Hootin an Hollarin parade is Saturday afternoon

Hundreds of spectators line the streets of Gainesville on Saturday afternoon of Hootin an Hollarin as the festival parade steps off at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20. Organizers hope attendees will embrace this year’s festival theme, “Neighbors Helping Neighbors,” by clapping and showing appreciation to local emergency workers who will be featured in the parade including ambulance workers, volunteer firefighters, first responders, the sheriff’s department, electric cooperatives, MoDOT workers, Ozark County Road and Bridge, city employees and Ozark County Emergency Management Director Curtis Ledbetter. 

This year’s parade promises to be another crowd pleaser, with several marching bands, imaginative floats, antique cars, vehicles, horses and all sorts of other entries. 

Parade co-chairs Kerrie Zubrod and Heather Bushner say more floats are needed for this year’s parade. Keeping in mind this year’s festival theme, “Neighbors Helping Neighbors,” area organizations, families and individuals are encouraged to round up friends and neighbors, tap into their inner creativity and build a float on a pickup bed or a flat-top trailer (or whatever) to join the parade. There’s a good chance your float will win something: the $150 grand prize, $100 first place, $75 second place, $50 third place or $25 fourth place.

The prizes, not to mention the fun of waving to all those smiling faces, makes Hootin an Hollarin floats worth the effort.

Floats must be available for judging at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the grassy area near O’Reilly Auto Parts.  Judged floats will wait there for their turn to enter the parade lineup.

Parade attendees can expect a traffic jam of antique cars, horses, fire engines and a roaring-good assortment of other vehicles and contraptions, maybe even some hot-rod lawn mowers. Those vehicles and all other entries should check in behind Dollar General and line up on Highway MM just west of the entrance to the MoDOT shed.  Line-up begins there at 1 p.m. with step-off an hour later.

Horse riders can wait in the grassy area near O’Reilly Auto Parts (with the parade floats) for their turn to enter the parade lineup.

The 2025 Hootin an Hollarin queen and her court, Lil Cedar Pete and Lil Miss Addie Lee and the princess pageant contestants will be among the smiling and waving parade people. And of course the winners of Saturday morning’s costume parade are invited to stroll around the square to show off their prize-winning attire. (Costume winners gather at Clinkingbeard Funeral Home to walk in the parade from that point.) 

The parade route proceeds east on First Street from Highways 5 and MM, turning onto Main Street in front of Town & Country Supermarket and entering the southwest corner of the square, going around it and then exiting the square onto Third Street and dispersing from there. 

Bakersfield Fire Chief Greg Watts will serve as this year’s Hootin an Hollarin parade marshal. He will be joined by the 2025 Citizen of the Year Douglas Hawkins and a host of other folks waving from vehicles.