Shoppers are early risers to descend on local retailers for the kick-off of the Christmas season

BRISTOL, Va. – Amid the trampling and chaos of Black Friday at Wal-Mart, signs of Christmas spirit shone through.

"Yes, indeed, that’s holiday cheer," said Betty Holmes, of Saltville, Va., after an anonymous fellow shopper gave her a Cabbage Patch doll.

Holmes was looking for one of the popular dolls for her great-granddaughter but didn’t get one in the 5 a.m. rush, when the Exit 7 Wal-Mart sold out of them nearly as soon as the sale began.

"They were talking about it, and this lady walks by and she puts one over the lady’s shoulder," said Pamela Dickenson, toy department manager. "She says, ‘I grabbed three, but I only need two.’ "

With enough searching, other lucky shoppers were able to find coveted doorbuster items around the store after they were abandoned by fellow shoppers who had grabbed the items but later decided they didn’t want them.

"You just grab a bunch of stuff, and before you check out, you just figure out what all you want," said Yo-Yo Trent, who was filling up a cart early Friday with her sister-in-law, Sarah Lynch, of Saltville.

"We found an empty buggy, and we put what we really wanted in there and left the other one."

Lynch said the crowds resulted in no time to look; shoppers had to grab first and decide later. She started her holiday shopping at Kmart, which was open on Thanksgiving Day, and still had a list of stores to visit early Friday.

"Probably everything I buy today and yesterday, I’ll probably only spend $400," Lynch said. "If I waited, I would spend $800 to $1,000 on Christmas."

At 4:45 a.m. Friday, the Wal-Mart parking lot was almost full, and customers speed-walked past a lighted artificial tree playing "Joy to the World" as they rushed to get inside in time for the 5 a.m. specials.

The constant ca-clack, ca-clack, ca-clack of shopping carts marked the fast-moving traffic coming through the doors, laden with sleeping infants and bleary-eyed children taken from their beds in the wee hours to shop with mom and dad.

Clogging the aisles in Wal-Mart were crowds waiting to pounce on shrink-wrapped pallets stacked with low-priced items in limited quantities set up to draw shoppers into the store with the promise of a bargain.

Some shoppers walked away happy – like Brenda Lee of Abingdon, Va. She arrived at 4 a.m. – an hour ahead of the sale – and got two 32-inch LCD flat-screen TVs for $448 apiece, instead of the usual $798.

"It’s exciting, and we wanted it for that price," Lee said. "We’ve been looking for one for a year, for it to come down to where we could get one."

Others, however, did not leave happy.

"When they moved the TVs, people jumped in front of the people that’d been there at 4 o’clock," said Tyrone Foster, of Bristol, Va., who came for a 42-inch flat-screen TV. "I would’ve had it if they hadn’t moved it back and everybody in Bristol jumped in front of him [my son-in-law] in line."

Tim Flannagan, a department manager who was supervising a pallet of GPS units, said at 5:10, at least half of them had already sold.

"It was pretty exciting; they just attacked it ...," he said.

Another department manager said someone always gets hurt on Black Friday.

"A lady got knocked down here a little while ago," he said, indicating a spot beside a pallet of flat-screen TVs. "Everybody wants theirs, and they think they should be first."

Karen King, of Lebanon, Va., said she has shopped on Black Friday every year for a decade.

"It used to be 4 in the morning you didn’t see nobody on the road," King said. "Now, they’re passing you."

Talina Pennington came all the way from Creston, N.C., in her budget-driven quest to take advantage of the 5 a.m. specials and Virginia sales tax at the Exit 7 Wal-Mart.

Kimberly Paige, of Abingdon, was stuck in a different type of traffic – people and carts clogging store aisles.

"I’ve been here for 20 minutes, and I made it from the door to here," she said, a few hundred yards from the entrance to the store. "I came here to get a printer and towels, and I can’t get to either one."

"I got here kind of late, at like 4:30 [a.m.]," said Derrell Dean, a student at King College. "I got two of everything – one for me and one for the family."

While people waited in checkout lines dozens of shoppers deep, the beep-beep-beep of cash registers echoed across the front of the store, and shoppers exited as fast as they’d come in.

"We’ll have a couple more stops for stuff they didn’t have here," said Davina Smith, of Meadowview, Va. She was planning her next several stops while she waited in the checkout line. "There’s a system."

After what retailers say was a slower Black Friday blitz last year, this year is seeing more promising signs of a profitable holiday shopping season, observers say.

The trend includes an increase in shoppers at Exit 7 stores and a continuing decline in numbers at the Bristol Mall.

"A lot of Southwest Virginia customers don’t have a reason to come past Exit 7," said Amy Woodard, manager at Great American Cookies in the mall. "But we’ll take what we can get."

She says the mall has been losing business to Wal-Mart – and it includes food vendors who open early to feed hungry shoppers.

"No matter how much turkey they’ve got left at home, they’ll eat breakfast and lunch and dinner out shopping," Woodard said.

While mall retailers say the numbers aren’t where they used to be, shoppers still swarmed through the mall early Friday.

"My kids saved up their own money for this, so I’m going to surprise them with the rest of it for Christmas," said Lisa Jessee, of Lebanon, as she waited in line at GameStop for a Wii video game system. "I’ve got to get it."

Tim Grizzle, of Kingsport, Tenn., was also waiting in line for the game system; he said it allows his 74-year-old grandmother to go bowling without having to lift heavy bowling balls.

Shortly after 6:30 a.m., David Kiser rested on a bench in the mall, full shopping bags piled beside him after an hour and a half of shopping. His 4-year-old daughter, Jona Kay Kiser, was fast asleep in a stroller.

He came with his family from Castlewood, Va., for the bargains as well as the excitement.

"There’ll be more," he said of his holiday shopping plans. "It’s just the beginning."

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