Page 12 THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1977
focus
Building Bonfire
One of A&M’s greatest traditions is moving skywam
This is
Bonfire
By J. WAGNER TYNES
Description
Well...uh...Bonfire is when most
of the students try to get together
and they go out and they cut down a
lot of big trees on land that needs to
be cleared. Then they haul all these
logs to campus and lash them all to
gether into a huge stack of wood. It’s
real impressive to see. Then, on the
night before the game against Texas
or sometime thereabouts, we light
the stack with torches brought in by
the yell leaders and watch it burn.
Then we have a yell practice. It’s
one of our best traditions.”
■aiSjlHvi
Eight Days to Go
light;
It’s Thursday night; a week and
one day before the Big Burning. On
the field where the bonfire is being
built, it’s obvious what is going on,
but the stack is not really big
enough yet to be the overwhelming
center of interest it will later be
come. Instead, the long rows of
huge logs laying on the ground are
the most prominent feature.
There are only about 75 people
working on the stack and none of
them seem too worried that they
might not get the stack finished in
time. A few guys are wiring the logs
to the stack, a few more are chain
sawing logs off to one side, and a
more-organized group is using mass
effort to bring logs closer to the
stack so they can be hoisted into
place.
The stack is floodlit by bright
lamps mounted on four evenly-
spaced poles. With the inky night
on all sides, the whole scene has the
look of a secret launching pad upon
which a giant spaceship is being
constructed. The workers them
selves, with their hardhats and dirty
See BUILD, page 13
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