"Remember, remember the 5th of November
gunpowder, treason and plot;
I know of no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot...."
With the advent of All Souls' Night in early November, I invariably channel one Harold Gerrity. I first met Harold in primary school when he just apparently conjured himself up from nowhere. And into our midst. At age 13, he was a kind of Guy Fawkes MC to our small circle of freewheeling ne'er-do-wells.
Looking back, we had the best week of our lives every late October into early November. For the time stretching just before Hallowe'en through Guy Fawkes Night was magical, wicked good. Mischievous to a fault, none of us had an organizing brain in our pre-adolescent heads. That's where Harold came in. He organized who was doing what for the 'Guising [what we called Hallowe'en], and what was to happen to the pittance we collected as 'Guisers. He even had a foul weather plan.
But the Bonfire on November 5th....and the effigy of Guy Fawkes....that was his piece de resistance. Us boys were divided into pairs, and we started collecting salvage two weeks prior to Bonfire Night. With the 'Guisin money, he bought a padlock for our WWII air raid storage shelter.
As soon as the school bell rang at 4 o’clock for the end of each day, we rushed out into the approaching dusk and headed off to a designated route to begin the salvage collection. Old newspapers, cardboard boxes, spare pieces of plywood--anything that would burn--was collected and taken and stored in our air raid shelter where it would stay dry.
'We're building a Matterhorn bonfire, boys, ' he would chuckle, and we nodded in agreement. Truthfully, none of us knew what a Matterhorn was, much less what it looked like, but we agreed as if we did. Ignorance was jealously guarded in those halcyon days of youth.
Rain or shine, and this Guy Fawkes was a shine, we assembled the Matterhorn bonfire just as dusk was approaching on the 5th. The police, such as they were, seemed quite disinterested in our little celebration, a denial we took as blanket permission. Our man Peembo always managed to conjure simple fireworks from somewhere, and he had the honor of strategically placing them around the edges. The Roman candles were placed on an old bench that we cobbled together from spare bits of collected wood. Our man Sam always seemed to have matches, a telltale sign that he was already smoking at the tender age of ten. We dusted off our 'Guising’ costumes and partially blackened our faces with boot polish in an attempt to look ghoulish—street-urchin souls stretching the spiritual membranes of All Souls' Night, connecting the darkness to an even darker world.
There was always a small 'window of waiting'—the anticipation he called it-- before Harold brought forth the Guy. Collectively and individually, we marveled at his skill in turning straw, chicken wire, papier-mâché, and exotic clothes into the likeness of Guy Fawkes; it was mystical and very different every year. Then, with the agility of a mountain goat, he would scale the heights of our Matterhorn bonfire and place the Guy dead center on the summit. That was followed by the appointment of five lighters--a much sought-after task. When the pentangle of fire lighters was in place, Harold would announce, in his best circus master voice: 'Burn the Guy! Burn the Guy!' Magically, as the bonfire caught light on its way to a pyre for the Guy, the fireworks would follow in random explosions, our blackened faces flickering in the firelight as the flames reached higher and ever higher for the sky.
We stood around mesmerized by the bonfire's slow demise, then its reaching back into the annals of a dark, troubled past.
‘Remember, remember the fifth of November ’?- Not a bother. It was a night we will never forget! Ever.
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