With his doomed from the start US Senate run finally over, Jim Gray has begun to return to the everyday duties expected of a former vice mayor. While these tasks are usually mundane and boring, there are rare occurrences that allow him to let loose and have a little fun while on the job. That’s what Gray did this morning, as he completed his annual pardon of a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon.

The tradition of pardoning a Wild Turkey bottle began in the 1980’s and has taken place every year since on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, except during Billy Gillispie’s tenure as Kentucky basketball coach. In each of those two years, city officials were unable to find a bottle of Wild Turkey that had not already been purchased and consumed by the disgraced former coach, and thus were forced to pardon bottles of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider instead.

The goal of the pardon is to spare one bottle of Wild Turkey from the horrors that bourbons typically face every Thanksgiving: being quickly gulped down by your Uncle Terry before he argues about politics and religion with your college-aged cousin Seth in-between football games.

This year’s exonerated bottle, a Wild Turkey 101 nicknamed “Freebird” (because of its propensity to cause people to break into Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics), will live out its days peacefully atop the wooden mantle that also houses Jim Gray’s esteemed braided belt collection.