When I entered the room, I felt desolate. All the doors and windows have rotted and fallen off, and there are several big holes in the gray tiles on the roof. What impressed me the most was the bamboo fence in front of me. At that time, my mother piled the sun-dried rice near the wall in the house, circled the rice with this bamboo fence, and pressed a big board on it, so it was not easy for mice to get it. Sometimes, in order to prevent chickens from stealing rice, this kind of bamboo fence will be used to surround the door, which will not only ventilate but also prevent poultry from invading. However, the bamboo fence has large, medium and small pieces, which are used as materials. According to the needs, this large area is generally used as a granary, and some people use it to enclose the vegetable garden. It's a small vegetable garden near home. The poultry of rural people are all stocked. In order to prevent poultry, it is surrounded by bamboo fences, which is a bit like what northerners say.
I remember when this house was built, it had three rooms, namely, purlin, bedroom and kitchen. Now the beams of the kitchen are rotten, the whole roof has collapsed, and the ground is a mess, which makes it uncomfortable to look at. There are green branches hanging on the unfinished wall, which are wild mangosteen protruding from the wall, that is, bamboo shoots that we usually like to eat. In our hometown, there is no fence between villages. Generally, villages are surrounded by wild mangosteen. Our home is next to the village. This wild mangosteen was planted by our ancestors in the early years. Every year after the bamboo shoots grow, my uncle will use a long-handled hook knife to reach into the wild mangosteen shrub covered with hard thorns and hook out the fat bamboo shoots. Then cut into thin slices, boil in clear water and soak in cold water. It takes about two or three hours. I don't remember exactly how long it will take. I only remember these mountain bamboo shoots. No matter what you do, they are delicious.
Turn east of the old house. Oh! The path is still there, which means people are still walking on this road. The front room is the old house where we once lived, and the back room belongs to others. That family has an only daughter, as old as us. In rural areas, only girls without boys are coldly and bullied, not to mention only one girl. Unfortunately, the girl got a strange disease, and her foot festered for a long time, and she was fat and stout. The other foot is normal, and the two feet are put together, and the thickness is obviously prominent. Although everyone is playing together, we are somewhat isolated from her. She seems to have some inferiority complex, and often hides her normal feet behind her thick fat legs, but no matter how she hides them, we can still see the hidden thin calves. She has an old woman who doesn't have much contact with the villagers. She just sits in a dark room all day. We little girls like to see what she is doing through the small hole. Small hole is also when we wet the mud wall with water, and then gently dig a small hole with twigs, so we close one eye and open the other to look in. Take turns watching. When I saw it, the old woman was sitting in front of the stove making a fire. When it was my sister's turn, a black poker suddenly stabbed into the hole. My sister didn't have time to dodge and was stabbed red-handed. My sister burst into tears with a "wow" and covered her eyes with her hand. We were all scared to death. The old lady is still swearing in the house. Her little granddaughter quickly pushed the door into the room and closed the door. Friends ran away, too. I took my sister home. When my mother came back from work, she saw her black and swollen eyes. I said she was stabbed in the back by an old woman. Mother was angry, so she took her sister to the old woman to argue. Of course, it was an earth-shattering quarrel. I don't remember how it ended. I only remember that at dinner, my mother told us to stay away from the old woman. And my sister's stabbed eyes left the root of the disease, which made two beautiful big eyes out of balance.
I still remember when I was a child, when it rained heavily, this path became a small ditch. Pig manure, cow manure and chicken manure were all mixed in the rain, and it was dark. Moreover, the current is very fast and often washes us into the black water. So every time it rains heavily, adults will shut us in the house and are not allowed to go out.
