographed and want the truth to be known,” she says.

“For those people who were actually on the curb on the day, what really was the worst day of their lives has just become the best day because they are dedicated to the memory and they must come on the 22nd.

To many of them, it’s the reason to keep going because that truth must come out, whatever that truth is.”

All that they have seen and

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“That’s a great American mystery,” Richards says.

“My belief changes every time — it changes with the weather in Dallas,” Barton says. “When you hear some people, you’re just convinced that there was more than one person, then you hear someone else and you think, OK, we’re all crazy. There was just one crazy person.”

Barton and Richards invite Oak Cliff neighbors to judge for themselves this month at their third photography exhibit at Hunky’s featuring photos they’ve snapped over the years, including some in this month’s magazine. An opening reception is Nov. 7 from 7-9 p.m.

And, of course, they’ll be in the midst of all the action again Nov. 22, “our ears open and our finger on the trigger,” Richards says.

“I lived in Seattle, I remember my mother leaving the table quietly to go lock the front door. I had said to her, ‘They’re in Dallas; we’re here,’ but I guess that that gave her power. It was first time the news went live, and newspapers, no matter how fast they printed the next special, couldn’t keep up with the news. I didn’t expect to live in Dallas, and then when we ended up living here, that was the first place I wanted to go. In the news coverage, the grassy knoll looked large, but in person, it looks small.”

—Patricia Richards

“I would have been nine years old and in the fourth grade at an elementary school in Waco. The teachers announced that school was being let out, probably at noon or 12:30ish, and with no explanation, no nothing, the kids left. We walked to school, back and forth. I had no idea what was going on. It was bizarre, obviously. I remember we had no school the next day, and what TV there was was just saturated with JFK in black and white.”

—Rick Barton

I 2008: A group of performers always presents a program right around the time Kennedy was shot. “Here, they were guarding this box, and then at the moment of its unveiling this is what was what was inside,” Richards says. Barton remembers that those gathered were speechless. “They were more quiet than I was,” he says. “I was going, ‘Huh uh, no way, unbelievable.’”

J 2007: Dallasite Ernest Brandt returns to the scene every year, always wearing the hat that he donned the day of the assassination. “He was standing on the curb with his buddy, and he knows for sure that there were only three bullets because he was there in that hat. In all of our pictures of him — and we have many — he’s pointing.” Richards says. “Once he finishes his spiel, it starts all over again because there’s a new crowd of people,” Barton says.

K 2007: One of the many vendors hawks his gear. “They’ve got different magazines, different pamphlets, which is even more carnival-ish,” Barton says.

ON THE COVER 1999: This photo was taken early in the morning, when just a few people had gathered. Usually a few hundred show up over the course of the day, Richards and Barton say.