The Night Before the Fourth

Just as the clock is striking twelve, thus adding another year to the era of American independence, your eyes will be drawn irresistibly to a towering monument of hogsheads and barrels and casks that raises its huge form one hundred and thirty-five feet high, and bulks against the midnight sky.

That's how Reverend James L. Hill, a Salem minister, the massive bonfire lit each July on the night before the 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 8,000 barrels; some years, it had 40 tiers. At midnight, a bundle of burning rags was run up to the top on wire pulleys, igniting the pile