All across the country, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving with family and friends, sharing holiday food and football.

Before heading home, many area residents took time out Thursday to help provide a warm Thanksgiving meal to the less fortunate.

At the Salvation Army in Sharon, 100 volunteers served up a hot turkey dinner.

"It's a good thing to keep doing every year," said Sharon High School basketball coach Brian Hoover. This marks the third year basketball players have helped serve the meals. "This year, I had players asking if we were going to go again. They really like to be able to help out."

Amario Boatwright and Marcus Williams, both Sharon High basketball players, served meals.

"I really like doing this," Boatwright said. "It makes you feel good, to be able to help someone out."

Williams agreed. "It's a great way to give something back to the community."

Work on preparing the meal started Wednesday, said volunteer and head cook Marjan Rodgers. Volunteers came back at 6 a.m. Thursday to make sure the 20 turkeys, pounds of coleslaw and bushels of potatoes were ready to go.

Chet Cameron of West Middlesex, who helped supervise the meal, said at least 100 people were at the noontime feast. Earlier in the day, some 25 meals were delivered to those not able to leave their homes, he said.

Just as the meal at the Salvation Army was being cleared away, firefighters in Sharon were sitting down to a meal of their own.

"It's hard being away from your family for 24 hours on the holiday," said Lt. Brian Scarmack. "With others, say in a mill, they'll work their shift and go home and can schedule dinner around that. We can't."

Scarmack, along with Kevin McMahon and George Buckley, prepared a Thanksgiving feast of their own: turkey, stuffing, corn, potatoes, rolls and baked goods from home.

Scarmack's daughter supplied the pumpkin pie.

"She did pretty good for being 6 years old," he said.

After the meal, the firefighters settled down to watch some football, and the evening news.

Not everyone zoned out in front of the television to digest their turkey dinners Thursday.

At Cinema 8 in the Hermitage Towne Plaza, families flocked to see "The Cat in the Hat" and Disney's "The Haunted Mansion," while teens and adults went to see one of the other movies released just in time for the holiday season.

Matt Niehaus, 17, of Sharon and his cousins, Jake Spears of Texas and Dan Spears of Grove City decided to catch the Michael Crichton film "Timeline."

"We just didn't have anything else to do tonight," Matt said. They'd watched enough football, he said, after seeing the Detroit Lions defeat the Green Bay Packers.

Jack and Carol Johnson of Wheatland decided to get a head start on Christmas shopping Thursday night at Kmart in Hermitage; they also said they needed to walk off the huge dinner they'd just eaten.

It was for other grandchildren, in Florida, that the Johnsons were loading up their shopping cart with sleeping bags, sweaters and T-shirts.

"We're finding some pretty good deals," Mrs. Johnson said. "But mainly, we just needed to get out and walk off all that turkey."