Dan Fick sold 25 Shop Vacs at Ace Hardware the first 15 minutes he was open Friday.

On the day before, Thanksgiving, Mike Thorne, manager of Alco, said business was up 63 percent over a year ago.

And at Hy-Vee, a place where you normally go to buy groceries, two 42-inch plasma TVs moved out the door still in the wee hours.

People are spending money in Estherville.

A lot of money.

All you had to do was drive by a number of stores that, like their big-city counterparts, opened early Friday morning to accommodate shoppers during what has become the biggest shopping day of the year - the day after Thanksgiving.

While Estherville didn't have the mad rush of the cities, it did have shoppers lined up early Friday morning. They included locals as well as visitors like Joyce Rogers from Kansas City who was one of the early morning shoppers at Pamida which opened at 6 a.m.

That wasn't the earliest anyone opened though. Sears opened at 4 a.m. With four washer-dryer pairs normally priced at $1,270 selling for $569, only one was left after an hour.

"We were up 63 percent over last year," said Thorne of Alco's Thanksgiving sales. "We sold a lot of TVs. It was mainly the electronics that were selling the most." That, and video games.

Rich Nitchals, manager of Bomgaars, had brisk traffic with the store offering 20 percent off all day long.

"They're looking for our ad items," Nitchals said. "We also had some good bargain leader items."

"We already sold a couple TVs," said Scott Walters, Hy-Vee manager. This is the first year we've had them." The 42-inch Panasonic plasma televisions were on sale for $498 - a typical price for a much smaller set.

Walters said MP3 players and digital cameras were brisk sellers too.

"We've sold a ton of toys as well," Walters said.

Noting "a nice, big line at the door" at Ace Hardware, Dan Fick said 25 Shop Vacs sold in 15 minutes.

"Everybody looks happy this morning. I think people need to push ahead a little bit anyway," Fick said.