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Crazy for kielbasa!

Those waiting in line at Kowalonek's Kielbasa Shop in Shenandoah know they can't come home without kielbasa for Thanksgiving.

SHENANDOAH, Pa. — Come Thursday, many families across America will be sitting down for a traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey as the headliner.

In the coal region, though, a Thanksgiving meal isn't complete without kielbasa, even if you have to wait in line to get it.

"The taste," Cindy Boyer of Mount Carmel said. "It's just so delicious. We just can't go without it."

The process of ordering it is just a little different this year at Kowalonek's Kielbasa Shop in Shenandoah. Lines are totally normal during the holiday season, but before entering the store, customers are asked to sanitize their hands. Then, they wait for a buzzer notifying them when they can enter the shop since only a select few people are allowed inside.

Once there, employees are working at lightning speed in a calculated fashion like any other year to fulfill as many orders as possible.

"It's different," Jessica Hannis of Kowalonek's said. "Definitely different, but we just have to adapt and do our best at that. Certainly, our number one priority is keeping everybody safe — our employees, our customers, our families. That's our number one priority, so we're trying to do that and move forward as best as we can."

Nobody waiting in line here wants to know what would happen if they came to Thanksgiving without their kielbasa.

"I don't even want to know," Chloe Getz of Jim Thorpe said. "That's going to be a really hard question if I come home without any kielbasa if I'm being honest, but we'll see."

"Where's the kielbasa?" Boyer said. "You didn't do that, mom! You didn't miss the kielbasa!"

Luckily for their families, they won't be coming home empty-handed because the Kielbasa craze is real.

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