There is love zapping all around in strong rays. Each member of the family develops relations with members of other families and they all want to get together and eat and talk and smile and kid around. We can't fit it all into one isolated Thursday that is set aside for giving thanks for our good fortune. So, we have to spread our visits out over multiple days. Our family's main Thanksgiving assembly is today, the day after Thanksgiving, the national holiday.
This special Friday, like George Washington's birthday, is traditionally a fine day for shopping, especially for Christmas gifts. In a small town, there are only a limited number of stores so the smart shoppers get to them early to scoop up the good gifts. In Wisconsin, the deer hunt includes the week of Thanksgiving so many of the men are in the woods stalking deer, freeing women and non-hunters to get to the stores and shop.
Young, energetic people are manning the cash registers, the checkout booths and the counters all set to handle the rush of shoppers. These clerks and salespeople are primed and ready, enthusiastic even. Today is "Black Friday", traditionally a day when such bargains and waves of buyers meet that the records for the store's sales for the year will, hopefully, should a black figure of profit instead of a red figure of loss.
An old guy goes into a main megastore just to get some last minute purchases for today's family dinner: butter, eggs, cooking oil. He has to don sunglasses to deal with the cashier and the store host. They are beaming, they are ready, they are radiating expectant energy. The staff is drunk with anticipation, intoxicated with readiness. The old guy takes his purchases and walks quickly to the protection of his car, dodging the increasing torrents of additional troops of shoppers.
