AUGUSTA (AP) – Mainers celebrated Thanksgiving with their families and friends, but many also took time to serve holiday meals to the less fortunate.

Gov. John Baldacci planned to serve Thanksgiving meals and meet with patients at the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor. He planned to return to the capital later Thursday in time to serve dinners to residents of Riverview Psychiatric Center.

Holiday meals will be served to hundreds of other Mainers with no place else to go. At least 60 people were expected to turn out at the Salvation Army dinner at River of Life Cafe in Westbrook.

In Kennebunk, the group Community Harvest helped to prepare dinner for 180 people at St. Martha’s Catholic Church.

Many of the jails and prisons in the state planned special Thanksgiving meals for the inmates. Penobscot County Jail in Bangor planned turkey dinners for its 153 inmates. The jail also planned to show a movie each night through the holiday weekend in an effort to boost morale among prisoners, jail supervisor Lt. Linda Golden said. Jails in Waldo and Washington counties added Thanksgiving Day to their visitation schedules. Normally, the jails aren’t open Thursdays for visits.

The holiday accent was on giving in Norridgewock, where strangers and friends helped a family whose three-bedroom house was destroyed by a fire. Tornia Bowring’s two children, Kaleb, 13, and Kayla, 14, received clothes, beds, blankets and dishes among other items after the family’s three-bedroom home was destroyed in a blaze. A woman from Solon called earlier this week to invite the family over for Thanksgiving, Bowring said.

Traffic in Maine was expected to be heavy during the Thanksgiving weekend. State police Col. Craig Poulin said troopers would be looking for aggressive and impaired drivers.

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