To Becky Walker, 44, her parents and her sister -- all of Duluth -- getting a spot in line at Best Buy on Thanksgiving Day is what turkey, pumpkin pie and football on TV are to other families.
"I'm here for the fun," Walker said. "It's a family tradition. We've been doing this for six years."
With the electronics retailer offering steep discounts on limited items, getting in line early made perfect sense for about 20 people lined up by 7 p.m. for the store's 5 a.m. opening. The temperature sat at 36 degrees but a stiff wind probably made it feel like 24 degrees, said Dean Packingham of the National Weather Service in Duluth.
Ben Asperheim, 24, of Duluth was first to arrive at 10 a.m. with his list of more than 15 items plus blankets, beverages and handwarmers.
Second in line was Marc Bax, 29, of Danbury, Wis., who rested comfortably in a recliner, supplied with footwarmers and, er, toilet paper.
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The store's newspaper advertisement promises to pass out tickets for its best bargains at 4 a.m. Friday. An example of the deals was a package that included a computer with 512 megabytes of memory, a 100-gigabyte hard drive and a DVD/CD player, a 15-inch LCD monitor and a brand-name color printer -- all for $189.97. The items normally would sell for $574.97, according to the newspaper ad. Best Buy only guarantees a minimum of 10 of the computer packages per store -- thus, the lines.
Walker's parents, Jim and Sharon Olson, drove their motor home into Best Buy's parking lot about 3 p.m. The clan included Walker's sister, Brenda Marshall, 46, and daughter-in-law, Mary Benson, 42, and her two children, ages 8 and 11. Benson was a first-timer.
The family used to split up on Black Friday, hitting a variety of stores and conferring by cell phone, Walker said. But eventually she convinced them all to join her at Best Buy.
"Last year we sat in line with the manager from Verizon," she said, "and we all switched over to Verizon. You make great friends from just being in line."
Rachel Scott is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Duluth.
