Bonfire

The official campusology entry for Bonfire is: "Before the football game with t.u. each year, Aggies gather wood and timber to build a huge Bonfire which symbolizes the burning desire to beat the HELL outta t.u., and the undying spirit that all Aggies have for Texas A&M." The one word, "Bonfire," is a general term for the Aggie Bonfire that only the people who have worked on one really understand - it's a time of year, an activity, a bonding experience, a tradition, and a symbol, all culminating in an event. As they say nowadays in Aggieland, "From the outside looking in, you can't understand it - from the inside looking out, you can't explain it."

For us, the experience of working hard together was a tremendous bonding experience that would be difficult to duplicate any other way. It caused Heaven's Eleven to come together as a group in a way that none of us had experienced before, and, outside of combat or natural disaster, that we probably haven't experienced since. Perhaps the best we can do here is to provide a series of memories - if you've "been there, done that," you'll probably recognize most of them; if you haven't, maybe you'll start to understand what that one word means to an Aggie, and especially to a CT, "Bonfire".

In our day, Bonfire was an intense effort for about a month, pretty much full time. The profs knew what was going on, and most lightened up on assignments and tests. The leadership had already arranged a location for "cut" (an area where the landowner wanted a lot of trees removed), a lot of heavy equipment (tractors, semis with flat-bed trailers, and cranes of all sizes, all donated by former students who owned construction companies), coordinated work assignments for Corps outfits and non-reg dorms, and prepared the area for the "stack," which, in our day, was the field South of Duncan Dining Hall, called the Duncan Drill Field.

White belts worked the cut area for a couple of weekends prior to the involvement of fish and pissheads - it was assumed that white-belts had better study habits, and could better cope with the time demands of both academics and Bonfire. As an outfit, we cut and loaded for a couple of weeks, then worked and guarded the stack for the last couple of weeks. The cut area our fish year was where Texas International Speedway now sits. Our zip year the cut area was along the route of what has become F.M. 2818, the west bypass around Bryan/College Station. I don't remember where the cut areas were for our pisshead and sergebutt years.

Bonfire was an entirely student-led and operated exercise. Most of the brute labor was supplied by fish and pissheads. In the cutting area, white-belts were the only ones allowed to actually cut trees, either with new-Army chain-saws, or old-Army axes (double-bit axes were older Army than single-bit ones.) In the stacking area, sergebutts were apprentices, learning how to run the operation, and were allowed to be on the stack guiding logs into place. The most promising of them were selected to assume overall leadership roles the next year.

Since all Bonfire work was performed in work clothes, a system of colored helmets (pots) indicated levels of responsibilities - at the top of the heap were red-pots; other functions wore yellow or brown. The red-pots were responsible for everything - planning, work assignments, design, procedures, certification of workers in critical jobs, training of all participants, and safety. They especially were hard-nosed about safety issues, and allowed no non-essential people anywhere near critical operations, no horseplay in the loading, unloading, or stack areas, and, above all, no alcohol.

Since there were so few women at A&M at the time, their role was primarily one of morale and welfare - they coordinated all the coffee and sugar-laden munchies that kept the men awake and energized, plus they kept spirits high when we were wet, cold, and physically, mentally, and emotionally tired. Each Corps outfit and non-reg dorm usually worked as a unit on one task at a time. Heaven's Eleven traditionally worked the cutting areas, while other units were assigned to load up the logs we and other outfits cut, and other outfits unloaded the logs at the stack area and sorted them by size into areas around the stack.

When cut was complete, we worked in the stack area, moving logs from the size areas into either close proximity to the stack, where one of the cranes would place them in their final locations, or, more often, all the way to the outside rim of the growing stack, where we up-ended them into place with muscle power and forked limbs to guide the logs into the correct places. Although cranes did much of the lifting of the heaviest logs, there were not enough of them to keep pace with the number of logs being placed.

As the stack grew, it became a target for people who were interested in seeing the effort fail. We heard many rumors of past attempts by tea-sips to ignite the stack prior to the official burn time (Wednesday night before Thanksgiving for home games, Tuesday night for away games.) Thus, as the cutting activity finished, units and dorms were assigned guard duty. There were "foxholes" every twenty feet or so around the perimeter of the Duncan Drill Field, continuously occupied by a couple of black-belts or non-reg freshmen and sophomores. White-belts constantly walked the perimeter, on the lookout for any suspicious activity. The Maggies also made the rounds periodically, supplying coffee and doughnuts during the night. Guard duty went on around the clock, no matter what the weather was.

It needs to be said that, in our day, we built Bonfires in no longer than six weeks, without any serious injuries, and none of them fell before they were burned. Since fish are the primary source of labor for a Bonfire, a Cadet considered the Bonfire his fish year as "his" Bonfire. Our Bonfire was 102 feet tall, consisted of thousands of tree-sized logs, arranged in a tiered "wedding-cake" design around a massive center pole, and required 2,000 gallons of jet fuel (kerosene) to prepare it for burning.

