Bonfire

I went to Bonfire last night.

I don't want to misrepresent the tradition, but as far as I know, every year before the t.u. game, a large stack of logs is erected and then razed to the ground as a symbol of Aggieland's "burning desire to beat t.u."

The largest stack was erected in 1969. It holds the world record for largest bonfire erected at 109 feet, 10 inches. This tidbit of information comes from a scathingly critical, yet interesting article written by a former member of the cadet corps.

When 12 students were killed by collapsing logs from the 60 ft. tall stack in 1999, the tradition of having Bonfire on-campus was stopped. In fact, ligation involving the university is still on-going today. Nevertheless, students have taken it upon themselves to move Bonfire off-campus and hold it without any university involvement. For more information on this organization (which, in despite of a recent controversial vote by the student government remains unrecognized by the university), I refer you to the Student Bonfire website.

At any rate, in despite of all the controversy surrounding the continuation of this 90-some year old tradition, I went to Bonfire with two of the other physics grad students. This year, it was held in Bryan, which is in close proximity to College Station, on a dirt race track called Hot Rod Hill. I was ecstatic to see signs posted for demolition derbies and the such. How this little piece of paradise has remained hidden from the A&M student body writ large is beyond my reasoning. The fact that there is a dirt track within ten minutes of me where cars slam into each other with tremendous violent force is equally tremendously pleasing. The facility had ample parking. We parked in a grass field and had to traverse a great amount of cow plop in order to get to the race track. We arrived quite early, so not very many people were in attendance as of yet (the girl at the gate said that they were expecting approximately fifteen thousand). But we were pretty excited to see a tall stack of logs ready to be set on fire with a small-ish burnt orange outhouse on top with the words, "t.u. frat house," inscribed on the side -- a skull with the longhorns sawed-off was fixed to the outhouse directly above those words.

Since we were there awfully early, about four hours until burn, the three of us found some Aggies with a glow-in-the-dark football to play a friendly 4-on-4 game with. The most notable thing that happened during this time was when I deflected a potential touchdown pass and then tripped and tore up jeans while doing a little victory dance. Clearly, this was an incident of karma coming to bite me in the ass for committing the veritable sin of excessive celebration in the endzone.

During the middle of our contest, the crew working on Bonfire began hosing the 50-some foot tall stack of logs with kerosene (although Peter would claim it to be jet fuel). They did this for a good half of an hour.

Eventually the lights went down, we all did some yells, sang some songs, and witnessed some pageantry before the Bonfire was finally lit. The picture here shows approximately the top twenty feet of the stack. You can make out the burnt-orange outhouse amid the fiery, intense blaze.

For whatever reason, the logs had trouble catching fire. The crew managed to keep the fire going though. After some time, someone made the questionable decision to hose more kerosene (or jet fuel?) onto the stack. At this point, the three of us took many, many steps backward and viewed this insanity under curious protest. After about three minutes, the blaze was going very strong again, and the hose was turned off without any incident (thank God).

Soon thereafter, we left because of the cold and because we were getting pretty hungry.

Part of the tradition around Bonfire is that if the stack collapses before midnight, then A&M will lose to t.u. I think, this year at least, that A&M can consider it a victory if they keep the score within three touchdowns.