(3 of 3)
While Barbara McGivaren talks of the bank she thinks is going up on her corner and the 52-unit motel going up across the street from that, the uncountable thousands are walking down Main Street in the rain. A young woman comes out of Bean's, pleasure in her face and a felt make-believe moose rack on her head. Inside an outlet shop, a slender matron explains to her friend, "So he bought me these shoes in Gucci's, and I said to him, 'Do me a favor. Don't buy me anything.' " Down in back of Main Street in the parking lots, there are men who deign not to participate with wives in this Disneyland of shops but, their mouths agape, sleep in their cars though it is not yet noon.
Up Main Street, Richard Wagner is cooking hot dogs and selling soda and cigarettes at his store, one of only two predating the boom. Wagner's great grandfather bought the small building in 1904, and the place is still prospering. "The more business, the more people are attracted and the more people, the more business. Only thing is we need some place to park. I talk about the old days--that's not so long ago (Wagner is only 44)--I knew everybody, the guy who ran the grocery store, the guy in the hardware store. I don't know anybody who owns these businesses. The people next door are from New Jersey. I don't know them. Some local people are doing well already. People just up the street sold their house for $200,000.
"There's no sense worrying about what you have no control over. I just hope it keeps getting bigger and bigger, like New York City. I'm a businessman, true, but I'm a native, so I can see things on both sides of the fence. If a local person doesn't like it, I can understand that, but money talks." A salesclerk for an outlet comes in for a soda, and Wagner asks her how's business. Oh, she says, "it's terribly busy," and Wagner says, "God bless America."