Our pisshead year, the Bonfire was 103 feet tall, which is the record height - after that monster burned, the City of College Station requested that we not build them that big ever again because of the amount of glowing embers that fell all over town when we burned it. But the Bonfires we built our sergebutt and zip years were just shy of 100 feet tall. At some point after we left, the University put a building on Duncan Drill Field, moved Bonfire to the polo grounds Northeast of the System Administration Building, and capped the height at about 55 feet. Also, the effort became less than full-time, which required stretching it out over at least 10 weeks.

Once the stack was complete, it was decorated with highway signs which featured the name, "Austin" and 4x8 sheets of plywood painted with slogans such as "Beat the HELL Out of tu," and a burnt-orange outhouse was installed at the top of the center pole. Several hours before dark, fuel trucks from the airport doused the entire stack with thousands of gallons of jet fuel (similar to kerosene so it is not nearly as volatile as gasoline), which was allowed it to seep into the logs, most of which were still green. Security got really tight at this point, since a saboteur could actually succeed in premature ignition (as opposed to all the rest of the time when we were guarding it, when it would have taken a napalm attack to do so.)

There was great tradition and ceremony involved in burning the Bonfire. After dark, thousands of students and people from the surrounding communities gathered around the stack - a few of the students were actually sober. Excitement was thick in the air as the Aggie band played. At a prearranged time, the yell leaders appeared with torches, circled the stack, and threw the torches on it, igniting the jet fuel. As the flames grew, the yell leaders mounted a flat-bed trailer, and held a yell practice, often including the football coaches and players.

The heat from the burning Bonfire was incredible, so that even a quarter mile away you could still felt the heat on exposed skin. The updraft was such that the 4x8 plywood outfit "spirit" signs were carried flaming high into the sky before being released to fall menacingly on the crowd below. It was smart to be on the upwind side of the burning stack. The sound of thousands of Aggies doing their traditional yells, the Band playing martial music, and the roar of the Bonfire all mixed into something that can't be described, only experienced, and more felt than heard. It really was a burning desire.

In years we played tu at home, after the Bonfire was lit, there was a concert in G. Rollie White Hall - I remember that our fish year the featured artist was Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. Tradition said that if the center pole stood upright until after midnight, the Aggies were certain to outscore the tea-sips. Many is the time that there were still warm spots in the ashes as we left for Christmas break.

Our earliest Bonfire memory is from our fish year - we got up before daylight, and dressed in work or combat boots, blue jeans, long-sleeved sweatshirts with towels stuffed under the shoulders to make pads, tough jackets, work gloves, and pisspots. We had added two identification markers onto our helmets with white tape: "11" on each side over the ears, and "IV" on the front and back, denoting fish from Squadron Eleven (everyone in the outfit had the "11" on their pots; pissheads also had "III", sergebutts had "II", and zips had "I".) We formed up and proceeded to the parking lot South of Dorm 12, where we were loaded onto a flat-bed truck. One row of fish sat on the bed, with their backs against the cab, and linked arms. The next row sat between the legs of the first-row fish, again with their arms linked, and the first-row fish locked their legs around the second-row fish's waists. There were six or seven rows of us, and the way we were interlocked there was no way one of us could fall off.

We were transported to the cutting area, unloaded, and marched to the location assigned to our outfit. Since the white-belts had already been cutting for a couple of weekends, there was already work for us to do - we had to get those downed and trimmed trees, and all the rest that the white-belts cut that day, out of that area and over to the loading area. The logs ranged from about two feet in diameter to a few that were well over four feet, and most were around twenty feet long. The larger ones must have weighed several tons each since they were recently cut and still green.

But first, we had to be taught how to move them safely and efficiently. For all but the largest logs, the fish and pissheads lined up in two rows, shoulder to shoulder, facing each other with the log at our feet. The shortest guys were bunched at the butt end of the log, and the tallest guys were more spread out at the top end, in an attempt to equalize the load.

The "log boss", always a white-belt, stood at the large end of the log, and yelled out commands.

First was "Cover Down!", which meant we were to squat down and get our hands underneath the log. The rest of the commands were all preceded with the log boss yelling, "One, two…"

Next was "Half-way up," which meant we were to raise the log to waist level, where we could stand up straight.

When the log boss was satisfied that we were in control of the log, he'd yell, "All the way up!" which meant we were to raise the log up to shoulder height, then pivot to face the small end, so that our shoulders supported the log. To make sure that the weight was distributed evenly, the log boss then yelled, "Heave!", which meant for us to use arm strength to momentarily lift the log off our shoulders so we could get in a better position when it settled back down. To show our motivation, at each "Heave", we shouted "F**k t-u!".

