The autumn breeze is slow, and the morning cold is gradually attacking. At this time, I can't help but think of giving gifts to my grandfather and grandmother, but unfortunately many years ago, they have passed away.
Grandparents and grandparents have a high life expectancy, and people have asked them about the secret of their longevity, but it is difficult to get a definite answer.
Mother summed up a simple but profound secret for them, that is, eight words: always remember that people are good, and know how to repay kindness.
Grandpa's big family has always pursued this family style. I could already feel this atmosphere when I was a young child.
The distance between our village and my grandmother's house is not far away, and now it only takes about 20 minutes by car. However, in the eighties, there were only three options for going to grandma's house.
The first choice, bus 11, which is a cliché, is still on foot, relying on both legs.
My mother recalled that when she first arrived at her mother-in-law's house, she walked every time she returned to her mother's house. As soon as the first rays of sunlight appeared, she began to walk, and when she reached her grandmother's house, she was just in time for breakfast.
In the countryside at that time, breakfast was considered the main meal of the day. People either come back to refuel after a hard stoil, or they have enough to eat before they have the strength to work.
No matter where you go, you have to walk on your legs, attend rallies, and visit relatives and friends. Not only do you have to walk, but you also have to carry things that are not light, which is a skill that has been cultivated since childhood.
Today, my mother is in her seventies, but her legs have always been in good condition. Walking is still fast and powerful, and we young people are ashamed of ourselves.
With the birth of my brother and I, walking is no longer an option with my children. Fortunately, there was a bus at this time.
The second option is urban and rural passenger transport, which is a real bus. However, at that time, the concept of public transportation was not yet popular, and we called it a passenger car.
There is one train in the morning, noon and evening every day, so you must wait at the station in advance.
At that time, most of the bus drivers were employees of state-owned enterprises, and they had a very prosperous life. Despite the fixed departure points, the management of the terminal is not strict enough, and the drivers have to rush home to shop, cook, and take care of the children, so they often leave early.
At that time, there was no GPS or Beidou navigation, once in the car, the driver was the uncle, and everyone was relieved to be able to go home early.
The biggest problem with taking a bus is that you can't go directly to the village, you can only reach the town where your grandmother's village is located. After getting off the bus, it took more than half an hour to walk to reach my grandmother's house.
The third mode of transportation is that our family goes out during the New Year's holidays, that is, the 28 big bars, and it is square.
The child is very interested in firearms, he knows the 81 bar, and asked me what kind of gun the 28 bar is, it feels cooler than the 81 bar, but why he has never seen it.
All I could tell him was that the 28 bar was an old-fashioned bicycle with a similar appearance to a bicycle, with square seats and was driven by feet.
My father bought the 28 bar in the seventies, and it is said that it cost him four months' salary. I still have a black and white ** of my father leaning on this bicycle, and the expression in it is simply dancing with eyebrows.
According to my father's description, when he rode this guy back to the village, it was no less sensational than a luxury car today.
The 28-bar was all the rage at the time, with wheels 28 inches in diameter and over 71 centimeters when folded, making the ride more stable and the speed was considerable.
The middle frame of the vehicle adopts a triangular design, which makes full use of the stability principle of the triangular structure. The most important feature is the addition of a cross member, also known as a large bar, between the front and the seat.
It is this big bar that solves the problem of our family of four traveling together.
Every year before the Mid-Autumn Festival and before the Spring Festival, you must go to your grandmother's house to give a gift, which is a custom that has been followed for many years.
At this time, the father's strength was revealed.
Many of the Boxing items were hung on the handlebars of my bicycle, with my brother sitting on the bar in front and my mother holding me in the square seat in the back seat. In this way, a bicycle can get all the gifts for a family of four.
The reason why I put a lot of emphasis on square seats is because by the mid-to-late eighties, they were basically changed to oblong back seats. And the square seat is really strong, it feels like it is welded by stainless steel, and there is no problem at all to support two or three hundred catties.
The biggest disadvantage is that it feels comfortable to sit on its side, but it hurts the base of your thighs when you sit while riding.
This has always puzzled me, as if only women or girls can sit on their sides, and if we sit like this, we will be made fun of.
Our area used to be poor, but there was never any ambiguity about etiquette.
Before the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival, the son-in-law came to the door to deliver a festival gift, which was a big event for the grandmother's family, and a formal banquet needed to be prepared.
In general, the mother and her two sisters tacitly arranged to rush on the same day, so that one reception would be enough. If there's something going on, you might need to come to a second or third game.
Because at that time, most people didn't have **, let alone mobile phones.
Grandpa is the most senior old man in the village, and when he was young, he was injured when he was harvesting wheat, resulting in deafness in both ears. The affairs of the family have been handled by the uncle for a long time.
In order to prepare this banquet, the uncle had to start preparing various materials a day in advance. By the time we set off the next morning, they were already burning the fire and getting ready to cook.
We are fortunate to live in an era where even ordinary families in rural areas can hold a banquet.
