PORTERVILLE, California -- This is the kind of place, small and out of the way, where people keep count of things taken for granted elsewhere.
Three McDonald's restaurants, including the one in the Wal-Mart.
One Starbucks, new. Nine screens at the Galaxy theater. Seventy-three jobs at Mervyn's department store.
But even in this town, pushed up against the parched foothills of the Sierra Nevada, where oranges and dairy cows appear to be as plentiful as people, at least one big-city item creates little excitement.
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