By Dennis Box

The Courier-Herald

After the turkey was carved and the last piece of pie eaten, the lines for shopping madness began forming in the wee hours of Friday morning.

The day after Thanksgiving has become known as Black Friday for the shopping chaos that kicks off the Christmas present-buying frenzy.

Wal-Mart Assistant Manager Jason Marshall said the line outside the Bonney Lake store wrapped around the building when he arrived at 4 a.m. He estimated hundreds of people had braved the early morning weather to snap up bargains on laptop computers, wide-screen televisions and other electronic bargains.

Unlike other areas where fights broke out and people were trampled when the doors opened, Bonney Lake stores avoided any major mishaps, according to the managers of Target, Fred Meyer and Wal-Mart.

&#8220It went pretty good,” Marshall said. &#8220The customers were anxious to get the hot items. Some of the customers lined up at the garden gate and there were some problems there and we handed out raffle tickets, but we couldn't make it all the way through the line.”

Marshall said with a little good cheer, some Starbucks coffee and allowing people to sign up for another raffle the customers settled into serious bargain buying.

Wal-Mart's big draw was a Hewlett-Packard laptop computer for $378. The store had 30 of the computers and they were gone in a blink.

Wide-screen televisions were another hot item, as were DVDs and anything electronic.

Josh LeBlanc, the store team leader at Target, said this was his 14th year with Target stores and he described Friday as very big for the Bonney Lake outlet.

&#8220The first two hours were really good,” LeBlanc said. &#8220Electronics were big sellers this year. Digital cameras and DVDs sold for us.”

Customers were lined up outside Fred Meyer waiting for the opening bell and Store Director Chad Higgins said he thought it was the store's busiest day ever.

&#8220People lined up to buy TVs, mp3s, electronics and apparel,” Higgins said. &#8220The first couple of hours were insane, but everything went well.”

Fred Meyer had gone through another buying frenzy Tuesday with the release of the Microsoft XBox 360. Customers, many of them teenagers, lined up during the night and Higgins said the store sold out in 15 minutes.

Along with the three chain stores, customers kept the local businesses busy as well.

Peggy Selle traveled from Kent, starting at 7 a.m. to hit Fred Meyer, Target and the Bonney Lake Ben Franklin store.

&#8220I'll be shopping all day,” Selle said. &#8220There are a lot of good deals.”

Clear numbers for the weekend will be out later this week, but estimates range from flat sales after Friday's boom to the solid jumps over last year, according to a numbers compiled by the National Retail Federation, a retail trade association.

The federation reported 145 million people descended on the nation's stores, up from 133 million in 2004. The federation's news release stated Americans spent $27.8 billion over the weekend, a 21.9 percent increase over the 2004 figure of $22.8 billion.

ShopperTrak RCT, a company that monitors 45,000 retail outlets across America, described Black Friday as flat with sales down about 0.9 percent

The federation noted what Bonney Lake store managers experienced, that people were drawn this year by dramatic discounts, particularly in electronics. According to the federation, electronic sales jumped 31.2 percent from last year.

&#8220It was a mad rush for the first couple of hours,” Marshall said. &#8220Friday was definitely the biggest shopping day of the year for Bonney Lake's Wal-Mart.”

Dennis Box can be reached at dbox@courierherald.com.