NORTH COUNTY – For anyone with nowhere to go or without the ability to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, free dinners are being offered in Tonasket and Oroville on Thursday, Nov. 26.

Each of the three meals in Tonasket begin at 2 p.m. One of the meals is at the Tonasket Free Methodist Church, located at 1 Stanton Loop Road. Stephanie Hulse, who is organizing the dinner with her husband, John Hulse, said the church is located about a half-mile up Havillah Road on the right. The dinner will be downstairs in the Fellowship Hall.

“This is a community wide event with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner,” S. Hulse said. “It’s open to anybody who wants to come. We want people to feel like they have a place to go. We don’t have family here so we started doing this so everybody can get together and get a good turkey meal.”

Another dinner, which is from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., is at the Tonasket Eagles and is also open to the public. This dinner will also feature a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

Finally, the Tonasket Saloon and Tavie Café will be hosting their annual Thanksgiving dinner from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Budley McSpadden will also be performing during the dinner.

“We all need each other more than normal this year,” Debby Curren, Saloon owner, said. “Everyone is welcome.”

In Oroville, Linda’s Bakery will also be serving a traditional turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. The dinner will take place between 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and everyone is welcome, says owner Linda Darrow.

“We have over 100 pounds of turkey and we’ve had many people who have been volunteering to get dinner prepared,” Darrow said. “We also had a sizable monetary donation from one of the gals who donates each year to purchase food for the dinner.”

Darrow said that John DeHardin of Hometown Pizza will be preparing pies and that several apple pies were purchased from the Catholic Church during their pie sale and some were donated.

“Of course we’ll have pumpkin pies and all the traditional things that go with a Thanksgiving dinner,” she said. “Hopefully we will have lots of people… I think we will see more families and single women with kids this year.”

The Tonasket American Legion’s Thanksgiving dinner was on Saturday, Nov. 21. The dinner began at 3:30 but there were so many people in attendance that the food was gone within an hour.

“Thirty people came and none left hungry,” Bill Schroedel, second vice commander of the Legion, said. “I had a 24-pound turkey and two eight-pound pork loins. It was a great success. We do this for the veterans on Saturday because of the free dinners at the Eagles, the Saloon and the church on Thanksgiving day.”