Earliest Memory of Going to a Memorial or Shrine Site - Sam Joseph

I had to have been five years old when I first visited the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
I grew up in Dallas.
I don't remember much about the memorial itself. I remember driving past the grassy knoll. I remember feeling bored and I remember not understanding why or how what is essentially a white cube on stilts could commemorate a man. I remember walking into the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza and waiting to get our tickets to go up to the memorial accompanying museum space. I remember my parents reading the different literature scattered throughout the space, and I remember my older brother shooshing me when I asked questions too loudly. I remember looking out the windows at the sky. I remember my dad pointing out some old newspapers.
But that's it. I don't remember much else. Fragmentary information littered here and there about John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald didn't amount to much to me at the time.
I walked away from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum baffled, and it wasn't until the third grade, when we went there on a field trip, that I understood the greater narrative behind the memorial.