By By Connie Nowlin Managing editor
National experts on the economy have been predicting the best holiday shopping season since 1999, but it seems to have gotten off to a slow start in Atmore.
B.C. Moore's on Lindberg Avenue opened at 6 a.m. Friday, but there were not a lot of takers at that hour, according to assistant manager Brian Shivers.
"We are not as busy as (the same day) last year," Shivers said. "But it has been steady. I'll take it."
Shivers said his big seller so far this holiday shopping season has been South Pole clothing. "That's our hot ticket right now," he said.
Shoppers in the store had different reasons for being out instead of home, eating leftovers.
Felecia Lyons Drake lives in Huntsville now, but the graduate of Escambia County High School was keeping a tradition going.
"We always come to Moore's after Thanksgiving," Drake said. "We always come home for the Pow Wow and this is part of our tradition."
Drake, formerly a home economics teacher at Escambia County Middle School, said she and her family had been at the retailer every Friday after Thanksgiving for more than 20 years.
Marci Beckham and her husband, Anthony, were out at 6 a.m., but they did not start in Atmore.
By midday, the couple had already been to Pensacola and Bay Minette, and stopped at the department store on their way to do still more shopping in town.
"It was a mess," Marci Beckham said, referring to the traffic in the larger towns.
And although television morning shows are full of advice about budgeting for the holidays, the Beckhams were following a less formal format.
"We were out trying to hit the sales," Marci Beckham said.
"And we have been doing pretty good," Anthony Beckham continued.
The couple said that the signs of resurgence in the economy were encouraging them to be more generous this year than in previous years.
That should make for a merry Christmas season for merchants, local and national alike.