In Reply to: Bonfire memories in Castlebar posted by C/bar native on July 13, 2005 at 14:41:30:

There'd be fierce rivalry between areas of the town as to who could build the biggest bonfire and the collecting would go on for weeks beforehand.

Of course the only problem was ensuring that no one stole any of your wood . . . so every young fella not involved in playing football or whatever would at some stage get a job of keeping an eye on the stock with the promise that he could throw a 'tyre' on the pyre on the night in question (tyres were great back then because of the 'load' of black smoke you could get out of them, of course now we know better than to be polluting our beautiful skies).

In fairness I'd say the Knockthomas crew always had the biggest bonfire followed closely by the McHale road crew, the rest of us were just trying our best for third place ;-)