Just up the hill from Mt. Airy, N.C. - the original Mayberry - tiny Hillsville, Va., is a remote mountaintop outpost on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are a few vineyards, a musty shoe shop, a rickety diner, and a bookstore - no green Starbucks awnings or Gap stores visible for a hundred miles in any direction.

But once a year, a more aggressive capitalism comes calling, as tents spring up in front yards and bank parking lots and the Hillsville Flea Market roars to life. Over four days, as many as 200,000 people walk the main strip among merchants selling everything from wagon-wheel chandeliers to rubber-band rifles. In the already quirky world of weekend markets, it's an oddity: the only flea market where an entire town, for a weekend, turns into a giant outdoor mall.

Once a quaint way to spend Saturday afternoon, flea-marketing has found its place in an emerging "social economy" that is supporting those on the lower rungs of the American economy, say experts. These days, 1 in 7 Americans relies on this informal economy to make up for wages lost as manufacturing heads overseas and the tobacco market spirals.

And here in Hillsville - the temporary center of this flea-market nation - lies a simple truth: In an increasingly outsourced economy, Americans are finding in these tents, trunks, and glassed-in cases, not just flea-market bargains, but a vital entrepreneurial outlet.

While the flea market itself is nothing new, "the sheer scale of some of these markets indicates a shift toward what I'd call a social economy," says Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Washington. "For shoppers, it's a fun diversion. For [flea-market entrepreneurs], there's a sense of, if there's money lying on the ground, why not pick it up?"

Indeed, many markets are growing by an order of magnitude, often fueled by Internet word-of-mouth or articles - "How to haggle at the flea market," for instance - in homemaker magazines. In Wheaton, Ill., treasure-hunters shop by flashlight at the All-Night Flea Market; between North Covington, Ky., and Gadsden, Ala., there's a 450 mile stretch of goods and eager buyers at the 127 Corridor Flea Market; and last weekend in Brimfield, Mass., May's Antique Market took over two miles of Route 20.

Even eBay, experts say, is basically a digital flea market that taps into broad economic shifts: new ways to make money, remote towns becoming destinations, a hankering for handmade goods in a Wal-Mart world, and, in essence, a national recycling effort that feeds an insatiable hunger for knickknacks, doo-dads, and general consumerist debris.

The flea markets' growth is part of a burgeoning underground economy - one that has given hope to some laid-off workers turning toward old hobbies, and may have the power to change entire towns.

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