A decade ago, customers flocked to the store in the convertedfire station on the east side of Toledo, Ohio, in pursuit of OldGlory.

Howard Pinkley established Flags Sales & Repair in 1960, andruns it with his daughter, Wendy Beallas. in days after Sept. 11,2001, customers lined up outside the door. Americans wanted to showtheir pride, their determination, their Americanism.

It’s all a fading memory now.

These days, folks are focused on paying bills. A new flag is aluxury, and the unvarnished patriotism of 10 years ago has beenreplaced by disgust with government.

A recent Wednesday saw just two walk-in customers. Father anddaughter have cut their payroll, but talk openly about whether theyshould give up. They’re no less dispirited than theirneighbors.

“I go home and I refuse to listen to the news because it’sfrustrating,” Beallas says. “To me, it’s not coming together andgetting things done.”

When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election, his advertisementsboasted that it was morning in America. nearly three decades later,as another presidential campaign begins, it feels like twilight -or, if it is morning, it is the kind of gray winter daybreak whenthe sun is only a rumor and only an optimist clings to hope thatthe clouds will break.

Listen to Americans in three closely contested states and you’llhear the same plaintive echoes, not just about politics or theupcoming election, but about the unsettling predicament that isAmerica in 2011.

Republicans or Democrats, liberal or conservative, young or old,they lack confidence – in the country’s potential to be greatagain, in their elected leaders’ ability to do the right thing, inthe economy and in themselves.

It’s not that they feel incapable of doing what needs to bedone, as much as they are uncertain about what that right thing isand whether anything they can do will have any real impact.

In Mount Airy, N.C., where a quaint Main Street is merely areminder of better days: “We need to get back to the ’60s and the’50s, and we need to get ourselves back to where we used to be -standing on our own two feet,” says long-haul trucker Harry J.Moore, 57, punching a beefy fist into his open left hand topunctuate each syllable. “We’re losing our pride. our pride’s goneaway.”

In North Las Vegas,, Nev., where the bursting of the housingbubble has forced hard choices: “People have lost a lot of spirit,”says Elmer Chowning, 70, who had hoped to slow down in his goldenyears, but is instead still working in real estate while raisinghis 8-year-old granddaughter.

In Lima, Ohio, where people have seen America’s industrial mightfalter: “I’m just waiting for China or somebody to take us over.That’s the way it seems,” says Becky Jamison, 36, who has watchedher 18-year-old son look unsuccessfully for work for months.”Because we’re just falling apart.”

If you look, you can find optimism in Ohio.

The Armstrong Air & Space Museum is in Wapakoneta, hometownof Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. it stands asa monument to an earlier, more hopeful time, and there are visitorswho are convinced that those times can come again.

To Stephen Andrasik, a foam salesman from Indianapolis who hasstopped in to the museum on his way back home from a business trip,the U.S. remains resilient, facing problems that can be solved bynew leaders in Washington who will allow Americans to live up totheir potential.

“I think we’re still the same people we were back then,” saysAndrasik. he studies a display case filled with inventions thatwere spinoffs of the space program, everything from fireproofclothing to battery-powered hand tools.

“I’m assuming it’s going to get better as long as the Americanpeople have the ability to do what they want, to invent things, tostart new businesses, we’ll be as great as we’ve always been.”

But standing before a model of the Apollo 11 command module atthe edge of the museum’s parking lot, Jake Retter, a chimneycleaner from Blissfield, Mich., notes the irony of a country thatonce raced a communist rival to put a man on the moon and nowrelies on China to buy its debt.

Rather than pursuing national goals, politicians chase their owndivisive agendas, he says. A nation built on hard work and thrifthas lost sight of what really matters.

“This country’s been falling apart for the last 50 years. It’staken time,” Retter says. “It’s not that capitalism is failing us.It’s that we’re failing capitalism.”

For many years, this region provided the muscle of Americancapitalism. its pride in its talent for making things is evident inToledo place names such as Jeep Parkway and the Veteran’s GlassCity Bridge.

The long, slow decline of factory work has been a source ofconstant sorrow in the Rust Belt. recent stirrings such asannouncements by Chrysler and General Motors that they will add1,400 new jobs at their plants in Toledo, and Ford’s plans to rampup engine production in Lima have offered some reason to hope.

“I can definitely feel like the forward momentum is there” -jobs at the union hall are picking up, says Kurt Kaufman, 31. Aunion electrician, he worked steadily until 2006. he has sincespent as much as nine months between jobs.

Still, he says, “I don’t think it’s ever going to be as good asit was around here.”

