The Past Under the Oil Lamp
Author: Zhang Fugui.
Oil lamp, an original lighting tool.
On the dark and silent winter nights of my childhood, a homemade oil lamp flickered and burned in the low and cramped room, and it was the only light in the room in the dark night. The flames carried the smoke that rose from the window, and from time to time it was blown away by the cold wind blowing from the window. Although the windows have long been papier-mâché tightly. But the dilapidated adobe house that lived alone in the field and had no courtyard walls could not withstand the invasion of the cold and the harassment of the strong wind. The saying "the hole with a big needle and the wind with a cow" seems to be true at all.
The oil lamp, which smelled of kerosene, was isolated in the middle of the earthen kang and emitted a faint but strong light, illuminating every corner of the dim old house. It has been with me throughout my childhood and beyond. Due to the fact that my house was not in a residential area, and because of my family's limited circumstances, it was not until the late 70s of the last century that the electric lights were connected. Later than someone else's house.
It took four or five years to enjoy modern civilization.
For countless days and nights, every time night fell, under the simple oil lamp, my mother, who had worked all day, always told us stories of the past while doing needlework.
Among them is the history of the rise and fall of the family, which my mother heard from my grandfather.
My grandfather and ancestor Shangyuan were on the boundary of Gulang County, Gansu Province, a place called Dajing's Zhangbaozichuan. At that time, it was also a large family in the local area, with prosperous people, solid family business, land, herds of cattle and sheep, donkeys and horses, and the closing time in the evening was as long as half an hour to end. Although it is not said to be a rich party, it is also worry-free. It is only because of the chaos and social turmoil for many years, and there are often bandits who raid homes and houses. Later, it was devastated, the property was looted, more than half of the people were killed and injured, and the family has been in decline ever since. In addition, the later Gansu Gulang **, landslides cracked, houses collapsed, and the surviving ancestors escaped death, were displaced, and left their hometowns.
My grandfather took my father and brother for the rest of their lives, and fled all the way to the famine to ask for food, wandering for several years. First settled in Hezhou (now Linxia), and the eldest father married a Hui woman and started a family. Later, due to the capture of the horse bandits, the eldest father was killed to avoid military service. My grandfather and my 16-year-old father once again embarked on the road to escape from the famine, and after many hardships, they finally chose to settle on the sandwich beach of the ancient Yellow River Road.
It is said that my grandfather knew a little kung fu. On the way to escape, my father was almost caught by horse bandits several times, but it was my grandfather who used his fists and feet to make my father escape from danger and escape from death. My mother said: After my grandfather settled, when he first arrived in a foreign country, he was cautious in his words and deeds, and his kung fu was deeply hidden. But he loved to play with children during his lifetime. Once, he teased my eldest brother on the door of his head and flicked his fingers, and the child instantly cried. When my mother saw it, the eldest brother's head immediately rose with an apricot-sized, bright purple bump. She also said: My grandfather slept on the kang, and with his tongue wrapped, he could blow out an oil lamp a few meters away in one breath, impartial, accurate, and extinguished. Ordinary people are within one meter, and it is impossible to blow out the lights in one breath.
Under that oil lamp, I also heard a lot of legends about feudal superstitions, ghosts, gods and monsters told by my mother. For example, the "earth lantern" in the wilderness, the "ghost howl" in the middle of the night, the "soul" of the desolate effect, the passer-by stepping on the "ecstasy grass", the real person "ghost possessed", "ghost" chassing, "hairy savage" and other legends about ghosts and gods and her own personal experience. As long as she says, "* Maybe it's dead again, and the ghost howled again last night." In a few days, on the north-south road in front of the door, there will always be a mourning procession passing by, which virtually verifies her prediction. I often listen to it that it is magical, and I am afraid, and I want to hear it, and I am timid, and I have to wake up my mother when I pee at night, so that she can go out with me. At that time, the sky was particularly blue, the stars were rising, a star belt was dense, my mother told me, it was Tianhe, if there were dark clouds in Tianhe Mountain, my mother said, Tianhe was dammed, and it would rain tomorrow. If you see a circle around the moon, it means that tomorrow is another windy day. My mother also identified "Bright Star", "Three Stars", and "Big Dipper" to me, and said that "Three Stars" are used to see the time, and the "Bright Star" is about to dawn when it comes out, and the "Big Dipper" is to debate the direction. On a few other occasions, I was specifically called out to see the rare "broom star", that is, the comet. Sometimes she was too tired to get up, so she told me, "Occupy the inside of the door and pour it out of the door."
Among the legends of ghosts and gods told by my mother, especially the "ghosts" are the most terrifying. She said: Once upon a time, there was a man who drank rice in the rice field on the bank of Nanhezi late at night. That night, there was a goose moon in the sky. Under the moonlight, the man turned around and vaguely saw that on the ridge opposite the paddy field, there was a big dog with snow-white fur at some point, and its two eyes were like two night pearls, shooting two green cold lights, grinning teeth, baring fangs, drooping tongue, and looking at him fiercely. At first, the man didn't care, thinking it was a stray wild dog.
At this time, the rice field happened to be filled with water, so the man took a shovel and walked towards the opposite field, preparing to seal the water mouth and go home. When he walked more than a dozen steps away from the "white dog", the "white dog" suddenly let out a long bark and pounced on the man. The frightened man splashed water with a shovel to resist and retreated, but the white "dog" always kept a few steps away from him. The white "dog" also seemed to have deliberately tried to lead the man towards the South River. When the man thought about it, he was terrified and suddenly timid, so he wiped his hair three times from the door of his head back with his hand, and the roots of the hair stood on end in an instant. Then he bit the middle finger of his left hand and threw it at the white "dog". Just listening to the sound of "wow", the white "dog" appeared, and it turned out to be a "woman" in white. The man was so frightened that he ran in the direction of his home, and the "woman" followed closely behind. The man stepped into the house with his front foot, and the "woman" arrived with his back foot and pushed the door to let the man wipe the blood from her body. The man does not follow, the "woman" does not leave, chattering endlessly, not following the forgiveness, and making noise outside the door. The man had no choice but to take a rag, push the door open a crack, take the rag and pull out his hand from the crack in the door, and rub it a few times for others, the "woman" was counted, and retreated scoldingly, and a white cold light shot in the direction of the South River. Later, the man said that when he rubbed it, he felt like a real person, hard and hard. The man had been seriously ill since that night, and it took months to recover.
Under the oil lamp, my mother also told us: the red-faced giant wore iron shoes to hit the mouth of the bronze gorge to no avail, and on the way back, he happened to meet the queen mother carrying a burden in Nanshan, and the giant asked: Why are you going, the queen mother said: I will go to the gorge. The giant snorted and mocked: I wore a pair of iron shoes, and the soles of the shoes were worn through, but I didn't open a gorgeThe queen mother listened to it, and put the burden angrily, and the current Daluo Mountain was raised on the spot, and the mother felt anxious, squatting down and soaking urine and rushed out of the nine ditches and eighteen forks, the mother lifted the burden, and took a few steps forward, and felt angry, and shook the burden again, and the flat ground raised the story of a small Luo Mountain. There are also 24 stories of filial piety in ancient times, such as filial piety moving the sky, selling himself to bury his father, and Wang Qiang lying on the ice. The story of Meng Jiangnu crying on the Great Wall, and so on and so forth.
Under that oil lamp, there is also a clear memory of me crawling on the hot kang at night, studying diligently with the help of the dim light, completing homework, reading and copying essays: at that time, we all went to school in the first half of the day, participated in collective labor in the second half of the day, or helped my mother do some housework at home, and there was no such thing as studying at home during the day. It has become the norm to crawl under the oil lamp to study at night, and the thick oil smoke fills both nostrils, and the next day it flows out with clear nose, and the hands of the wiping hands are black. Sometimes I don't pay attention, and I burn my hair. Whenever this happens, my mother puts the oil lamp on the mat a little higher, and says, "The lamp is high and bright", but I always feel that the "word" is still not bright, but is still blocked by the shadow, which is more blurry. It wasn't until I grew intellectually that I realized that what my mother was talking about was the "self", not the "word" as I understood it. Later, the fact that I insisted on studying under the oil lamp every night was passed on by my second sister-in-law to the ears of everyone on the team. She said: "Ah 'Yinyuan' (milk name) don't study very hard, every night, climb for a half night, climb for a half night." Since then, this sentence has become a joke for people to tease me, and my partners will say when they see it: "You crawled in your sister-in-law's xxx for half the night last night", whenever I mention it, I will inevitably be teased by them.
At that time, the kang at home, in addition to heating and sleeping for the family, also shouldered the heavy responsibility of burning "Hu Tu La" for the production team every winter, and every day in the kang hole, several earth skullas the size of a human head were put into the kang hole. The already cold clay kang is then put into the frozen soil outside, and smoked with limited firewood, grass, and seeds, how much heat can we enjoy. Every day, when the morning dawn is about to dawn, the kang has long been out of warmth, shivering and difficult to sleep, so I open my eyes and stare at the looming rafters on the roof, silently "count the rafters", waiting for the time to get up and dress for school.
Of course, under that oil lamp, what impressed me the most was my mother's figure day and night, stitching and threading, sewing and mending, and working hard for her son and daughter.
