Dear Friends,

The only footpath I love better than a Grade B road is a Grade C road. The only stretch of Grade C road I’ll travel on this March, two days ago, greeted me with a sign that warned of great peril. Signs posted at the entry to Grade B roads simply recommend caution.

Today’s Grade B experience got interesting. A mile down, the road’s got a jog in it, right where there’s a big ole apple tree. I’m admiring the tree and tasting one of its offerings when a pick-up truck pulls up. I’m surprised, since I’ve never before encountered a vehicle on a Grade B road.

The driver says he’d seen me on the gravel road a few miles back and thought he’d come by and introduce himself. (His name slips my mind, sorry.) He farms a few hundred acres of corn and beans nearby. Like every farmer I’ve met, he’s unhappy about Trump’s disruption of the soybean market.

I never ask anyone who they voted for. Sometimes, that information is offered, but not this time, though I definitely get the sense the farmer’s not pleased with how the country’s being managed.

He tells me the apple tree I’m standing under was planted there a long time ago when the road went straight on through toward Murray. He points here and there, waxing nostalgic about the many farmsteads that used to be visible from this spot.

(That’s a common conversation I have with people I meet along the road — remembering how there used to be so many more farms and farmers in their area.)

The guy told me I’d soon be crossing the train tracks where three kids were killed six years ago, and I’d see a memorial there. It was one of those stupid, tragic things that kids sometimes do, trying to beat a train across the tracks. The train hit their vehicle and dragged the car 1,440 feet before being able to stop completely.

Later that day, I meet a truck driver waiting to load his rig at a Pilot station. He’s Cuban, from Miami, and when he sees my shirt he says, “Yes we have to save America, save it from the communists. Trump is doing a great job.”

I told him I didn’t see it that way. I asked how he felt about all the people being deported. He insisted they were all criminals. I did a search on my phone and showed him objective data showing that 63% of the deportees had no criminal record, and only 7% had committed any kind of a violent crime. He said it was fake news.

I asked him if he supported Trump blowing up boats in the Caribbean. “Yes, because they’re all narcoterrorists,” he said. I pointed out that there was no way of proving that because all the evidence had been blown up.

I asked him if the US should invade Venezuela, and he said yes. I asked if there was anywhere else we should invade. “Yes, Cuba,” he said.

He then showed me photos and videos of trash in the streets of Havana, a young girl emaciated from starvation, and an old man digging food out of garbage cans. There was no way to verify whether the images were real or fake. He then showed me an image of four “dictators,“ one of them the prime minster of Spain, Pedro Sanchez. I asked him if we should invade Spain. “I think we should, but we couldn’t pull it off, so maybe not,” he said.

I’ve been walking for two weeks, and this is the first conversation I’ve had that has been, well, impossible. Miami Man has his mind made up. Period. There is no altering his worldview with facts. I’m comforted, a bit, knowing he’s not eligible to vote in Iowa.

— Ed Fallon