PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) _ Just before opening, cars drive up to Silver Lining Jewelry & Loan, their owners clutching bags and boxes of their past, their former slice of the American dream, rings, paintings, things that were grandma's.

In quick bittersweet transactions, they hope to pawn them for enough to fill a gas tank, feed a family, keep the lights on in a house they once could afford.

As Washington prepares to bail out the biggest banking collapses in history, the family down the street prepares to part with golf clubs, an X-Box, a plasma TV.

Clients of this Northeast Portland pawnshop are doing what they must. Silver Lining and similar businesses are barometers of Oregon's economy, and their business, at least, is flourishing. Middle and working classes mingle here freely.

A slender woman with a heavy bag and heavier shoulders slinks in. Makeup-stained tears puddle beneath her eyes.

"I want to get a loan on my jewelry," she says. "My rent is 19 days late." She pulls out dazzling diamond rings and gold bracelets, then asks for a tissue and shares her troubles.

A balding man pulls a gold ring with six baguette diamonds from his finger. He has borrowed against it every month since January.

"I wear it two weeks, and then they get it," he says. "It's a sad statement, but gas is crazy and I have to rob Peter to pay Paul."

Earl Oller, Silver Lining's owner, knows his profession has a stigma and works hard to change the perception of sleaze.

His shop is bright and airy, friendly and spotless. He coaches employees to imagine themselves on the other side of the window.

Customers bring in an item and borrow against it. When they repay the loan and interest, they get it back, about 85 percent of the time.

The state sets the interest, and the worst that can happen after 90 days is the loss of the object.

"Pawnshops make loans banks won't make. They won't loan you $50 to pay a bill, he said."

Arnel Arrozal waits tables but struggles to put food on his own. The former welterweight boxer who once won a $35,000 purse is here to pay a loan on jewelry he pawned a few weeks ago. His gold chains remind him of who he was. He can't let them go.

A tall man with sandy hair, scuffed work boots and a camouflage baseball cap brings in a Marlin 30-30 deer rifle.

"I need to pay some bills, man," he says. It is the railroad conductor's first trip to a pawn window.

Name? Brian. Just Brian. "I don't want my dad to know I had to pawn something," he said.

Recently his taco lunches have become peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sodas have become water.

He works seven days a week, sometimes double shifts.

"Just trying to keep food on the table, it seems like all I'm working for these days," he says. "And I have a good-paying job, but it's not enough anymore to support two kids."

He is sure he will return for the rifle. Deer season starts next month.

For now he stuffs the $150 into his jeans - $100 for a past-due electric bill, the rest for gas and food until payday.

Oller sees victims of layoffs, maxed-out credit cards, empty bank accounts.

A mortgage broker with a $4,000 watch can't pay her house note. A white-collar worker in an Acura needs a loan on his Movado watch and Mac computer.

Pawnshops have an unusual view of the economy. When times are good their sales go up. When they are bad, their loans do.

Oller says he is seeing more clients and lending more than a year ago.

Silver Lining, Oregon's largest pawnshop, serves about 125 customers a day, and the average loan has shot from $75 to $200.

"This is a true recession," Oller says. "People are borrowing just to stay afloat."

To sit behind the barred window and issue loans is a bit like tending bar. Sad stories abound.

Some want more than Oller will give. He has to make a profit if he has to sell an item.

He refuses some items, such as a film camera left in the dust of the digital age.

His employees know to ask borrowers how much money they need, not what they want. It increases the likelihood of payback. To Oller it's a business, but he believes he also helps those with no place else to turn.

Back at the window Laura Barney pays back the $100 loan and $22 interest on her diamond wedding set. Barney works for Good Samaritan, but her 20-year-old son can't find a job and her 15-year-old eats her out of house and home.

She has pawned the rings twice this year, this time to pay her gas bill and buy a car part.

"It's my backup," she says as she stretches her fingers and looks at the twinkling diamonds. "With this, I was able to make it."

At closing, a woman in a carefully creased cotton shirt holds a velvet bag to her chest. She removes heavy forks, knives and spoons, family heirloom silver priceless to her, but not worth what she needs. She accepts the loan.

I's easy to imagine the silver-haired lady at a well-laid table, laughing with friends in happier times.

But today her dreams are on the Silver Lining's shelves. She hopes, one day, to reclaim them.