HANGING ROCK, Ohio — Doug Scott instantly answered the question of the day: Before Hillary Clinton campaigned in this village of 279 people this week, what was the biggest thing to happen here?
"Nothing," the 67-year-old retiree said.
Uh, wait a minute, said Tammy Johnson, a co-owner of the Red Brick Oven bakery.
"George Bush drove by a couple of years ago," she recalled. "Everybody was out waving at him."
That's life in Hanging Rock, a speck of a place just across the river from Kentucky, a lush slice of southern Ohio that 75 families call home.
Clinton spoke to about 300 people at Ohio University's child development center and highlighted her proposals to curb poverty. About 20 percent of the local population is below the poverty line, nearly twice the state average,
Lori Thomas took her 13-year-old daughter, Kylie, out of school to see the show. Bob Hintz, a power plant supervisor, took off work.
The setting was unorthodox. Hanging Rock is an hour from the nearest big city, and that's Huntington, W.Va., not one of the big Ohio metro centers whose votes could determine the fate of the New York senator's presidential bid when the state votes Tuesday.
Hunting Rock was Clinton's only public stop Thursday, her last scheduled day in Ohio this week. Spokesman Doug Hattaway explained the choice of this lonesome hamlet: "She takes the causes of people in small towns and rural Ohio very seriously."
While here, Clinton saw the hanging rocks; they're visible from Highway 52. The village itself is about six blocks long, and a bakery and a gas station are its most prominent features. There's no downtown, just a pastiche of houses, all different shapes, sidings and sizes, lined up on Main Street, with the Church of the Rock at the end.
Hanging Rock was once a center for pig iron, and it prospered from its proximity to the river. But the steel mills are largely gone, and most of the people who live here work in Ironton, Huntington or Ashland, Ky.
Still, this is no dying village. People are proud of what's here.
"One of the CIA guys came in today and wanted a dozen doughnuts and six pops (sodas)," reported Kayla Pyles, a high school sophomore who works the counter at the Red Brick Oven Bakery, probably referring to the Secret Service entourage.
At the child center, Faye Kidd compared Clinton's coming to the opening of the new kitchen at the child center last June. Asked what she could do in the new kitchen that she couldn't do before, Kidd said, "Cook."
The first day, she prepared whole wheat toast and oats for the children.
"They loved it," she said.
Life resumed its calm routine Friday. The 55 children at the center went back to school. At the bakery, Johnson had a new picture of Clinton to post next to the "biscuits and gravy" sign.
Scott noted that the village will get back its old reputation quickly.
"Usually," he said, "we're known as one of the biggest speed traps in the area."