PITT COUNTY - N.C. 11 runs through the heart of Pitt County, southward through fields still white with cotton, past homes where worry fills the air like humidity. Tractor-trailers rumble by, or they stop at the Country Mart for $3.99 diesel.

The four-lane highway links countless economic stories: of the cafe supervisor who must pay for a ride to work, the trucker who may soon file for bankruptcy, the unemployed woman whose trailer hasn't had electricity for a year.

Josie Briley, 51, knows there's a presidential election this year, but she couldn't tell you who's running.

"We don't have no current," she said, "so I don't watch no TV."

On television last week, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain couldn't say in their debate whether the economy will get worse before it gets better. They should take a drive down N.C.11.

The farmer knows about the economy. So does the trucker. The barber, too. His business is down 20 percent the past six months.

"And it's not just me," said Steve Roebuck, 69, as he ran a comb around a client's balding head in the near-empty downtown of Bethel. A McCain 2008 sticker was pasted on the wall next to the Ten Commandments. "We lost 159,000 jobs in the United States in the month of September. The whole world is suffering now."

Big hurt in small towns

In many ways, the communities along Pitt County's main north-south highway reflect the rest of North Carolina -- a dichotomy between the old farming economy and the new industries stemming from technology and higher education. Whether business is down, milk costs more or the banks won't offer loans, the effect for residents around here is the same: They have less money.

Strung along N.C. 11 are small towns with empty storefronts, trailer parks where children's togs wave from clotheslines, farmlands sown with peanuts. There's also the city of Greenville, where jets fly over the new hospital wing and East Carolina University's Pirates are 3-2.

The unemployment rate in Pitt County was 7.5 percent in August, slightly above the statewide rate of 6.9 percent. The median household income is $33,000.

This could be McCain country, in the tradition of southern Democrats who vote Republican in presidential races. More than 8,000 McCain supporters showed up at a Sarah Palin rally Tuesday in Greenville. But Obama has opened an office here, too, and folks who might normally swing toward McCain say now they're not so sure.

Begin in Bethel, pop. 1,774, at the northern tip of Pitt County's slice of N.C. 11. Stores are boarded up, the streets feel deserted. The Piggly Wiggly closed a few months ago, and now folks must drive 14 miles to the nearest grocery. Outside a local bank, new teller Carrie Graham-Brown stands on a stepladder and adjusts the marquee to remind customers their last Christmas Club payments are due.

She's overqualified for this job. She's a paralegal who works in real estate, but her business wasn't doing well and she was living on credit cards.

A Republican by nature, she doesn't know how she'll vote yet. She just knows she's angry.

"Why is it that I'm up here with this sign and I can't keep my business afloat?" Graham-Brown asked.

A few miles south, W.C. Moore, 65, oversees the first day of cotton harvest on his 2,500-acre farm. He figures the crisis will hit him this winter, when it comes time to take out new loans for next year's seed. The bank will want more collateral -- land, equipment.

His wife, sitting in the farmhouse, is incredulous. "We don't have anything else to give them," she said. The couple are in the middle of a renovation -- ceilings, carpets, walls knocked out. They saved for it for years.

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