Summary by @tldr:

A thin man in a white banded collar shirt, with a low, black leather gambler's hat greeted us with a smile, indicating a stair case that led down, concealed behind a waste high railing, with a red velvet curtain hanging down from it to the floor.
A girl in a black dress came by and served kettle style popcorn in heavy crockery bowls and iced tea in mason jars, which I skipped, on the off chance that granny upstairs might have formerly used one of them as her spittoon.
The gathered audience looked like the cast of a horror film set in a small West Virginia mining town, hard, thin and unsmiling, except for a little blonde girl with a lollipop, who laughed every time we glanced her direction.
He'd added a soundtrack of local music, and filled the screen with interviews of town's people who remembered the Miracle Bears, two girls, they thought, named Maggie and Ursula.
A narrow, brick paved street ran around a rectangular green and wood frame buildings, neatly painted and maintained surrounded it on the three sides opposite us.
Everything is done by barter exchange, with established rates for common things like eggs, bread, or sides of bacon." "What if they need something they can't grow or make?" Gwen asked, looking around, as curious towns people began to gather on the green, around a white gazebo.
Gwen, who had been watching a group of women gathering on the board porch outside the general store, stiffened and turned and Phil shot me a look.