Casper Car Show Benefits Wyoming Food for Thought Project
Sherrie and Rick Baker drove their respective muscle machines from Midwest to the Wyoming Food for Thought Project car show in the 500 block of South David Street from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday
Sherrie brought a first generation 1967 Pontiac Firebird, which is mostly original except for the 455 cubic inch V8, which she modestly notes is more powerful than the 350 in Rick’s Chevelle.
“I’m very competitive,” Sherrie said. “He keeps up with me.”
To which Rick responded, “It’s the truth.”
The car show featured food trucks, a band, a raffle and a lot of four-wheeled eye candy.
All the proceeds from car registrations went to the Food for Thought Project, said Ray Parnell, who organized the event with the Central Wyoming Corvette Club.
Parnell has been organizing events for Food for Thought for seven years. This year, he joined forces with Jacquie Anderson, owner of the Cheese Barrel at the Bluebird, 544 S. Center.
Food for Thought is personal for Parnell, who said his Depression-era parents worked on weekends and he and his siblings had to fend for themselves. “It’s a good cause.”
While the show was free for spectators, he asked them to bring canned goods and dry foods that will be donated to the charity.
The combined car registrations, food donations and in-kind donations raised about $1,600.
Maggie King, culinary director for Food for Thought, said it provides food bags for food-insecure children in Natrona County and Glenrock for weekends. The bags contain both nonperishable foods and leftover unserved food from Casper College, King said.
The organization works with the Natrona County School District, and distributes about 1,200 weekend food bags during the school year.
That number drops to about 300 a week during the summer. Volunteers distribute the food bags door-to-door during the summer, she added.
Recently, one volunteer came back to the Food for Thought office at 420 W. First St., King said. The volunteer was crying because she went to a mobile home and the children ran out to her thanking her for bringing the food bags, she said.