You know that we're within a white whisker of Christmas Day when you see these sorts of things at Hanes Mall -- girls with red bows in their hair waiting to sit on Santa's lap; women dressed in festive sweaters; and men carrying Victoria's Secret gift bags.
Another telltale sign? Cars creeping along the roads leading to the mall as people scramble to finish their shopping in the St. Nick of time.
Shoppers heading to the mall around 4 or 5 p.m. can expect to spend a lot of time sitting in their cars instead of sorting through clothing racks. Exit ramps from Interstate 40 have become backed up with cars trying to get to the mall. The Winston-Salem Police Department's "holiday task force" is helping with some of the traffic. The task force works in the mall area to deal with the increases in shoplifting, theft and car wrecks.
Police Sgt. Keith Redmon said that six to eight additional officers are used to help deter crime before it happens and respond quickly when it does.
Officers from the traffic-enforcement unit also participate in the holiday task force to assist in crash investigations and help with broken-down cars.
Redmon said that there's not much that police can do during the peak-traffic hours. "Any time you try to put a thousand vehicles in a space designed for 20 cars, for example, you're going to have gridlock," he said.
To avoid the gridlock, the best time to tackle the mall is when it opens -- 8 a.m.
Linda Lane of King was taking a rest on a bench on the mall's lower level about 10:30 a.m yesterday. Two days ago, her sister in Chapel Hill had asked Lane if she would pick up a hammer at Sears because the stores in the Triangle appeared to have sold out of them.
Lane figured that fulfilling such a request would involve a trip to the mall.
"Yes, there was a big hesitation," Lane said, "but I had caught up on everything and thought, ‘We'll go. We'll go early and have no expectations.' The stress is off."
Her goal was to get to the mall before the teenagers woke up, she said, and there was no trouble with traffic or crowds at that hour.
Although the parking areas near the main entrances were filling up by noon yesterday, plenty of parking remained in the outlying areas, and traffic around the mall was normal.
A trip to the mall on Monday evening, when crowds and traffic were thick as eggnog, didn't discourage Mike Lambros of Midway from coming back on Tuesday.
"It was bumper-to-bumper," Lambros said about Monday evening's traffic. "But everybody was pretty polite.... You just had to be patient."
Lambros said he is a last-minute shopper by design.
"I enjoy getting out and watching pe ople," Lambros said. "My Mrs. doesn't understand that."
He said he plans to return to the mall this morning.
Sean Lucas and his wife, Leilani, traveled an hour from their home in Hickory to get a taste of the mall's hustle and bustle. Like other morning shoppers, they encountered no traffic problems en route.
"We like to people-watch," Sean Lucas said. "We're not here to shop. We're done."
David Burcham of King sounded as though he was ready to be done. He was with his daughter, who wanted to come to the mall.
"I like a hangnail more than shopping," Burcham said. "You gotta do it."
And if you must do it in the evening, there's little that a driver can do beyond being patient and driving slowly, Redmon said. On the bright side, he said, traffic has been so slow that most of the wrecks have been fender-benders.
Shoppers will have good weather, at least. The National Weather Service's forecast calls for a 60 percent chance of freezing rain late Christmas Eve. Rain will continue into Christmas Day.
Until then, roads will be free of ice but not of vehicles.
lodonnell@wsjournal.com.
727-7420
Journal reporter Paul Garber contributed to this story.
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