Hillyard Parade Full Of Hoots, High Jinks Neighbors Celebrate Annual Event
Anna May King wouldn’t miss Hillyard’s annual parade.
Since 1936, she’s watched the clowns, bands and politicians stream by in the Hillyard Hi Jinx festival parade. She’s seen it through bad times when the parade was barely alive.
“Now, it’s good again,” she said.
On Saturday, a half-hour before the 11 a.m. start at Wellesley and Market, she parked off the parade route and fixed her folding chair on a sidewalk.
King said Hillyard gets a bad rap as a crumbling neighborhood.
“I’ve really fought with people over that,” the 74-year-old woman said. “I always tell them count the churches, not the taverns.”
This year, she got to see her son and five grandchildren participate.
Her son, Benny King, drew hoots and howls from the crowd. He wore a dress and tiara as he sat perched on the hood of a car with a sign that read: “Miss Hillyard sponsored by Great Northern Plumbing.”
King named his plumbing company for Great Northern Railway, which once employed his father and thousands of others in Hillyard.
He yelled, “Hi mom,” to Anna May King. She quickly snapped his photo, then laughingly tried to deny that she knew him.
She also watched her five grandchildren pull a locomotive made from a little red wagon with a shiny, tin garbage can. They called themselves the Great Northern Railway.
Her son’s act didn’t go over well with some women in the crowd.
“Miss Hillyard, that was a little tacky,” said Anne Grammer, 26. “There’s a lot of cute women in Hillyard.”
Grammer did have some favorites, such as the Hillyard Belles. They were a group of older women dressed in flapper outfits and accompanied by a ragtime band.
There were clowns, old automobiles, a Mustang coupe decorated with Tweetie birds, and a furry dog waving from the Go Spot Go Car Wash car.
Children dodged off the curb to grab candy thrown by those in the parade.
“Someone threw candy straight at me,” said Cassy LaCroix, 8.
Her father, Bryan LaCroix, who has come to the parade for years, said he was most impressed with this one.
“It was the longest parade I’ve seen.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo