Living in Seattle, John Van Dyke knew he lived in a “blue bubble.”

So when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, he couldn’t understand why. But rather than complain about it, he set out on a cross-country adventure to find the answer. He found out that even at age 74 a person can learn a lot. He wanted to find out what was happening in his country—why it is so divided.

Van Dyke, who now lives on Bainbridge Island, has written about his sojourn in his first book, “BOOM! It’s a Big Country for an Old Man.”

He started his seven-year odyssey locally, eventually bringing his camera and recording equipment to over 34 states, collecting more than 130 conversations. The stories people share differ depending on where they live, but there are still shared experiences, dreams and values that unite Americans, transcending the differences that often divide us.

“I was beginning to see an America—a people, resilient, diverse, determined; survivors, entrepreneurs, dreamers—that was not the same one our leaders were portraying,” Van Dyke says in the book.

He says he was careful in his interviews not to interject his left-leaning views. “He had to be willing to listen to people that didn’t share the same experiences as him, and time to reflect on what they said, moving beyond his gut reactions,” his book publishers say. “We become the places that we live. Our concerns tend to be localized to our lived experiences and daily life.”

Van Dyke, who previously was a designer, architect and branding expert who led a design office for 21 years in Seattle, said writing a book was difficult. In his job, he hired writers and photographers. “I never thought of myself as a writer.” But he said with the advent of social media, “We all became everything—creators of content.” To help, he hired a book editor, who “understood the project and what I was doing.”

The editor, Julianne Cohen, has known Van Dyke for 18 years, so she had inside knowledge before they knew it would be a book. He had so much film footage the first thing they did was focus on using the best conversations. They then organized it by region, so readers could understand that where people live determines often how they think. She said his style was reportage, so she had him add some atmosphere and details to create scene, but it’s “extremely scarce”—nothing like Hemingway.

She called his book experimental, “adventurous” and “beautiful.”

“It’s a new view” for writing, she said, adding so many nonfiction memoirs are author-centric. “Different voices in different places and finding their commonalities.”

Cohen said the book is an easy read because Van Dyke asks questions that everyone wants to know the answers to. She thinks it could be a best-seller because it is information people want to know and understand. Even though the book “stands on its own,” she thinks it could be turned into a documentary or a series of them.

At first, Van Dyke thought he’d do a video documentary. But while talking to a friend during COVID it was brought up that the process of writing is good therapy. “Just write, it doesn’t matter what you write.” He wanted to share his experience, so that’s when the book was born.

Getting started

He said he was never a fan of Trump and never admired him as a business person. He didn’t even watch “The Apprentice” TV show. So Van Dyke was “amazed at what was going on” when Trump was elected. “It was like a dirty bomb going off. I wanted to find out what’s happening to my country?”

His first trip was to Wichita, Kan., where he found groupthink and voter apathy, both of which he ended up finding everywhere. People feel their votes don’t count because corporations with all the money are the ones who decide elections, he said. Van Dyke blamed the landmark Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United in 2010 allowing corporations to finance federal elections. “Politicians, they had a new payday; ordinary citizens come second. It opened the floodgates for money to pour into candidates.”

He said that’s why the middle class feels forgotten and extreme candidates in both parties get elected because, “They will do the bidding for the people who fund them. There’s always been corruption (in politics) but nothing to this scale.”

Unlike Charles Kuralt’s famous “On the Road” TV series of rural America, Van Dyke didn’t get into a motorhome and take off driving around the nation. He would fly in airplanes to destinations, rent a car and drive around for a few weeks, often visiting several states.

“I ping-ponged around a little bit,” he said, adding he’d drive along state roads rather than interstates to see the backcountry. He’d then come back to BI, “exhaling and unloading a lot of video footage.” He’d make short clips and enjoy their “video expressions—re-living these conversations.”

Real people

Van Dyke said he did not get into corporate America or big cities because there’s lots of coverage of that.

“I dropped down a level or two to find real folks,” he said, adding he developed an appreciation for small towns and the working class. “I have an appreciation for the neglected people in our country. They feel like their lives have been taken away from them.”

He said it was a real “eye-opener” going to downtrodden places like Detroit and Flint, Mich. He went to a town in Ohio where drugs had taken over, one of many, he added. He visited a town in Wisconsin where a General Motors plant closed. Families were breaking up and kids were having to go to work. Children were being raised by grandparents. “Stuff we don’t realize,” he said of those more fortunate.