But a bad economy, some say, is not at the core of what ailsnorthwestern Ohio, and America. there have been hard times before,and there will be again. The real problem, they say, is inAmericans and their leaders.

“What’s different from this and the great Depression is that themoral fiber has changed,” says Russ Terry, a retired postal carrierwho lives outside Lima and has stopped in for a morning break atThe Meeting place on Market, a coffee and sandwich shop downtown.”The reason we can’t handle this is we don’t have the moralbackbone, the stick-to-it-tiveness, the collective people workingtogether.”

Terry, who describes his politics as very conservative, blamesthe federal government for printing too much money in an attempt tostimulate the economy. but at its heart, the country’s failingsreflect the will of individuals, he says. “The government is just areflection of the people, is it not?”

Just down the road from Toledo’s GM plant, Martin Ridener sayshis worries are based on more than 20 years of running a 16-unitapartment building he once thought would pay for his retirement.instead, a building that used to generate a steady income is nowbarely covering its expenses, as many tenants lose jobs, fallbehind on rent and move out.

Ridener, who is 75 and votes Republican, can’t imagine votingfor President Barack Obama given the state of the economy, but hecan’t see how Republicans taking over the White House will makethings any better.

“I don’t consider either side wrong in what they’re doing. WhatI resent is that every Democrat thinks completely one way and everyRepublican thinks another way. They’re afraid to talk over it anddo what’s best for the country.”

Across town, most of the red-checked tables are full at theHungarian hot dog purveyor Tony Packo’s. but between bites, PatShupe, a 72-year-old homemaker, says she worries about the worldher 3-year-old granddaughter will inherit with seemingly limitedopportunities.

“I absolutely see no light at the end of the tunnel untilsomething is done in this country to equalize opportunity forpeople to get a job,” Shupe says.

While the 2008 election gave her hope that the country couldwork through its problems, the gridlock in Washington has robbedher of that brief optimism.

“I think we’re just ruining ourselves,” Shupe says, “destroyingourselves.”

Not everyone shares that bleak outlook.

Terri Leary’s employer eliminated her job as a senior housingmanager in 2009, six months after her husband lost work inconstruction management. Leary, 44, was convinced that her lack ofa college degree had made her expendable, so she enrolled at OwensCommunity College’s campus in Perrysburg.

Days before her graduation ceremony in early December, she satin the commons area of College Hall and described the tough timesof the past few years as an opportunity, an outlook entirelydecoupled from politics.

The job losses and belt-tightening, she is convinced, were “agood thing. it teaches the kids very valuable life lessons, youknow, make good with what you have. … we learned we can do morewith less and be just as happy.”

There are lessons to be learned, agrees 29-year-old ErinTupper.

She and her husband, Marc, have much to be thankful for. Theyhave been married just a week, they have a home of their own(albeit modest and worth less than it used to be), and Marc prizeshis job as a police officer. but they look around, and see evidenceof an America that has lost its way.

Erin, recalling her father’s pride in his work as a truck driverhauling new Jeeps off the Toledo assembly line, says she and herfriends talk now of employers who pile on hours while treatingworkers as expendable.

When she drives near her childhood home, she is dismayed by thebig homes on what was once farmland, a sign of misplaced valuescentered on instant gratification and overspending. People seem tobe more concerned with themselves and their own narrow intereststhan in working together for the common good.

“We’re learning a lesson,” she says. And if we don’t, “we’ll beright back to where we were.”

“Your Community of choice,” reads the motto on signs spreadaround the city of North Las Vegas, and for a while it was.

Once among the fastest-growing places in the country, the citysaw thousands of stucco and tile-roof homes sprout up toaccommodate retirees and a middle-class workforce coming for jobsin the booming casino and construction industries. The city addedworkers, increased revenue and embarked on ambitious plans forredevelopment projects to keep pace with the growth.

Today the community is deeply in debt, cutting programs, layingoff employees, fending off a possible state takeover and weighingstill more difficult decisions that will directly affect the220,000 people who live here.

Talk to people on the street, in the library, at the recreationcenter, and seemingly everyone knows someone who is out of work. Ifthey own a home, its value has decreased substantially and theirneighborhoods are filled with forsaken properties. you can’t watchTV without seeing local commercials for help with loanmodifications or from lawyers pledging to keep the banks from yourassets.

The Neighborhood Recreation Center sits in the old part of town,a lifeline for senior citizens in need and young people whoseparents can’t afford fancy gyms. Over the summer, struggling toplug an overall $30 million budget deficit for the fiscal year andunable to reach a deal with police unions over cuts, the North LasVegas City Council voted to close the center.

People who consider it a second home revolted, descending oncouncil meetings with signs and petitions in hand.