It took awhile for us to learn to work in unison, such that the log moved completely vertically, without any pitching motion that would really strain some of us. Once the log was under control, the log boss would relocate to the small end of the log, and move us out, with steering commands such as "Forward," "Guide Left", "Guide Right," etc. Sometimes the journey could be as long as a quarter of a mile and it was grueling. It was particularly bad when we went though a ditch or over a rise because it was critical to keep the log level at all times to prevent it from sliding forward or backward. These places required a kind of rolling heave to keep the log level.

So, try to picture this: a dip is coming up. The guys in the front begin to go down into the ditch. As they go down, the only way to keep the log level is for them to lift the log over their heads (called "high-porting.") This process moves backwards through the ranks as our group moves forward and into the ditch. Any time that one of the carriers felt that the weight distribution was causing him undue pain, he'd yell out, "Need a heave, Sir!", which would prompt the log boss to give the command. As we got more experienced, we could actually throw some of the lighter logs up into the air during a heave.

As we got the log to the loading area, one of the "load pots" would meet us, assess the log's size, and then direct us to put it on the ground in a certain area. As we got the log into position, our log boss would halt us, then command "Half-way Down!", which caused us to pivot and face each other, then lower the log to waist level. Finally, he'd yell, "All the Way Down!", to get us to lower the log to the ground. When he was satisfied that everyone's hands were out from under the log, he'd command, "Clear", which meant for us to stand up, back away from the log, and wildcat. Then we trooped back into the woods to get another one.

The largest logs, however, couldn't be moved that way - there was no way to get enough muscle-power on them if we stood shoulder-to-shoulder along their lengths. So we arranged smaller logs, maybe 10 -15 feet long and five to six inches in diameter, perpendicular to the main log on one side, and arranged about five feet apart down the length of the main log (these smaller logs were called f**k sticks.)

Then we got on the other side of the main log, and rolled it over the f**k sticks until it was centered along their lengths. This time, the command to "Cover Down!" meant for us to take up positions on the f**k sticks, all facing the smaller end of the main log. The command, "Half-Way Up!" meant to stand up, cradling the f**k stick in our elbows. This was the final lifting command - we then walked forward with the f**k sticks held at waist level.

Of course, getting across ditches and rises with a log this big got to be a real undertaking - sometimes you had to "high-port" the f**k sticks. And heaves had to really be coordinated or the log could roll from side to side, putting a majority of its weight onto half the guys. If it became obvious that strength was lacking in some area, the log boss would direct certain of us to move to a different position. After we got experienced, though, we knew where each person would work best, and the need to re-locate people as we were moving a log pretty much went away.

The very largest log in our cutting area was tagged as an "outfit log", which meant that it took every available body to move it. The white-belts would carve "Heaven's 11" along its length, and into its butt, so everyone who saw it would know how red-a** we were.

Then every once in a while, one of the white-belts decided to go for a ride. We had to stop, set the log down and allow him to climb up onto it. Then we picked it up and moved along. He'd often ask to be bucked, so we would have to coordinate a heave so that the log might bound up six or eight inches. Schoolcraft recalls that Randy McMullen ("Lard Ass") was the biggest abuser of this treat.

Tom also remembers "…being so tired at the end of the first day, that I could not eat that evening and I could not sleep. There have been only a few occasions in my life where I have been so tired that my mind races at night so that, exhausted as I am, my mind would not slow down enough to allow sleep. This was one of those occasions. Fortunately, we carried most of the largest logs on Saturday, so Sunday was a relatively light day. The only problem with the lighter logs was that we had a smaller crew to carry them, so the load was not much of an improvement." Almost all of us had bruises on our shoulders and scratches on our arms for the rest of the week, despite the padding and the long-sleeved shirts and coats we had worn.

Because we moved the most and heaviest logs on Saturday, there was time for some horseplay on Sunday afternoons. Traditionally, we had "dizzy races", where teams of fish competed in a relay race which began with each participant twirling around dozens of times. The sight of fish trying to run across an open space to the next member of their team, while still under the influence of all that spinning, provided a lot of hilarity. On the last Sunday we had in the cutting area, we were marched back to our transport vehicles along a route that just happened to pass by a small pond or a muddy hole. As we did so, it was tradition for the fish to attempt to throw the pissheads into the water and mud. We found out how fast some of our pissheads could run, but, in the end, all the fish and pissheads got wet and muddy.

One memory John has about fish-year Bonfire is the anticipation that Eddurds had - as a local boy, he'd seen numerous Bonfires burn, but he'd never worked on one. And he knew that it was a manly task, and that real men doing manly tasks chewed Red Man tobacco. He bought a pouch, put it in a drawer in his hole, and made the mistake of letting us all know that he was planning on demonstrating his manliness by chewing tobacco while working in the cutting area. I think it was Graner ("The Instigator") that hatched the idea of substituting lawn clippings for the tobacco in the pouch.

