Shopper’s delight

Hours before sunrise, Culpeper residents were out in force Friday morning to kick off the start of the holiday shopping season.

By far, the morning’s largest crowd of shoppers was at Target, where about 300 people were in a line that snaked around to the rear of the building well ahead of the store’s 5 a.m. opening time. Jen Phillips and Valerie Ward of Culpeper were first in line.

“We didn’t have good luck at Toys R Us,” Ward said. Phillips said they both planned to snag electronics — video game systems and music players.

Target manager Lisa Schott said every store employee — about 120 people — would be working at some point during the day on Friday and that things seemed calmer in Culpeper than at the last store she worked at in Waldorf, Md.

“We have the flat screen TVs already set up in carts so if someone wants one, all they have to do is push it up front,” she said.

At the JC Penney in the Dominion Square shopping center, store manger Cleve Craddock said he was expecting a good day. With the company for nearly 30 years, but also a newcomer to the Culpeper area, Craddock said he was up at 2 a.m. preparing for the day.

Within minutes of opening the doors at 3:55 a.m., customers that had already selected their purchases were at the register to checkout and planning their next move.

“Walmart is next,” one woman told a teen girl as both headed for the door clutching bulging
shopping bags.

“Hey, are you up yet?” another woman asked someone on her cell phone.

Tracy Kerns of Remington was up. She said the excitement on Black Friday is just as much fun to her as the sales. Still, she added, there were a few more stops to make.

“I’ve got some grandbabies,” Kerns said. “They’re all five and under and they’re all expecting Santa Claus to drop off something.”

At Sears, nearly all of the 10 or so customers in line around 5:30 had at least one cordless power tool in their arms.

“It took a while for the help to come in, so I was here by myself this morning for a few minutes,” said store owner John Grose. Acknowledging that he’ll probably be staying until the store’s 7 p.m. closing time, he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “That’s the joy of ownership.”

Over at Belk, manager Melissa Nuckles was handing out gift cards to the early shoppers. Behind her, the store was abuzz with the sound of swooshing shopping bags, laughter, chatter and ringing cell phones.

“That’s the good thing about shoppers this early,” Nuckles said. “They’re pretty chipper. You don’t get up this early unless you love shopping.”

Dubbed “Black Friday” because the day marks the start of a season of profits or being “in the black” instead of being in the red, the Friday after Thanksgiving is usually one of the busiest shopping days of
the year.

According to the National Retail Foundation, an estimated 134 million Americans are expected to go shopping at some point this weekend.