CLEWISTON, Fla. — A highway can offer a history lesson and a hint about civic pride if you look for the signs.
U.S. Highway 27 is Main Street to Barbara Edmonds.
Her sub shop, Main Street Subs, in her hometown of Clewiston even says so.
"It's our life," she said.
Others call the stretch of road Sugarland Highway. Everyone calls it important.
U.S. 27 stretches from north Florida to Miami.
In places like Clewiston, on the edge of Lake Okeechobee, it keeps businesses moving and lives routed.
"I love it," she said.
Edmonds also loves the idea of a new proposed name for U.S. 27 -- the "President Donald J. Trump Highway."
"He tried to help America the best he could and he did a fantastic job," Edmonds said.
Two impeachments, the latest spawned by the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol he's accused of inciting, do not change her view.
"No, it doesn't, because after seeing what's happening on the news now and the fake media, I feel like we don't know everything that's back there," she said. "We don't know everything that's gone on."
Edmonds said she is sure of one thing, as she works for her slice of the American dream.
"My business has been better since Donald Trump has been in there," Edmonds said of Trump's presidency.
The country may be divided politically, but there is no sign of that here.
"I think he achieved a lot of good, a lot of respect and recognition from the rest of the world," Clewiston Realtor Laura Smith said.
A block or so off U.S. 27 is Clewiston Pawn.
"I supported Trump and I still support Trump," owner David Angell, a military veteran, told WPTV.
Even so, Angell doesn't want a penny spent erecting new highway signs.
"We need to put America and Americans first, and changing the name of a highway to glorify anybody, whether it be Donald Trump or Martin Luther King, it's a waste of money," Angell said.
They're attitudes, viewpoints and, along U.S. 27, the prospect of new signposts that could soon offer their own lessons about where the country is and where it is headed, one town and one highway at a time.
