Early birds catch bus to shop Chicago.

Rural Midwesterners are early risers, but this is ridiculous--waking up at 4 a.m., then traveling hours on a bus just to go shopping.

Yet that’s what Wilma Wubben did: Woke at 4; left her Independence, Iowa, house at 5 a.m.; and 80 minutes and 60 miles later, boarded the “Shoppers Express” in Dubuque along with three friends. By noon they were rolling through traffic-clogged downtown Chicago with 44 other rural Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin shoppers.

“This is exciting,” said Wubben, the Welcome Wagon lady in Independence, who in 62 years of living just 250 miles away had never visited the Windy City. “Oh, I went through on Amtrak once, but I never walked around there. I’ve never been there to look and shop. Today we’re doing both.”

‘Tis the season to shop, and daily scores of tour buses are bringing thousands of shoppers like Wubben to Chicago from across the Midwest for a few frenzied hours of consumerism.

Day and overnight shopping trips to the Windy City are a rapidly growing regional retailing phenomenon, becoming as much a part of the holiday season as fruitcakes and sleigh bells. Midwest tour bus lines report between 10% and 50% annual growth in pre-Christmas, Chicago-bound shopping trips, with this type of travel reaching its peak over the last week. The city is perfectly located, at the region’s crossroads and a five-hour or less bus ride from major cities and small towns that are home to tens of millions of Midwesterners.

Shoppers are drawn by a concentration of big name retailers and pricey specialty shops second only to those found in Manhattan.

“I’m going in to get my hair done at Elizabeth Arden and to shop at Saks Fifth Avenue,” said Anita Conway of Galena, Ill. “I want a cloth coat and I couldn’t find anything in Dubuque.”

The buying binges are fueled by the approaching holidays and by the flow of cash and free time in rural America that comes after the growing season.

“The harvest is over. Farmers have sold their crops and have money,” said Laurie S. Wurster, who runs a feed store and grain elevator in rural Stockton, Ill., and who was also riding the Shoppers Express. “Farmers have paid their bills and other rural people also have money now. And it is the only time of the year when they have no chores and can go away and do this.

“Besides, when you’re from the sticks, coming (to Chicago) is relaxing.”

It can also be culture shock.

“The prices downtown are very, very high,” said Terry Monahan of East Dubuque, Ill. “I paid $14.75 for two ice teas and two beers. I’m not used to that. Back home a bottle of beer in a bar costs a buck 25.”

“Chicago has quite a reputation,” said Neva Holland of Independence. “But I’ll do anything to get out of town. I go to Waterloo or Cedar Rapids at least once a week.”

“I worry that maybe I’ll have my charge cards stolen,” said Jeri Byrne of Shullsburg, Wis. “But I don’t think anybody will kidnap me.”

There are no sophisticated marketing studies of this shopping phenomenon, but there are measures of its popularity.

For example last Wednesday--a day picked at random--100 tour buses jammed two special downtown parking lots while their passengers shopped in the Loop and along North Michigan Avenue. One downtown hotel reported it had booked overnight rooms for 45 bus shopping tours the weekend of Dec. 2-3.

The giant, 225-store suburban Woodfield Mall--the second-most popular Chicago area destination for rural shoppers--hosts an estimated 30,000 customers bused from eight mid-America states in the six weeks preceding Christmas.

“They come from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri and rural Illinois,” said Betty Bryant, the mall’s marketing director and one of the few students of the trend.

Tri-State Tours, operator of the bus Wubben rode, this year will carry about 3,000 shoppers--at $20 each--to Chicago from northeastern Iowa, northwestern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

Marshall Field’s big Loop department store was the first stop for Wubben and her friends, who managed to cover the city’s two most intensively shopped retailing areas in their five hours downtown. There was lunch at Watertower Place, and a finale of shopping at Bloomingdale’s.

“I’ve been so busy gawking, I’ve hardly had time to buy,” said Wubben, whose purchases were limited to a sweat shirt and some fresh baked cookies.

“This is my first time in these stores and, oh, they have SO much. It’s overwhelming,” said Fran Crawford of Independence.

“I couldn’t believe the men’s department,” said Wubben. “I’ve never seen so many ties in my entire life.”

“Did you see those fancy dressed girls waiting in the aisle to give away samples of perfume?” asked her friend Gloria Mohlis, a farmer’s wife who comes from Rowley, Iowa, population 280. She was the big spender in the group, buying a $60 jar of body lotion, a $37 gift for her husband and a $31 Bloomingdale’s sweat shirt that said, “Born to be a Shopper.”

“You know, one day’s not enough,” she said as the group walked past winking, twinkling Christmas lights toward the bus as darkness fell.