Delaware store keepers reported being busy Friday with last-minute Christmas shoppers who were looking for those special gifts.
“We’re slammed,” said Terri-Lynne Smiles, owner of The Greater Gouda on Sandusky Street. “We just called in additional help; we’ve had people lined up since we opened today.”
Smiles said they opened the doors at 10 a.m. Friday. “At 10:20 we were busy,” she said. “Yesterday was pretty much the same.”
Smiles said they will make a lot of party trays that will go out Friday and Saturday. “Oh gosh, I’m going to have a bunch of people at my house,” she said, about some of her customers that suddenly realize they have guests coming.
The Delaware Antique Mall reported they also had been busy with customers all day.
The store’s head cashier Connie Noble said the customers coming through were last-minute shoppers, but were looking for something vintage to give as a gift.
Standing at the cashier counter of the antique store holding an old beer glass with the Cleveland Indians logo on it was Art Buanno of Delaware. He said he lived in the Cleveland area for 40 years before moving to here —and the glass was a gift for himself.
Earlier Buanno said he been in the store and found something for his wife, who loves birds. “She is probably out there right now feeding them,” he said.
He described the gift as a tree with different types of birds sitting on its branches. At the base was a music box that played song of birds in the tree. Before Buanno left the store he found one more item, a stamp to add to his collection.
Studying the old cameras in a section of the store was Kennedy Holtzclaw of Marysville, who stopped to look for a vintage camera for her brother. She said he recently had gotten into photography and she wanted to buy him a vintage camera for Christmas.
Gayle Angle walked down Sandusky Street with her two young children after picking up her last gift from The Bare Bowl. “We don’t have much left to buy, ” Angle said. “We just picked up our last gift.”
However, her son Xavier, said he still had something he needed to do before he finished his list. ” I still have to make some letters for my dad,” he said.