When we stepped over the low stone wall and stood in front of the closed door, all the memories quickly welled up in our minds. Here, I have too many memories, childhood memories, vivid. I remember when I built this house, I was only about three or four years old. At that time, my father worked in other places and was seldom at home. My mother has been planning to build this house, and has invited the construction team, and my uncle has also come to help. And uncle, I am just an uncle who lives in another village. He can do carpentry, and he does all the carpentry in the family. One morning, the red sun poured down from the entrance of the village, and my sister and I played by the village road early in the morning. In the distance, I saw a man with a tool coming from the oblique light of the sun. Hazy figure, a moment forward, a moment backward, I froze, a few back and forth. I asked my sister doubtfully how this person could walk like this. My sister is as confused as I am. Looking at it, I feel a little scared. Just as we turned and ran away, the man approached with a sunny smile on his face and his eyes narrowed with laughter. He reached out and stroked our heads and said kindly, "What are you two wild girls standing there for?" Ha, it's my uncle. We hugged my uncle's thigh excitedly. My uncle squatted down, put down his tools, picked us up one by one, put us down again, and said, "Play by yourselves, my uncle is not available." Say that finish, grabbed the tools on the ground, got up and walked to the construction site. We looked at his back and never saw the situation of going forward or backward again. Until now, I still remember the figure that kept moving forward and backward.
In the old days, the door lock was a door with an iron bolt across it and two iron rings lining the other door. When two doors were closed, the iron bolt touched and just inserted into the iron ring of the other door, and the door was locked. At this point, the lock is still intact, only a little rusty. This house has long been owned by my brother-in-law I forgot to ask for the key when I came, but I was unwilling. So I opened a small crack and looked in. The interior is basically unchanged. Zhang Zhengtang has a big table in the middle and several old benches on both sides. According to my parents, this house is not suitable for us to live in, so we must build another one. My childhood was written in this room. At that time, my father-in-law had some money at home, and he was almost classified as a landlord when he was divided into classes. If my mother-in-law hadn't made trouble in the commune working group and scratched the landlord, it would have been my father-in-law. I still remember a landlord in the village who was put on a pointed paper hat and hung a sign around his neck. There are several big characters written on the sign, and a big cross is painted on the big characters. The landlady's hand was twisted behind her back, and she stood on a table with flowers tied. The villagers shouted the slogan "Down with the landlord", and their clenched right hands kept waving. I was so scared that my mother wouldn't let us see it and drove us home. Now that I think about it, I still have a lingering fear.
Because my father is the eldest son and the first head of the family to build a new house, the best Chinese fir is used in the choice of building materials. The high beams are engraved with various patterns, including flowers, trees and birds, and some wavy folds, which are exquisite and atmospheric. The houses in my hometown are all of the same style. There is a nave, two wings, and a hidden compartment behind the nave, which only adults can enter. My mother-in-law's house is next door. I have seen my mother-in-law grab some sweets from Tibetan areas to share with us. But every time my mother-in-law comes out, she will make a frightened look and whisper, "Don't make any noise. The devil inside is sleeping. I secretly took it out to eat. " So, we turned and ran with candy in fear and excitement, for fear that the devil would catch us red-handed when he woke up.
There is a small cowshed next to the house, next to the wall. I remember that we had a black and yellow cow at home, but I can't remember whether it was a bull or a cow. This cow seems to have a job every day, and follows the adults out early and back late. I was afraid of cows, when I was young. I never dared to go near this cowshed. I still remember that this cowshed was filled with all kinds of poultry droppings. When the cow comes back, it will throw some straw. The cow will lie quietly on the straw and keep eating. My mouth is full of white bubbles. If there are too many bubbles, they will fall on the straw. It doesn't care. There seems to be endless food in its mouth. Later, my father-in-law was too old to do farm work, so he herded cattle every day. That day, he went to lead the cow, was knocked down by the rope that tied the cow, and never stood up again. He left us after lying in bed for half a year. The day he closed his eyes, it rained heavily. My father and uncles went to pick up the broken branches. When they came back, they found my father-in-law sleeping on the trampoline with his eyes closed. Since then, my father has been living in regret, and no one is around when my father-in-law died.
