Cars turning around in the Reese & Ray's IGA parking lot to make another trip Draggin' Main.
A Draggin' Main event was held in Sidney Aug. 8. The event was in tribute to first responders & law enforcement. Pictured left is Tom & Belinda Pavek riding on their scooters during the event.
Starting in 2020, two Sidney locals, Jason Schrader and Nick Kallem co-organized Sidney Draggin' Main events. Here they brought cheer to the community and raised funds for local charitable organizations.
The idea for starting this event came from a couple of ladies at the South 40. "They said that it would be cool if we could do what the locals did back in the day and have a draggin' main event, which is where everyone would come out and drive their cars around town," said Jason Schrader.
After formulating a plan to make "Draggin' Main" an established event, Kallem and Schrader put on one for the community to participate in and have fun amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. "After we did this, we started thinking of how we could use this to help the community. So, I talked to the Sidney Mayor, Rick Norby, and he said that our local food bank was having supply issues. So, we had a Draggin' Main event where people were encouraged to bring food items and we ended up raising over 3,000 pounds of food. We filled that food bank right up," stated Schrader.
After seeing the success of this event, Schrader and Kallem wanted to take it a step further and contact local charitable organizations that may need help with raising funds. They sponsored a Draggin' Main event for the Boys and Girls Club of Richland County and raised around $1,200 and did an additional event for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention/Eastern Montana Out of the Darkness Community Walk and raised over $1,000.
Schrader and Kallem also organized a Draggin' Main event for the Sidney High School Class of 2020 graduation. "My son graduated last year and because of the way COVID-19 affected everything, we wanted to do something special for their graduation. So, all the seniors lined up with their cars, graduation pictures, and decorated vehicles. And a buddy of mine brought a karaoke machine and hooked it up to a generator and I met the crowd out and we were playing the grad song, and everybody lined the streets. We had a great time. We also had a lot of community support - Pizza House was selling pizza by the slice and Sidney Mercantile was selling snow cones," explained Schrader.
"Seeing all that community support was just amazing. The area businesses contributed to these nights, making them a huge success."
The main goal of these events is to "bring the community together and get the cars back on the road." Schrader and Kallem want to keep offering these events to "give the community something to do and to get people out there and having fun." They also plan to continue using this platform to generate funds for local charitable organizations.
Schrader explained that there will be many more Draggin' Main events to come and there will be a detailed schedule of all the events coming out at the end of February. He said," This next summer we plan on doing all the same events and more- around 10 to 12 Draggin' Main events. We will have one every other Saturday from high school graduation to the end of September."
Schrader hopes to continue putting on these events for the community because of what the community has done for him. "I came out here 12 years ago working in the oilfield and after a year of being out here, I moved my family up here. As time went on, I started meeting some of the locals and they took us in like family. I love this community and my family loves it here. So, I enjoy giving back to this community because it has brought me so much joy."
Reader Comments(0)