As we got loaded on the flat-bed truck early that first morning in the dark, Eddurds made a great production of dragging the Red Man pouch out of his jacket, and putting a wad into his cheek. Since he'd never chewed tobacco before, it took him awhile to figure out that something was seriously wrong. Maybe our laughter tipped him off. John continues, "I never let him forget it, either.

The summer before our zip year, any cadet in our class that had an Air Force contract and was pilot-qualified (via a physical and an exam) was required to go through ground and flight school at Easterwood Airport to earn a private pilot license. Part of that curriculum includes a solo cross-country flight. Wayne and I planned ours to be roughly at the same place at roughly the same time (we weren't permitted to fly formation), and we arranged to keep in communication while airborne on the standard "air-to-air" frequency usually used in the landing pattern at uncontrolled airports to keep aware of other traffic. I was assigned a Cessna 150 that was white with a yellow stripe, so my unofficial call-sign became "Yellow Dog" - Wayne's 150 was white with a red stripe, so I made him use "Red Man" as his call-sign. The cross-country lasted a couple of hours, and we kept up pretty much constant chatter on the radios when we weren't required to interface with a ground station. As we got near our destination, however, we were in the process of switching frequencies to the control tower when a third voice came over the radio saying, "Good luck, Red Man and Yellow Dog!". Obviously, someone had been listening in on two budding fighter pilots in our combat Cessnas!

Back on the Bonfire topic, though, that fall when cutting started, Wayne and I rented another Cessna 150 and flew over the cutting area taking pictures."

Click here to view bonfire pictures we've taken. For a really large picture of us as fish in the cut area, click here.

John (Yankus) Yantis

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The time I'm rememberin was actually our pisshead year when The Duck and I sneaked Eddurd's Red Man pouch the night before the first big cut and mixed in a 50% mixture of fine bermuda grass from the quad. I'll never forget early the next morning standing out in the quad witheverybody in the dark waiting for the flatbed truck, when Eddrurds pulled out his RedMan pouch, opened it up, reached in with his index finger and thumb, mixed it around, and said, "Time for a nice chaw"-- put a chaw-full in his mouth, chawed and then started spitting in 18 directions.
Awesome.
Dan (Graner) Garner

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We were taking a short break on the edge of a clearing area, right next to a small ravine with about a 4-5 ft. drop. I'm not sure, but I think Carey, Gonzo, Cunningham and Animal were in attendance. Maybe Nesbitt too, I just don't remember exactly. Anyway, we heard this loud crashing noise coming out of the trees above our position. In a short time we caught a glimpse of a doe crashing down the ravine about 30 yards in front of us. She was obviously tired and being chased by something.... her tongue was hanging out, she was bashing into limbs instead of jumping over them and was running straight towards us.

I said, Lets get her or something to that effect and I think Buzzy said something similar about the same time. Anyway, amid fish trying to haul logs and everyone else standing around, Buzzy runs for the ditch and as the deer came within range, he jumped down on her and tackled her. I showed him how to hold her front leg, so she couldn't get away and she relented for a moment from kicking and flailing about. Somehow, Buzzy and someone else (probably a fish detail) were able to get her up the bank and under this big tree. Now what? I don't know who said it, but I knew what was next.

I got my pocket knife out, which I recall being an EYEBRAND single blade 4 inch folder with wood handle. It was the ranch-knife of choice before lock-back knives took over..... Anyway, they held her down and I cut her throat. We turned her around uphill so she would bleed out. Then I gutted her and we hung her up in the tree and I believe we skinned her. I seem to remember making the fish poke their hands inside to pull out the intestines, etc. and I'm pretty sure, that it was the first time some of then had ever witnessed dressing an animal of any kind. I don't remember eating it, but it should have been very good. I think we left it hanging until we were ready to exit the area. Then I think it was quartered and hauled out to someone's freezer. I'm hoping Buzzy will look this over, correct, and embellish the story. It was our sergebutt year, and we were cutting out by the racetrack I believe.

Mike (Polar Bear) Shurley

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Anyway, Bear's version is pretty much how I remember it, except I threw a rock at the doe and missed. When she jumped from the rock she stumbled and fell down in the ravine and I was able to catch her before she got up. After we cleaned the deer, I believe I remember hanging it safari style on a pole and presenting it to the campsite with a fish procession. Things fuzz up a little after 30 odd years, but I remember the Bonfire authorities sending a representative to investigate the unauthorized killing of an animal. Thank goodness they sent Keith Chapman, yell leader and rodeo buddy, who quickly disposed of the official report.

John (Buzzy) Griffin