When we arrived, we were greeted warmly by the whole family, including my grandparents. As the next generation, my brother and I are the most popular, and people's enthusiasm for us seems to be connected to the tendons of family affection.
Although Grandpa couldn't hear us, his face was full of happiness, as bright as a blooming flower.
I never knew how many uncles I had. There are only two uncles, and the others are cousins or uncles who are farther away, and every time an uncle is not satisfied with a table.
Although children are generally not allowed to eat at the main table, my brother and I are an exception, and we can find a small Maza to sit next to our father.
On the other hand, grandma and aunts usually don't eat with us, a local custom that has been criticized online in recent years.
In such a more formal setting, there is usually more than one table of wine. Generally speaking, the main table is dominated by men, the son-in-law is the guest (pronounced kei in dialect), the uncle occupies the main position, and the other uncles accompany the guests, in order to show respect for the guests.
Mother and her sisters, as well as aunts and uncles, usually occupy a table alone. Rural families may not have many formal dining tables, so they may have borrowed them from neighbors or made do with them on an improvised basis.
Of course, there are also cases where women don't go to the table, because they are all a group of old men, and it is not so convenient to talk. They were also busy cooking, and they couldn't wait for all the dishes to be ready. By the time all the dishes are ready, they may be too tired to have an appetite.
It is undeniable that this reflects the influence of stereotypes of male superiority and inferiority. However, in the environment I live in now, this is basically rare anymore.
Seating in the order of host and guest is quite a tedious task. However, once this habit is developed and everyone has a fixed seat, the whole process is less complicated.
I don't care what they say. I just feel that they treated my father with more respect than kinship.
This feeling grew with me and lasted for many years, and it wasn't until a while ago that I figured out why.
When I was very young, I remember that my father was different from the rest of the village.
The people of the village worked hard in the fields all day, and the father had to go out to work every day, usually only on Sundays when he was at home. In reality, however, there was no real rest even at home, because there was a lot of farm work at home.
My father participated in the national ** movement before graduating from junior high school, and after returning to the village, he studied with the accounting of the brigade and quickly mastered the basic accounting skills.
Because of this skill, when the ceramics factory was established more than 20 miles away, my father was successfully hired as an accountant with a monthly salary of 18 yuan.
By the time I began to remember something, my father had been working in a ceramics factory for many years.
I vividly remember that people from the village often came to my father in my family, as if they had a request. Soon after, they would come back to thank their father.
Later I figured out that they were looking for my father to buy the vat.
Around 1983, the rural areas began to implement the household responsibility system, which meant that the family's grain production increased.
The question then arises, how to store this surplus food safely? It needs to be protected from moisture, moisture, and insects, and the capacity is large enough to be used for a long time.
And the most suitable container is the large grain tank.
The factory where my father worked, which specialized in the production of these large grain tanks, was quite popular. These tanks are very sturdy, the largest can be more than a meter high, and the capacity is very large, making them ideal for storing grain.
However, in that era, it was not something that wealthy families could do to buy large vats, and there were not many things that could be allocated to a village. It is a great joy for every family to be able to buy a large vat, and the whole family is happy.
Because of this vat, the food is safe, and the whole family is stable.
The people who came to my father to buy the vat were not just the villagers of our village. The uncles of my grandmother's family are also the main force in buying a large number of cylinders.
A few years ago, when I was having dinner at my uncle's house, an eighty-year-old cousin happily recalled the past: When we went to buy a tank from your father, you were still young and naughty in the factory, so you nodded like that!
As he spoke, he stretched out his hand and gestured, slightly exaggerated, almost that tall, not even two years old.
I try to think about it, and it seems that there was such a thing, probably when I was five or six years old.
I've always wanted to see how the vat is made. My father told me that he would take me to see it when he had time.
At that time we lived in a real rural area, and there was not even a single commissary in the whole village. In contrast, the location of the factory where my father worked was more prosperous, after all, it was an area where industrial and mining enterprises were concentrated.
From the current point of view, it is like an industrial park, like a small town.
We chose to go in the afternoon and didn't arrive until it got dark. My father also went to the cafeteria to ask the chef to fry two dishes for me. It was a great deal of face, and it was the first time I had ever tasted the delicious food of a professional chef. The taste is even better than that of a feast in the village.
In the evening, I rested in my father's dormitory, and he told me that he would take me to see the process of making the cylinder early tomorrow morning.
The so-called roller cylinder refers to the process that needs to be transferred from the kiln to the warehouse storage yard after the firing of the large cylinder. This is a huge undertaking that requires the mobilization of all the workforce in the plant, including the plant manager.
The next day, at dawn, my father pulled me out of the bed, took me to a high platform, and handed me over to one of his female apprentices to take care of me.
It was a shocking scene that I still remember vividly.
