Putting together the Hog Capital Festival parade is a huge undertaking for the Kewanee Chamber of Commerce’s Ambassadors Club.
But the Ambassadors have plenty of experience; they’ve been organizing the parade for nearly half a century.
Mark Mikenas, executive director of the chamber of commerce, doesn’t remember the exact year the Ambassadors took over the parade. But he thinks it was around the same time the Hog Capital Stampede began, and that was in 1976.
The chamber accepts parade entries and the Ambassadors determine the order in which the entries will head down the parade route.
On parade day (the Saturday before Labor Day), the entries will be lined up along the streets in the vicinity of Kewanee High School on East Third Street.
In what seems to be at least a minor miracle, the parade entries fall into place in the correct order and head to East Second Street. They proceed west to Second Street in downtown Kewanee, head south for a couple of blocks to Central Boulevard, and turn west to end the parade at Irving School.
The length of the parade is “right at a mile,” Mikenas said.
Along the way, the floats, marching bands, commercial entries and beauty queens will wave to thousands of people who sit in lawn chairs (in the shade, if they’re lucky) to see the parade.
The task of getting all the parade entries lined up has been made easier in recent years by the addition of a new parking lot across Third Street from Kewanee High School, Mikenas said.
He said he expects there will be at least 95 entries in the parade, which will last at least an hour.
They’ll pass the reviewing stand on Second Street just east of Main, where judges will determine which entries win the parade awards.
Mikenas said there will be a few high school marching bands in this year’s parade, but not as many as in years past. Many high school band directors have decided to concentrate on competitive events instead of parades.
Among those bands are the marching Gray Ghosts of Illinois Valley Central High School in Chillicothe, which had been a highlight of many previous parades.
Mikenas said some longtime entries are no longer taking part in the parade. But at the same time, there are new entries each year, so each year’s parade is unique.
If you want to watch the parade from a good vantage point, it’s a good idea to find stake out a spot early. Along some parts of the parade route, people start setting out lawn chairs and roping off their space as much as a week before parade day.
