Some people, when blessed with the opportunity to spend time with relatives, need to get away and have a drink.

During her three years working at The Keg on Thanksgiving, Melissa Arnold noticed that. She also noticed something else during her years bartending.

“Some people on Thanksgiving didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said.

So when she became bar manager at The Keg, in 2004, she asked the regulars to help put together a Thanksgiving potluck. The event, like cranberry sauce on blue jeans, has stuck.

The emergency exit blared on Thursday as someone opened the fire door for "Potsy," who lugged in a slow-cooked, 23-pound turkey from the afternoon cold.  

He headed inside, past a flier Melissa put up that read, “Hope to see all my Keg Family on Turkey Day” and to a table in front of a cardboard cutout of a Budweiser clydesdale.

“Just like Emeril Lagasse,” Allen Roos, er, Potsy said as he poured a mixture of whisked milk and flour from a bar pitcher into a gravy pot.

“I got nothing to do,” he said. “So Melissa, she’s not a real good cook, so I’ll cook for her.”

He brought a bowl of apple-raisin stuffing — Mom’s recipe — and talked about the merits of wild turkey versus store-bought while sipping on a Canadian whiskey and water.

His girlfriend got off work at the airport early, so the two of them dined together with the rest of the crew.

Some wore Harley leathers. Others winter sweaters. Some drank. Some didn’t. Candy Bosak griped about how Christmas music is already on the stupid radio. Her husband Mark said he’s been playing it since he heard the first noel.

It’s a mixed crowd, Melissa said. If you can get along with the bikers and the drinkers, the karaoke gods and the conscientious objectors, great. If not, you know where the door is.

At a table near a growing pile of discarded pickle cards, Christopher Bratcher flipped through photos of Darby and Mark and Mama C, of line dancing and singing and drinking, of nights at The Keg much wilder than Thanksgiving.

“I think it’s such an awesome time,” said Bratcher, who started coming to the bar for karaoke. “It’s developed into more than that for me.”

It’s not the only time Melissa and company put together a feast at the 20th and O street bar. The regulars get together on Christmas, too. And many Wednesday Bike Nights are buffets in disguise.

“This goes on all year long,” Bob Miller, another Wednesday regular, said. “This is a neighborhood where something like that is important.”

“Dinner is done and you are more than welcome to get some,” Melissa said over the bar’s intercom system. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

Reach Cory Matteson at 473-2655 or cmatteson@journalstar.com.