Let the shopping begin!

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November 28, 2009

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Daily Sun photo/Janet Jacobs Exhausted but pleased, Wendy Mayers, Bridgette Sonneborn, Brittani Sonneborn, and Tammy Stanart finish an all-night shopping experience that ended with the Wal-Mart in Corsicana.
Daily Sun photo/Janet Jacobs �reat sale, good deals,�said Michael Ellison, who arrived at the Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. Friday.

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Black Friday shoppers hunt their limit snagging bargains

By Janet Jacobs

Tammi Watson has a Black Friday shopping strategy, but it requires an accomplice. That person this year was Jenna Doggett whose sole job was to stand in a corner and guard the shopping buggies. Meanwhile Watson scoured the store for bargains and brought them back, like a squirrel scavenging for nuts.

“It was a madhouse,” Watson admitted. “I was sweating.”

Watson said she does this kind of hard-core shopping every year on Black Friday, the day when stores go into the black. Doggett, who’s never done this before, said she wouldn’t do it again. Apparently, serving as buggy guard is boring.

Still, the partnership allowed them to score four buggies full of electronics, toys, and household items.

The two looked exhausted Friday at 7:30 a.m., following their three-hour marathon at the Wal-Mart. The only thing they missed was a bargain on laptops that Watson wanted.

“But we got four bikes, two Blu Ray DVD players, and a bunch of toys,” Watson said. “It was worth it.”

Well before dawn Friday, the parking lots of the Wal-Mart, Atwoods, Big Lots, Radio Shack and others were full of cars, and the stores full of shoppers.

At 5:30 a.m., Dana Arnold had already had her fill. She left Wal-Mart with only some $3 pajamas. It wasn’t a fun experience, she said.

“I got here at 4 a.m. and it was that bad,” Arnold said. “I’ll never come back again on this (day).”

Bridgette Sonneborn didn’t go to sleep Thanksgiving night. Instead, she was in Waco at 11 p.m. waiting for the Toys R Us store to open at midnight, and then back at the Corsicana Wal-Mart by 3 p.m. with her family in tow.

“Absolutely, it was worth it,” she said, laughing. “We got exactly what we wanted.”

She reeled off a list of items, including two GPS units, a laptop, sheets, a coffeemaker and more.

Deep inside the Wal-Mart in the electronics department, Lorena Ramirez stood in line as buggy guard clutching a bottled Starbucks drink, while her brother Hector continued to forage for more items.

“I’m sleepy,” she said.

Together, she and her brother purchased two television sets, a Blu Ray, two GPS units, a set of dishes, pajamas, sweaters and a coffeemaker.

Despite her loss of sleep, Ramirez said she felt it was worthwhile.

Coming out of the Atwoods at 7:30 a.m. Sally and Charles Joles and mom Linda Kveton were loading up the last of their purchases. They’d already been to three or for sales that morning and were ready to go get breakfast.

“We pulled an all-nighter,” Sally Joles said.

Like a hunter boasting about a 12-point buck, she listed off $18 microwaves and $15 Guitar Hero games that she’d bagged that morning.

“We got half our Christmas shopping done today,” she said.

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