The facility was saved only after the local police union agreedto defer for six months a cost-of-living increase and distributionof accumulated holiday pay. that was enough to keep the center openthrough next summer.

Recreation supervisor Neil Gallant sits at a desk littered withspreadsheets as he works to find grant money or other ways tosubsidize the center’s costs. he talks of his seniors feeling”abandoned” when the City Council voted to close the center and ofa sense of disconnection between elected leaders and those theyserve.

The politicians don’t know the people, Gallant says. “They don’tsee them.”

That sentiment was echoed by so many in North Las Vegas, butespecially Gallant’s struggling older clientele. They are womenlike Nita Hargis and Maxine Delisle, who live on meager SocialSecurity checks and depend on the center’s $1.50 hot lunch (risingto $3 come January) and the companionship they find in ceramicsclass.

One Thursday, instead of molding candy dishes, they vented aboutthe state of their community and the country, and the overarchingtheme was one of neglect – a feeling that every level of governmentis ignoring their needs and has failed them, despite so manypromises to do otherwise.

For Hargis, a 65-year-old who has lived almost her entire lifein North Las Vegas and worked a variety of jobs – painter, giftshop clerk, remodeler – recent efforts to attempt to modify herhome loan left her exasperated and in worse shape than shestarted.

“They ran me around for nine months. They ruined my credit. Ieven got one of these government guys that was supposed to help me,and all he did was say, ‘Well, call ‘em back, call ‘em back.’ Henever did anything to help me,” she says.

For Delisle, it’s the glaring imbalance between people like herand those in government that leaves her feeling alienated. Shenotes that there hasn’t been a cost-of-living increase in SocialSecurity for three years, yet it took months of difficultnegotiations to get the local police union to agree to forgo itsadjustment for just six months.

Nineteen-year-old Oscar Corral works the front desk at therecreation center. He’s a philosophical young man with anoptimistic smile and outlook. Neither of his parents graduated fromhigh school, and yet his mom is an accounting manager at a localcab company while his father works construction. His dad was laidoff not long ago but soon found another job and is “hanging on athread.”

“There’s this thing about humans. when they’re pushed, I guessthey go into survival mode and they really work hard,” says Corral,who studies audio production at The Art Institute of Las Vegas.

He likens the many problems facing Americans right now toclimbing a mountain. “From far away,” he says, “it looksimpossible. but when you start getting close up, you see there’scracks here that I can climb up and you just attack it little bylittle. … sometimes we just get caught up in the bigproblem.”

It’s true that in North Las Vegas, as is the case nationally,the problems are so big it’s hard not to get caught up in them.Short-term fixes and eventual union concessions kept the cityafloat this fiscal year, but already officials are predicting a$15.5 million deficit for the next budget cycle.

Says Elmer Chowning, the real estate agent: “We’re a fastsociety. we want things to happen. And this is a thing that islingering, lingering, lingering.”

It’s no wonder, he adds, that people have taken to streets andparks in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“There is a tremendous feeling of camaraderie,” he says, butalso “hurt and madness.”

A couple of weeks ago, North Las Vegas and its residents didtheir best to put all of that aside for a time. Hundreds gatheredon an unusually blustery evening to celebrate the grand opening ofa nine-story City Hall – a project launched when the city was flush- and watch as the town Christmas tree was lit.

It was a night meant to represent a fresh start, the promise oftomorrow.

Nita Hargis was there with some of her friends from therecreation center, wondering aloud why the city felt the need tohand out commemorative tiles and paperweights and what was the costto taxpayers. The Chownings brought their granddaughter, and stoodin the back as a children’s choir sang Christmas carols andballerinas danced on the shiny new granite floor.

Soon they, and everyone, were joining in the carols, applaudingthe entertainers, sipping hot chocolate.

Soon, their worries seemed to fade. At least for one night,anyway.

The hometown of Andy Griffith, it is Mayberry – America as itused to be, or as we would like to believe it used to be, when thenation’s industrial and military might was unquestioned and seemedunbounded; when a man, even one without a high school diploma,could earn enough to own a house, buy a new car every couple ofyears and send his kids to college for a better life than even he’denjoyed. Stroll down Main Street, and you expect to meet characterslike Aunt Bea, Goober and Floyd the barber.

They’re not here. instead, you’ll find businessmen and womenstruggling to survive the recession by selling nostalgia, and realpeople eager to buy.

“They’re looking for what we wish that times could be again,”says Debbie Miles, who moved here with her husband from southernIndiana five years ago and opened Mayberry on Main, where the wallsand shelves are lined with items like Aunt Bea’s Kerosene Cucumbersand Otis’s Moonshine Jelly. “That’s the main thing that we hear.’We wish that it could be like that again – like it was on theshow.’”