In our poor and remote area on the ancient road of the Yellow River, the river beach is inconvenient, the economy is backward, the environment is poor, and the income is low. Even the kerosene needed for the oil lamp was often not available for it. Most of them were waiting for a certain amount of praise from the "small bank" in the chicken ass to get the supply and marketing cooperatives (called cooperatives at that time) in Beihezi. It is said that it is a supply and marketing cooperative, in fact, it is three adobe houses built on the side of the road, which has a middle-aged man surnamed Zhang and an adult woman surnamed Kong, two salesmen are busy selling goods, ** within a radius of several kilometers, the daily needs of thousands of members and the masses, as small as needles and threads, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar, as large as cotton and linen daily necessities, production and labor tools. Sometimes, in order to be able to buy some scarce goods, people are often crowded and pushed, as if they want to overturn a wooden counter. I have met countless salespeople in my life, but the two people who left the deepest impression on me were the two men and a woman in the "cooperative". Especially the middle-aged old Zhang, who has a gentle temperament, methodical movements, and is unhurried. The act of fetching me kerosene is still vivid in my mind.
I used to carry a few eggs, pull up my trouser legs or simply take off my pants in summer and autumn, and flow through the North River, and in spring and winter I would wade on the ice or step on "cracked rocks" to cross the river in exchange for a bottle or half a bottle of kerosene for the oil lamp to suck and smash. There was really no more, my mother buckled the rice bowl, poured a little bit into the nest at the bottom of the bowl, and the cooking oil was very limited at that time, and a piece of "twist" was rubbed with cotton and put it in the oil at the bottom of the bowl, and one end was lit on the edge for cooking, eating, and living lighting.
At that time, there were many of us, and we were all "skins" inside and out. My mother always took our tattered clothes, old shoes and hats after we went to sleep at night, sat in the dim light the size of peanuts, and sewed and mended for us. Often when I woke up, my mother was still sitting under the dim oil lamp, flying needles and threads, and was busy sewing and mending. Now that I think about it, it was her trip for her children the next day, making the most beautiful "wedding dress" within her ability. Later, my mother's eyesight became worse and worse, and she gradually couldn't wear the needle under the dim oil lamp, and she couldn't lead the thread, so she asked me to help thread the needle and tie the thread. However, I still couldn't wear it because I was clumsy, so my mother turned the "lights" on the fire again and again. It really didn't work anymore, so I was willing to pick the lamp twist up with the tip of a needle. Even if it is so frugal, it is still common to borrow a few match stems for two cents a box and a few sewing threads for a few cents from the neighbors for urgent use. It is even more common to borrow a handful of salt, a liter of rice, or a bowl of noodles. When you have it, you will return it to others. At that time, the neighborhood relationship was always so good-neighborly, harmonious and friendly.
Under the oil lamp, the only thing missing is like other families: the hero sits under the lamp, holds a dry tobacco pot in his hand, fills a pot of dry tobacco in the tobacco bag, takes out a thumb compact, holds a cigarette holder, aims the head of the cigarette pot at the flame of the oil lamp, smacks a few puffs of "horn and horn", swings the cloth tobacco pouch, opens his mouth, and a puff of white smoke gushes out. Then, lazily lying on the kang head, smacking a sip from time to time, after smoking a pot of dry tobacco, he knocked the head of the cigarette pot on the edge of the kang a few times, poured out the cigarette ash, and once again loaded the cigarette and lit the fire. A few pots came down with a few pots, and after a lot of clouds and fog, the smoke addiction was too much. From time to time, I coughed a few times, and the whole house was filled with the smell of dry smoke. But that taste is what our family lacks the most. Of course, there is still a lack of other families, under the oil lamp, the family sits together, talking and laughing, and the joyful atmosphere of reunion ......
Now that I think about it, my mother is both a mother and a father for us. Day and night hard work, no regrets, hard work, shelter us from the wind and rain, warm and warm, hard work, great love. It is in response to the classic lyrics: Only my mother is good ...... in the world
Decades have passed, my mother has left us forever, and I am already old. Now the standard of living has already undergone earth-shaking changes, everyone has a variety of clothes, shoes and hats, not afraid of heat in summer, not cold in winter, four seasons allocation, everything. However, I will never forget the tattered clothes, cloth shoes and cotton hats that my mother sewed for me under the oil lamp. It was the warmest and most intimate dress I have ever worn in my life. I will never forget my mother, who sat under the oil lamp and stayed up all night, as well as the stories she told and taught her earnestly. There is also the kerosene lamp that has gradually been obsolete by history.
No, it must not be dusted and forgotten. The oil lamp was by no means a very simple lighting tool in today's view. It should be the memory of an era, engraved with the imprint of history. That oil lamp, with the history of a village, has witnessed the suffering of generations. The oil lamp records the story of a family and the growth process of a generation. It is a string of historical notes worth inheriting and recalling.
No matter how the times change, no matter how the environment changes, it is in my heart.
The oil lamp is like a mother who will always stay in my heart.
It was a lamp, a lamp of the heart that would never be extinguished.