Early risers get an early start on the new year

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

The sun had some company Thursday morning in Wytheville as it made its first rise of 2009.
Although most town denizens still were snoozing or at least cocooned up in their homes at daybreak, a few indefatigable folks didn’t waste any time getting a jump start on the new year.
Before 2009 was eight hours old, and with the bank marquee proclaiming the temperature at a why-is-it-ever-this-cold 16 degrees, Jeremy Stowers of Fort Chiswell already was hard at work.
Stowers, who called himself a “jack-of-all-trades” employee at Wytheville’s Wal-Mart, had drawn parking lot duty as his first task for 2009.
Managing an upbeat attitude despite the freezing conditions and the seemingly endless scattering of shopping carts for him to wrangle back inside, Stowers said New Year’s Day was just a routine workday for him.
“This is what I work every day,” Stowers said, referencing his 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift.
While Stowers said he was asleep on Dec. 31 by 10 p.m., he added that being awake even two hours before midnight is a late night for him.
“I stayed up and played the Wii some,” he said.
Overall, employees far outnumbered customers early Thursday morning inside Wal-Mart and the dozens of carts in the parking lot left over from the New Year’s Eve rush easily trumped the mere smattering of cars.
Standing alone in practically the entire non-grocery side of the store, Leonard Collins of Wytheville was out and about shopping for tires just after 8 a.m.
Collins, a truck driver, had a quick reply when asked why he was awake when most of his neighbors still were tucked in bed.
“I didn’t party last night for one thing,” he said.
In fact, Collins said he had drove a day shift on Wednesday and was asleep by 6 p.m. and then up by 2:30 a.m. Thursday.
He admitted, though, that more sleep was on his agenda for New Year’s Day afternoon before he had another route to drive.
Across the way in the only slightly more populated grocery section of Wal-Mart, Kelli King and Jamey Henley couldn’t quite say whether they were up early or still up late.
The pair watched the ball drop before hopping in their truck in Smyrna, Tenn., around 1 a.m. central time to start their long journey east across the state.
“We drove through the night,” Henley said, adding that they had switched off driving duties but still only managed to grab about an hour of sleep each.
Henley said they stopped in Wytheville after spotting Wal-Mart.
Although Henley and King were a bit bleary-eyed, they said they planned to push on to Snowshoe Ski Resort in West Virginia and, after a quick nap, be on the slopes by the end of the day.
But King said their early morning activeness was not a normal trait.
“We definitely would have been asleep,” she said regarding a more typical New Year’s Day morning.
Mark Epperson also was traveling on New Year’s Day, but in the opposite direction of Henley and King.
Epperson was pumping gas at Sheetz a little before 8 a.m. and, like Stowers, didn’t let the cold dampen his New Year’s cheer.
“I don’t run on a lot of sleep so I’m OK,” Epperson said.
After starting his journey in Elkins, W.Va., Epperson said he and his family spent New Year’s Eve in a Wytheville hotel – its regular midway stopping point on trips south –before waking up at 6 a.m. to be on their way to Chattanooga, Tenn.
And the reason for the early start?
“To be there by 1 p.m. to get there for the Georgia game,” Epperson said with a grin, explaining that his wife is an alumnus of the football-crazed school that was set to play that afternoon in the Capitol One Bowl.
While the Eppersons were drawn out of bed by the Georgia Bulldogs, it was a miniature schnauzer that got Frank Emerson out of the house before 9 a.m. on the first day of the year.
Emerson, a Wytheville musician and writer, was walking his dog along an otherwise deserted Main St.
He said he and his wife are regular early risers and had been up since 6:30 a.m., but he added that he had been contently watching “Monk” on television until his dog decided the holiday was no reason to skip their daily morning walk.
“It was time to go,” Emerson said.
Emerson said he had managed to make it up until midnight the previous night – if only just barely.
“I took a couple of naps in between,” he said.
Topping even his fellow early birds, though, was Edward Halsey.
He and his sister, Virginia Halsey, were enjoying breakfast at Hardee’s around 8:30 a.m., but it was far from his first activity of the day.
Edward Halsey gets in his morning exercise by walking around Wal-Mart and on New Year’s Day he said he began his routine around 5:45 a.m.
“I just get up early all the days,” the Wytheville retiree said.
The breakfast venue – not the early hour – actually was the more unusual part of Edward Halsey’s morning Thursday.
“We usually go to McDonald’s, but it was closed,” Virginia Halsey said.
Just another day, Edward Halsey said about the start of the new year, scoffing off the idea of staying up late on New Year’s Eve and messing up his New Year’s Day morning.
“That don’t interest me none,” he said.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .