“Do you know who Mike Juliano is?”

The questioner has pulled his old Ford Ranchero over to the side of a suburban back road in Braintree. Heavyset and wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses and a short-sleeved white shirt, speaking through a salt and pepper beard. Out for a Sunday drive or going to church?

“We’re not local,” I say to indicate we don’t know Mike.

“He was incinerated in the Towers … thanks for your help.”

Then he pulls away in the direction we’re walking. It’s about 9 this Sunday morning, and we continue plodding along. The Ranchero driver has seen only a couple of strangers wearing “9/11 TRUTH” signs and had to stop.

He might be typical of the friendly people we encounter if we had the luxury of talking with them for even that long – about 20 seconds.

–   –   –

“What IS the truth?” This yesterday afternoon from the thirty-something driver of a clean late-model pickup truck as he waits for a green arrow signal to let him take a left off of Union Street in (I think) Braintree still. Not much time to fill him in on the whole truth.

“We don’t know, but it’s not what the government says,” I shout across a couple of lanes, and he is off, the light having changed.

It is a good question that we get once or twice a day. The pejoratives “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorists” is a handy way to put down truthers who are trying to figure out 9/11 themselves. I don’t like to get bogged down in who did what, why, how, where, etc. What is certain, I say, is that the government’s accounts of the crashes at all three sites – the World Trade Center, the Pentagon headquarters and the field in rural Pennsylvania – can’t POSSIBLY be true. Why all these lies, lies, lies?

Reinforced by the uncurious, parroting news media, or we wouldn’t be out here walking across Massachusetts.

–  –  –

“I know who did it … the Bush family!” shouts a fairly well-heeled guy in his forties a in late-model car who has slowed down while driving in the other direction this afternoon. He smiles widely. Then he is on his happy way.

Who knows?

An hour or so later we check in at a chain motel where the front desk clerks checked out our signs and were delighted to see and talk with us. One had studied the atrocity for awhile and then gave up.

Yesterday at a Chili’s the young black female version of a maitre di beamed at us when she spotted our signs. All waitpersons were positive. One had done research on the Kennedy assassination and liked my assessment that the Kean Commission report on 9/11 didn’t have any more validity than the Warren Commission report on JFK in Dallas. A teenage patron several booths away smiled at us, took our picture, and gave a big thumbs up. We get a lot of thumb up from people in cars, often accompanied by toots. But it was nice to see it from someone in the same room. Gave her a big smile and a thumbs up back.

Well, it’s about 6:30 and we’ll head out for supper. Seventeen or so miles today.