Business is down about 10 percent from a couple of years ago.but Miles can’t afford that kind of pessimism.

“You know, if you’re an optimistic person, you think there’snowhere to go but up,” she says with a laugh. “It probably does tryeveryone, but I think you still have to be optimistic, you know?That’s what Americans are supposed to do – think for thefuture.”

Darrel Miles – who, like his wife, is a registered Democrat butdid not vote for Obama – finds it a bit harder to be hopeful.

“I think they need to turn the whole upside down in Washingtonand shake it real good,” says Miles, who worked 32 years for acompany that made soda and ice dispensers. “I think we might havethe wrong government, the wrong people trying to fix certainthings. There’s too many hands in the fire, as you would say. Imean they can’t even come to agreement even within their ownparties to fix certain things, you know?”

Across the street, at Snappy Lunch, business is down 20 percentor 30 percent over a couple of years ago, says Mary Dowell, whosehusband, Charles, has owned the restaurant since 1960.

“We still have tourists who come in, but the bus groups havedropped a little bit,” Dowell says over the sizzle of meat for thediner’s “famous pork chop sandwich.” ”Last year, I did have togive everybody a day a week off, because we were so slow. And we’llprobably do that this year.”

On this sunny afternoon, Jennifer Brown stands outside SnappyLunch and peers through the window. Her parents, Steve and Diane,both have good jobs in manufacturing. but the 27-year-oldCleveland-area woman, who has an associate’s degree in officemanagement, can’t find permanent employment.

“I did telemarketing. I worked at a park. I even worked at acounty fair for a week,” she says. “I’m doing side jobs, someretail. but nothing that I wound up being able to keep.”

Her mother, whose company was recently bought out by a Europeanfirm, can’t help feeling that the U.S. is in decline.

“Because the average person can’t graduate from high school andfind a job,” she says. “It’s easier for somebody to come fromanother country and get started than it is for us who grew uphere.”

“Mmmm,” her daughter nods in agreement. Jennifer Brown motionsto the street scene around her.

“This is where it needs to go back to,” she says. “Like theAmerican dream. America, not the socialist stuff that’s going on.And where you could just, you can get a job.”

Around the corner from the bustle of Main Street, in front ofthe Andy Griffith Playhouse and Museum, Sheriff Andy Taylor and sonOpie stride in bronze, hand in hand, rods over their shoulders,toward an imaginary fishing hole. A plaque at their feet reads, “asimpler time.”

Inside the museum, the gauges on two vintage “ethyl” gas pumpsare frozen at 17.9 cents a gallon. Oil worker Jeff Zwicker ofVacaville, Calif., poses for a photo with museum founder (andGriffith childhood friend) Emmett Forrest.

Zwicker, 55, a 20-year Air Force veteran who served on cargoplanes in Operation Desert Storm, is worried about the deficit andAmerican indebtedness to foreign creditors such as China. but ifWashington can get those things under control – and he’s confidentit can – “I think the future’s great for our country.”

“We’re a great nation,” he says. “We have a lot of smart peoplehere, and if we put all the smart people on this and get it going.but you’ve gotta get serious about it, you know? You’ve gottareally do it. You’ve gotta WANT to do it.”

Forrest isn’t so sure. The 84-year-old former electric companyvice president says Obama has “taken us down the path to absoluteruin” and, if he’s re-elected, “there’ll be no recovery fromit.”

“Ten or 20 years ago, I think we were the shining star of theworld, and our star has dimmed quite a bit,” he says. “I guess I’mjust cornpone patriotic. I love this country and hate to see it godown.”

But to Pablo Hernandez, these are good times.

Hernandez, 45, came here from Mexico in 1987. he traveled thecountry, picking apples, oranges, tomatoes – “everything” – beforelanding a job at a chicken-processing plant in nearby Dobson.

For the past five years, he and his wife, Salustria, 33, haveoperated La Sierrita Tienda Mexicana in a strip mall on a bypassoutside downtown. They sell everything from black beans and driedchilies to CDs from groups like Los Rancheros and Fortunato y susCometas.

Sure, Hernandez is concerned about the recent wave ofanti-immigrant sentiment in places like Alabama and South Carolina.The couple’s two daughters – Lesley, 13, and Nadia, 6 – were bornhere, but the parents have their green cards. but he is not apessimist.

The American Dream “is still alive for me,” he says, as Nadiareads a picture book beneath a ceiling dangling with colorfulpinatas. “Because I’m still here, you know.”

As the campaign unreels, voters feel dispirited