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Salem used to get really fired up over the Fourth

Yoni Appelbaum reports on days of yore when Salem would light massive bonfires to herald July Fourth:

For weeks, volunteers assembled materials, stacking them into a towering pyramid reaching high into the air. Fat hogsheads on the bottom supported row upon row of oily casks, topped with layers of smaller kegs. The pyramid claimed eight thousand barrels; some years, it had forty tiers. At midnight, a bundle of burning rags was run up to the top on wire pulleys, igniting the pile and announcing "that the night has turned into the morning of a new year of liberty."

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It's an interesting story of how they gradually domesticated the Forth of July celebration. Most of the night was spent putting out fires and chasing kids. The bonfires weened people off of the DIY anarchy of the old days.

http://rememberjamaicaplain.blogspot.com/2007/12/b...

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Thanks for that vignette. It's amazing how many people have some memory, or record, of these having been done in their local communities back in the day; I love to hear the stories.

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.... there used to be bonfires all along the beach in Marshfield. They were never as well constructed as the Salem ones- no barrels, just scrap wood. But it was quite a sight to stand on the wall by the Third Road steps and see an unbroken string of bonfires stretching along the beach all the way to Scitiuate.

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