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How were the bonfire days?

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Beyond Awesome

I Remember my (first) Senior year we bought and slaughtered a pig. Huge party, un-freakin real

[This message has been edited by jh94 (edited 11/16/2007 1:23p).]

Everyone on here has pretty much summed up the feelings for Bonfire. I've only read about three pages in segments and each time my eyes start to glass over.

There was definitely an empty feeling in the spring semester when compared to the previous fall. I will never forget any of my experiences from Bonfire. The sense of unity and purpose that emanated from this campus during those fall semesters was something that can never be replaced.

Here's to one day bringing it back to campus.

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Cut was dirty, tiring, fun, hard, awesome.
Unload was dirty, tiring, fun, hard, awesome.
But, there's nothing like sitting in a 4th stack swing from midnight to 6AM.


But you forgot yelling "see you when it burns!" to all the 2%ers, or groding the pots to & from swamp every night or the Albertsons parking lot scene before Cut or defending a perimeter pole the night before centerpole went up...

I think Bonfire was the pivotal event in the fall semester each fall while I was a student. It was always there, something going on while one went about their business of going to class, doing projects, or working on cut/stack, etc. But there was always an anticipation of what was to come.

It was located near Duncan while I was at A&M. My first year was the best I experienced (followed by the best tu game I ever witnessed, 42-10 in '85). It was muddy - I guess it was always muddy, but that's one of the things I remember most about that night. There were 1000s of people everywhere.

At one point I remember the crowd around me parted and this bowling ball of a girl, a real fat one, came through and knocked my roommates and myself down. So I was covered in mud from head to toe, but I was a freshman and didn't give a damn. It was my first Bonfire.

You'd see the Redpots coming at some point in a scene reminiscent of Frankenstein, with their torches held aloft. It was great! The guys would surround Bonfire; there was a heavy smell of aviation fuel in the air; they would begin tossing the torches onto the stack, and up in flames it went. And some of the other posts I've read are dead-on: the remains would still be glowing weeks after ward.

It's a pity that New Army can't experience this fantastic event, but I will say this in temperment to my cherished memories of Bonfire: it was not worth any one ever being killed.

I want to see THE bonfire

this thread makes me sad. we current students got jipped.

If you were not in the Corps and did not participate in Bonfire, it is impossible to describe the intense emotion and "burning desdire to BTHO tu" that WAS the two weeks before the Thanksgiving Game!

BTHO tu! and one more!

If you refer to the North forty as anything other than tu or 'sips, you are not an AGGIE!

I think what is also remarkable was how students from all over Texas (otehr schools) would come to it to see it. longhorns, TCU students, SMU, Texas TEch students...they were all there. It was televised every year across the state.

It was one big party, like a roast or BBQ and tu was the pig on the rotisserie...so to speak.

Anyone remember the 1979 bonfire? It was the tallest ever, I think. It was amazing.

I think '79 was actually in Guinness, before some English firefighters beat it out. I still think we'd have the record, if we didn't limit the heighth to 55' every year (for safety sake, you know)

The fall of my senior year in HS 1976, with an off week from football, I had a chance to run down and get my campus visit in at A&M. My cousin was going to put me up in his corp dorm. I got there late friday after school, but in time for Midnight yell, afterwards, he says come one, lets go work on bonfire. It was TCU weekend, so push was on. He steals a pot from some BQ and we spent the rest of friday night in akle deep mud, with a fog and mist floating in, watching the guys on stack swing back and forth, stood around the perimeter fires, flirted with college girls, drank scotch from one of those cheap ass clear glass dr pepper bottles the machines had, listened to Hank over the loud speakers and what must have been 4 or 5 repeats of Patton's speech, with everybody reciting the words with him. "No poor son of a ***** ever won a war by dying for his country. . . . "

that was the night I became an Aggie. You couldn't have dragged me, paid my way or enticed me anywhere else.

After 4 years at Dunn hall, I remember riding that same flat bed trailer Southlake mentioned out 2818 to cut one year, out to OSR one year and somewhere half way to huntsville the next. I remember more akle deep mud, more Patton speeches, more Hank and lots of Bolly & Wilson. I remember when the center pole snapped in 81 while it was being hoisted in place. I remember braiding this really cool plat out of gold cord that I attached to my pliers so I would look especially cool up on stack.

I also remember being there when it burned. A weird combination of unbelievable heat, bright sky bound flames and sparks, freezing muddy ground and what has to be one of the world's best organized, most civil, longest lasting and largest tailgate keg parties ever happening.

In a box with some stuff from back then, I have my bonfire cut card certifying that I have been adequately trained and instructed in all bonfire safety issues. On a shelf in my bar, is a stick from my freshman bonfire, with '77 carved in the bark on one end, my virgin stripe wrapped around the other end, all leaning across the top of that former BQ pot that my cousin swiped. Still OD green, DUNN on the sides, ATM on the top and '81 on the back.

gig em

20 guys raiding the La Quinta's ice machines at 5:30 to fill up our water coolers. Taking your grodes off after cut and they stand up by themselves. Ahhh the good ol' days.

I was never the biggest Bonfire guy, but our entire fish class put out for cut and swamping logs b/c it meant the p*ssheads couldn't f-with us at 6:00.

We were given the choice of swamping logs or doing push-ups...easy choice!

I remember driving to cut my fish year after running a land navigation meet that morning. Man we were dog tired but got to cut in time to put out.

I was a fish in '94 when it fell, and it seemed like we lived out there getting it put back together.

At the end of my fish year my ol lady and I both found our Bonfire grodes (jeans, brown Corps fatigue t-shirts, and boots) under the bed. My younger sister, who was helping with the move out, gagged and ran out...that was one nasty science experiment growing on those things. Its amazing they never made us sick after a year of growning under our rack!

BQ sophomores build the outhouse, and the outhouse corporals pasted the entire inside of the house with the nastiest porn ever produced for the redpots to look at on the way up the crane for wiring it into stack.

I'll agree the t.u. fans were top notch for the 1999 game, but I told one of my best grad school friends (t-sip undergrad) the true test of class from t.u. would be how they acted the next year for the game in Austin. I'm sad to say we saw more than one shirt with pics of the fallen stack with "Aggies can't keep it up."

I don't bring back the hate for t.u. b/c it never left!

"Me fail english, that's unpossible!"
-Ralph Wiggam