Now 81, Van Dyke said for years he has gone to a home he built in a remote part of Mexico on a warm beach to escape and unwind. “I’ve been living the dream, by some people’s definition,” he said.

He added that, “People are a product of place,” meaning where they live determines many of their beliefs. He talked with cowboys in Montana and coal miners in West Virginia. He saw families that had worked up to four generations in industries that had closed, and they were lost at what to do. “Neglect is why we got where we are,” he said. “The country is not paying attention to them.”

Van Dyke said he found out why there seems to be so much misinformation nowadays. “If you start to say something over and over again you start to believe it.” He recalled a woman at a restaurant in Wichita saying, “I can’t believe what I read. Everybody hides behind the social media wall.”

Van Dyke said labels divide the country—especially red and blue (Republican or Democrat). “In my life I’ve sometimes been purple,” he said of the color mixture of the two. Adding to that division are age and technology. “We’re just scratching the surface with AI,” or artificial intelligence, he said. “It’s almost like a perfect storm.”

Most memorable visit

Welch, WV used to have a population of 100,000 and was nicknamed, “Little New York.” But when Van Dyke visited there the population had fallen to 3,414. There are two 1-way streets. Buildings, some as tall as six stories, line both of them. “But they’re all empty.”

He pulled into an empty three-story parking garage on a Saturday and saw a Hispanic family setting up for a Farmer’s Market that was to start in a half hour. “They were the first people I’d seen.”I’ve seen ghost towns before, but never the scale of this.”

As an environmentalist, Van Dyke has been against coal because of its pollution. But when he saw what happened in their community, he had more empathy for their situation. “I really met some very nice people,” he said.

He learned historically how communities “owed my soul to the company store,” as Tennessee Ernie Ford sang in a song years ago. Van Dyke said these people weren’t trying to get rich finding gold. They just wanted a steady job to put food on the table. “They love what they do,” he said, adding they would always kiss their family before heading to work because it’s a dangerous job, and they didn’t know if they would return.

He said they weren’t the ones getting rich off coal. “They did the hard work getting it out of the ground. They never got anything. They were always poor.”

Once Trump got elected, they were happy as mines opened up again. “If they’re working they’re happy,” Van Dyke said.

He added that area is beautiful country. The mines are underground so there is no surface visual pollution. The air is fresh. “I can see why they love it there,” he said.

He said they admit they are hillbillies, and joke that because it’s so mountainous one leg is shorter than the other. “They’re pretty smart, but not overly educated or intellectual. They are about a single issue: Are we working or not?”

He said retraining for another career is hard for them, but some are trying for different options. While it’s tough to grow produce there, for example, he did note that there is an effort to grow hydroponic vegetables. “There are new ideas to put life back into this place,” he said.

They are overlooked

Of his adventure, Van Dyke said: “I didn’t realize how little I actually knew. All the little towns are emptying out. One town was only open three days a week.”

He said in every town the first place he would go was to a coffee shop, not just because he wanted a cup of Joe, but because it’s a universal place where people might set down their electronic devices and have a conversation.

He learned “how much we are a product of place.” He said industries are what built up towns so when they are taken away because they deal with timber or minerals and things like that they lose their roots, sense of place and their feeling of Americana.

“We discard what we no longer use or care about anymore,” Van Dyke said. “Those people are left out, overlooked.”

He recalled a visit to Janesville, Wisc., where it was hit with a double whammy when the GM plant closed and moved to China during the great recession of 2007-09. He talked to a man who came there from Eastern Europe. He started as a dishwasher and ended up owning a restaurant but it was struggling due to the economy.

He said it may not sound like it but his book actually is very positive, focusing on the hope these people have. But it was a challenge.

“America right now is kind of a sad story,” he said. “We’re buried in a lot of information and misinformation. But we are writing history right now. It’s a significant historical time.”

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The book

The 286-page book is sold on Amazon in paperback for $14.99; it’s $9.99 on Kindle. Reviews average 4 out of 5 stars.

Three of the 5-star reviews say:

• “Maybe if we all wonder about our neighbors near and far just a little bit more, maybe if we take a moment to consider them as people, we’ll see them not as others but as us.”

•“…this book is incredibly inspiring. In a world that has grown weary of listening, John reminds us that we are never too old to listen, change and learn.”

•”There is a deep love for his country, a strong social conscience and a sincere concern for others.”

The book cover.