Bonfire: 10 years later

Come Thanksgiving week, it'll be 20 years since I first saw Texas A&M's Bonfire burn, as a freshman Aggie … in the Corps of Cadets, no less.

That same week will mark 10 years since the Bonfire collapse that killed 12 Aggies. There has been no official Bonfire since then.

Bonfire will not return.

Nor should it.

Those lines will hurt my popularity among my Corps buddies. They won't make me any more popular with a lot of other Aggies, either. I'm kinda sorry to say it, I admit. But there's no sense in writing, if I can't be a little fearless.

Don't get me wrong. I truly enjoyed my time building Bonfire while at A&M. I truly appreciated the work, the tradition, the ceremony and the spectacle. A picture of Bonfire from my father's era hangs on my wall in my Man Room.

Now it's true, I am, and always have been, a bit of a tree-hugger. But while I was at A&M, the trees for the Bonfire came from land that was being strip-mined, I was told. Those trees were doomed to be cut already. I actually saw the strip-mining machine one afternoon, and it boggled the mind in its enormousness. We weren't saving the trees, but we were giving them a much more dignified death.

What did I do at Bonfire? As a short, stout guy, my job at the Stack was predestined. I led teams of freshmen and sophomores humping (carrying) logs from the unloading area to the Stack. You see, you needed short guys on the large end of the log to position it on the ground while the tall guys pushed the smaller end toward the stack.

For some reason, short guys in the Corps tended to be of slight build, which didn't mix well with very, very heavy logs. That made me pretty valuable, and I embraced my job, making sure that nobody got their foot smashed on my watch.

But, post-collapse, there's no question Bonfire wasn't terribly safe. And the atmosphere at the Stack site started at politically incorrect and went downhill from there. It was a 1950s scene, hanging on for all it was worth.

Even as an observer in the early 1990s, it was apparent to me that Bonfire was a tradition with a lifespan. It would not live forever.

Unfortunately, it came to a premature and tragic end. And Lord knows, I hate to see it go out like that. But Bonfire was always going to come to an end.

Will it come back? In this world today, you can't stand on a stack of logs in the midst of one of Texas' top universities and shout out sexist lingo as you build the hell outta Bonfire. In this world today, you can't put that much effort and natural resources into a project for the sake of setting it on fire … even if the trees are already doomed.

Don't like what I'm saying? Me either. I'm a traditionalist of the first order. Nostalgia is my thing. But, I'm also a realist. And the return of the Bonfire we knew is just not going to happen. If Bonfire were to return, it would be nothing like it was before.

And is that what we want? To carry on lamely, just to carry on?

For the past decade, I've challenged Aggies to come up with a new tradition. I'm more than aggravated that some official in this month's Texas Monthly article mentioned "Habitat for Humanity," because that has always been my example.

If Aggies set their mind to it, they wouldn't build just a house. They could build a neighborhood. Give it a couple years and their wouldn't be a homeless person in the Brazos Valley. 

The next tradition could be beyond amazing. And it is within the Aggies' grasp. All we have to do is decide to reach ahead instead of reaching back.

Comments

[Robert Adams]

Wonder what else you could come up with to 'build' upon the burning desire to beat the hell outta' t.u.? How many bonfire laborers are there - a few thousand? Over 3 months? That is a lot of horsepower.

I suspect if you took the trees and converted them into lumber, it is not enough to supply the effort available.

Of course, that kind of project might broaden the appeal to a larger group of participants - as well as - dampen some of the zealotry that was cool about Bonfire.