Bonfire ‘93
mber 24,1
Wednesday, November 24,1993
The Battalion
Page 3
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Igielife editor
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From start to finish,
the burning desire...
By Susan Owen
The Battalion
T en thousand trees, five thousand Aggies and
most of the fall semester were the requirements
for the 1993 Fightin' Texas Aggie Bonfire.
The construction of the world's largest bonfire
began this year when the first trees fell on Sept. 25
and will end tonight when the redpots lead the Ag
gie Band through the crowd and light the stack.
A&M students volunteer thousands of hours to
cut, load and stack the logs.
Seven senior redpots and eight junior redpots
are in charge of Aggie Bonfire 1993. Below them
are the climbers, three seniors and three juniors.
Five seniors are brownpots, and two senior and two
juniors are centerpole pots.
Each men's residence hall has a yellowpot and
two to five crew chiefs. Each Corps unit has a
buttpot, a junior who wears a maroon pot.
On fall weekends from September through No
vember, hundreds of Aggies wake up before dawn,
pull on dirty clothes, grab axes and hard hats and
head out to cut down trees for Bonfire.
A cold and windy thirty-minute ride in the back
of a pickup truck gets the workers to this year's cut
ting site in Navasota, where land is being cleared
for cattle raising.
Man/ Macmahus/THE bATTAUON
"You get in your woods and you basically start
clearing and make paths," said James Hobson, a
freshman from Dunn Hall.
Yellowpots and buttpots supervise the cutting in
their assigned areas. Workers chop down the trees
and cut off the treetops and branches.
"Then you get people to carry the log out to the
tractor path and the tractor pulls it to load site,"
Hobson said.
At load site, a nearby clearing, crews of workers
pick up the logs and throw them onto flat-bed
trucks until they are piled higher than the cab of the
truck. Sticks jammed upright around the bed and
chains hold the logs in place.
Jason Ayers, a Sophomore from Walton Hall,
said workers from Walton and Squadron 13 load
trucks all day. Other halls and units are sent to
load as they finish cutting.
Ayers said, "It's not a glamour job like cut and so
dorms and units don't really like it when they get
assigned to load — except for Walton."
On a good cut day, 10 truckloads of wood will
arrive at the Bonfire field on the A&M campus.
David Williams, the Company F-2 buttpot, said
F-2 and L-2 stay at the field all day to unload the
trucks as they arrive. The chains are removed and
eight workers climb on top of the piled-up logs to
roll them off the truck.
Small logs are placed with one end under the
lowest log on the truck. "That way logs can roll
down the runners off the truck," Williams said.
Crews pulling on ropes snap the upright sticks, and
the logs roll off the truck.
Work began on the Bonfire stack after the center-
pole was raised on Oct. 28. The centerpole, donated
this year by a timber company in Lufkin, is made of
two logs spliced together using steel plates and bolts.
Each year one Corps unit is allowed to fly a flag
from the top of centerpole and wrap the splice in
rope at "fish wrap." This year the honor was
earned by Company E-l.
Junior redpot Nick Bown said, "They participat
ed more in cut and brought out more people than
every other outfit to cut."
The night before centerpole was raised, E-l
freshmen took turns wrapping a rope tightly
around the centerpole splice. Sophomores had al
ready wrapped the splice in cable.
' Stack begins when centerpole is raised. "As soon
as it went in, we tied it to the perimeter poles and
started stacking that night," Bown said.
Senior climber Wes Bringham ( said, "The
climbers put up the first and second stack cross ties,
which are guides for the stack ifself." Workers sit
in swings hung from the cross ties.
Bringham said the senior redpots begin each
stack by wiring together the first circle of logs that
cover the centerpole.
"As soon as the wrap is done, that stack is open for
anyone that wants to come get in a swing," he said.
Crews carry logs to the stack and slam first-stack
See Bonfire/Page 4
Chris Cope/Special to The Battalion
Twi Moog/The Battalion
Top: The 1993 Fightin' Texas Aggie
Bonfire will bum tonight.
Upper Left: Freshmen
civilian half of centerpole.
carry
the
Mary Macmanus/THE battalion
Far Left: Jason Payne, a junior parks &
recreation major from Rockwall, pulls a
log towards himself to add to stack.
Left: A cadet in Company B-2 wires
some logs together from his swing.
Right: The junior redpots steady the
centerpole as David Reasoner, a senior
climber, scales the pole. Centerpole
was raised on Oct. 28.
Bottom Left: Junior redpot Michael
Owens saws the top off a log to level off
the stack as the Dunn Hall yellowpot
pushes the log towards the ground.
Bottom: A member of Company K-2
tops a tree at cut.
Bottom Right: The freshmen of
Company E-l tighten the rope around
centerpole during fish wrap.
Mary Macmanus/THE battalion
Mary Macmanus/THE battalion