Countless people lined up in a long line, divided into three or four rows, starting from the kiln, and tilting the vat about forty or fifty degrees. Taking advantage of the rounded nature of the bottom of the cylinder, they began to force the large cylinder to roll outward. After rolling a few meters, it is handed over to the next person, and one by one, like a spinning top, the vats are safely transferred to the reserve field a few hundred meters away.
This labor scene is very shocking, there are no slogans, no command, but everyone is full of tacit understanding. In the process of rolling, the vat makes a rumbling sound and kicks up the dust on the ground, which is very infectious.
The power of the people is indeed great, and this method not only saves time and effort, but also tests the quality of the vat. Any defective product that is poorly made will have a hard time withstanding such a rolling process.
It took more than an hour for the large vat of this furnace to roll out.
Due to the high demand, a different kiln was released every morning, and more than an hour of rolling was required.
It's definitely hard work, and for me, I'm afraid I won't be able to roll ten vats.
The director and secretary of the factory came towards me, and they were with my father. Two middle-aged men in their forties and fifties wore overalls and patted the dust on their bodies with gray towels as they walked.
If it weren't for my father's introduction to me and I called them uncles, I wouldn't have seen that they were the top leaders of this factory.
I don't understand why people were so healthy back then. They did more than an hour of heavy work, not only did they not complain, but they were in high spirits, maybe because they could go to eat after finishing their work, right?
This time, my father did not take me to the cafeteria, but took me outside the factory.
I was excited by the scene of the cylinder just now, and when I came out, I found that the weather was a little cold. In front of a breakfast stall across the street from the factory, I tasted white porridge that I will never forget.
It didn't have this way of eating in our village at the time, and this was my first attempt.
This is a dish unique to our region, where millet and soybeans are ground together to make a slurry and then fired into a pale yellow white porridge. Although the name is white porridge, the actual color is slightly yellowish.
After the white porridge is served, sprinkle with a layer of salty, salty, soft and glutinous beans, so that the light white porridge instantly becomes salty and delicious.
From the first sip, this taste is deeply seared in my memory, and it has become a taste cultivated as a child, and it is difficult to change for the rest of my life.
This bowl of white porridge not only has a delicate taste and fragrant aroma, but also is rich in nutrients, which has a good effect on warming the stomach. Ideal for breakfast, young and old.
A bowl of white porridge is drunk clean, and with a few crispy small fritters, this breakfast is really pleasant.
When I left my hometown as an adult, what I missed most was the white porridge in my hometown, which was a manifestation of my deep attachment to my hometown.
Just as we were about to leave, a voice suddenly came from behind us: "Oops, I've finally found you!" There was a hint of anxiety in his voice, and a joy that could not be concealed.
Looking back, I was a little dazed because I didn't know this person! It was four or five plainly dressed but very neat uncles.
My father also seemed a little confused, and didn't seem to know any of them. Through some self-introduction, I learned that they were several of the many cousins in my grandmother's family.
We don't usually see each other, so we don't recognize each other. They arrived early in the morning, and since the factory gate had not yet been opened and the security department had not allowed them in, they had to wait patiently on the side of the road. If it weren't for the sake of me to taste a bowl of white porridge, I'm afraid they would have to wait forever.
Because at that time, the people who bought the vats were lined up at the factory gate.
The eighty-year-old cousin said with emotion: "If it weren't for your father's help, how could so many families in the village easily buy a cylinder?" Without tanks, it would be difficult to store grain. Although you have only been back for a short time, the people in the village remember you well! ”
I seem to understand why so many of these cousins were so kind to us, because of my father's kindness back then, and now it bears the fruit of gratitude in their hearts.
I used to think I was an invincible and cute being!
Whenever the cousins mentioned this past, my father always felt that it was difficult to bear their concern.
Throughout the ages, it has been a matter of course not to repay kindness, especially with family members. Unexpectedly, decades later, these people still remember that deep gratitude.
Later, I heard my father tell me that it was not easy for him to help these relatives buy vats. After all, resources are limited, even in order to take care of the workers in the factory, they can only be limited in number.
For the sake of a mouthful of vats, my father paid a lot of effort, including working overtime, running errands, inviting people to dinner, etc., all of which were painstaking actions.
Talking about this, my uncle became very interested and pulled us into the next bedroom. As soon as I entered, as far as the eye could see, there were five or six large vats on the wall, containing all kinds of grain.
Since my cousin and cousin got married, this bedroom has been vacant, but my uncle turned it into a granary.
The uncle pointed to the cylinders and said, "Look at these cylinders, they have been thirty or forty years, and they have not changed at all. When I asked him why he was storing so much grain, my uncle smiled and replied, "Don't you understand?" If you have food at home, you won't panic. Sometimes, even if there is **, you can't buy food. ”
He continued, "We don't want that day, but if it happens, you won't have much food in the city, and what I have here will come in handy." ”
Now it seems that the uncle's words are not alarmist.
Only a few years ago, the global food problem has been confronted. Perhaps the vats accumulated in the village over the years may really come in handy in the future.
I don't know if they will pass it on to the next generation, telling them how difficult it was to buy these vats back then.