People emptied stores of generators and chain saws and flocked to town halls to charge phones on emergency power.
"It's just kind of overwhelming the lengths that people will go to help you," Mr. Rutledge said, adding that last weekend about 300 volunteers flocked to town.
Every store, shop, business, church, even the school, faced Main Street, and on Saturdays the traffic inched along, bumper to bumper, as the country folks flocked to town for their weekly shopping.
This was, after all, a time when communities flocked to town theaters for edification from renowned lecturers like Twain, as well as for popular entertainment from traveling shows with stars like Sarah Bernhardt and Buffalo Bill Cody.
Centuries later, country people all over Europe flocked to towns for work in the new factories.
Now in its 29th year, the Tenby Boxing Day Swim is the highlight of the town's Christmas calendar, with some 600 swimmers and thousands of onlookers flocking to the town's beach.
People have been flocking to the town in the past week to get a look at the carcass, according to Jenny Parsons, a restaurant owner in town.
But predictions by the local council of 60,000-plus visitors flocking to the town each day seemed ambitious.
That's right, a ton of single, pasty Japanese men with money to spend flocking to the town of Atami.
For example, as early as 1822 when textile mills were founded in Lowell, Massachusetts, young women began flocking to mill towns.
