BONNERS FERRY, Idaho — People usually start lining up for Thanksgiving dinner before 10 a.m. at Chuck Quillin’s place in Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
Some are strangers Quillin has never met. Others have been coming for years.
For 14 years, the owner of the Three Mile Cafe has been offering a free Thanksgiving dinner to everyone who walks in the door of his truck stop. Usually about 300 people eat.
Most of the guests are regulars, but they include surprised truckers and tourists who are pleasantly surprised that, at least on Thanksgiving in Bonners Ferry, there is such a thing as a free lunch.
"We probably have enough for 500 people," Quillin said this week as he prepared the huge meal. "We have plenty of food."
People come from as far away as Spokane, 100 miles to the southwest.
This is not a meal intended only for the poor or for lonely singles, Quillin said. It is a civic gathering in the spirit of the first Thanksgiving. Entire families come to the diner, and no one is allowed to sit alone.
"Whether you have or have not doesn’t even enter into it," Quillin said. "It’s something where you give back.
"You’ve got to give back," he said. "You can’t take, take, take."
The cafe, which seats 62, is just north of this little logging town on U.S. 95 about 30 miles south of the Canadian border.
"What’s nice is when we get Canadians," he said. "It’s not their holiday, and they come in and are caught totally off guard."
There’s nothing unusual about the menu. The food is turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, roll and pumpkin pie.
"We prepare the turkeys ahead of time, but everything else is prepared the day of," Quillin said. It takes 15 to 20 turkeys to feed the crowds.
Half a dozen employees pitch in as volunteers, as do a large number of community members. Quillin always has more volunteers than he needs.
The Thanksgiving meal is served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., but people have typically fill the seats by 10:30 and a line forms.
Quillin doesn’t eat until the last guest has been served.
He has never run out of food.
He refused to reveal how much the meal costs, saying he has never added up the bills and doesn’t care.
Quillin, 64, spent 19 years constructing pipelines all over the United States. One of those jobs was in the Bonners Ferry area. He liked it so well that he bought the cafe in 1979.
The first free Thanksgiving dinner drew about 25 people, and it’s been growing since.
He plans to do it all again next year.
"I don’t know why I’d want to retire," he said.
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