Every time Pete Loyd turned around on Thanksgiving, someone was patting him on the back.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to thank you,\u201d said one woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d replied Loyd, smiling.<\/p>\n
Owner of the P&D Grocery in Mancos, Loyd prepared 16 25-pound turkeys and 50 pounds of ham for his annual free Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. He estimated feeding some 300 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the 14th year,\u201d explained Loyd. \u201cIt\u2019s gets bigger and bigger every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some 45 minutes prior to opening at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Loyd said dozens of people were waiting in line. By 1 p.m., all of the deviled eggs, sweet potatoes and cream-filled celery sticks had been consumed.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Loyd responded when asked why he started the tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess I had a bad dream,\u201d he continued, chuckling.<\/p>\n
A Montezuma County native, Loyd further explained that the annual dinner started as a way to feed his neighbors who had no place to go on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow everybody comes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Camila Fola, 5, her younger sister, Ashanti, and 9-month-old cousin, Amelia Navarro, were among those at the free dinner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the turkey,\u201d said Camila Fola.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hundreds of thankful neighbors enjoy feast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6371],"tags":[13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-116223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mt-news","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116223"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=116223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}