It suddenly occurred to me that our oldest house is not this one, but on the other side of the village. So, we walked to the oldest old house again. Passing a mud brick wall. At that time, mud brick walls were considered as houses that only people with more ability could build. At that time, most people were mud mixed with straw covered with woven bamboo sticks. Build a house with bamboo sticks in advance, and then cover it with soil mixed with straw. Mud is red soil with strong viscosity. When it's covered, it's a wall that keeps out the wind and rain. As far as I can remember, our house is a wall made of black stones. At that time, the wall had not been painted in Carboniferous, so it was clear at a glance whether it was well built. But I really don't remember what the walls of the oldest old house are made of, only that it is too dark.
When I arrived, it was flat, not even a piece of residual tile was left. It is this carambola tree that enables us to determine the location of the house. According to my mother, this carambola tree was planted by our ancestors. How many years ago, no one knew. I remember my mother helped me take a bath and put on clean clothes. Then hold me, carry a small low stool in one hand, put me on the low stool under this carambola tree, and she scrubbed clothes under the eaves. I sat idly, my eyes rolling up and down. The poplar tree is covered with lush leaves, and the sun shines through the cracks in the leaves. I don't remember whether there is a carambola. When I looked down at the ground, there was a caterpillar with green and yellow stripes moving where I was staring straight. Being so close to me, I cried with a "wow" and was so scared that I was at a loss. When my mother heard the sound, she knew that I was scared by the caterpillar. She quickly picked me up and put the low stool beside me while coaxing me. When I stopped crying, she put me down, and I sat on the low stool and watched my mother wash clothes. I was only about two years old at that time, because my sister was not born yet. It is said that children have no memory, but I remember that time of panic.
Today's old carambola trees, with sparse branches, record the growth of generations and witness the development of the times. Litchi and pomegranate were planted in our village at that time. Litchi is planted in the village head's family. When picking lychees, everyone in the village came to help. We watched the red lychee filled with bamboo baskets and swallowed, but no one dared to reach out and grab one to eat. The youngest daughter of the village chief is our partner, and sometimes she secretly takes out two pockets for us to eat. It smells sweet and fragrant. We couldn't bear to eat it right away, so we carefully peeled off the shell and then carefully tore a small hole in the film. A drop of water bounced out at once, and we quickly stuck out our tongues to lick it. The tip of the tongue is sweetly contracted between our lips and teeth, and then swallowed, and saliva and sweet juice flow down the throat into our stomach. Bon voyage, beautiful.
Decades later, the village is still there, but it is not the village of that year, and a feeling of desolation and dismay suddenly welled up in my mind. Under that big banyan tree, I couldn't help inviting several villagers to communicate with them. Everyone wants to get rid of poverty and get rich, but there is no leader. I asked the village chief, why not go out and see the outside world and learn how others build new countryside? A villager turned and ran to find the village head, and came back to say that the village head was not at home and might have gone to the county seat. I said, "The village chief is not here, but everyone wants a good environment. You see, there is no drainage ditch in the village, sewage is everywhere, and flies and mosquitoes are in droves. Everyone still lives in a low-rise dangerous house. The typhoon came, tiles were smashed, rainwater and sewage mixed together and rushed into the house. Don't you want to transform your living environment? " The villagers' mood was raised, and everyone said noisily, "Who doesn't want to live in a good house? Who doesn't want some money in his pocket? But we only have a few plots of land, so it's good to have enough to eat. " I asked, "What about the village chief? Doesn't he want to do something for you? " The villagers said: "The village head is a young man elected by everyone. He wants to change the face of the village, but there is no money in the village and the county government has no money. He went to the county to grind almost every day, but he still didn't approve it. " Alas! Helpless, helpless, I pray for my relatives in my hometown and look forward to changing the face of the village as soon as possible so that they can all live in a clean and comfortable environment. Walking on the road, their waists are straight, and everyone will say, "Come to my house for a drink!" "
Time flies in the gathering, the sunshine moves in the communication, and when the sunshine leaves the shadow of the trees for a long time, we bid farewell to the villagers, bid farewell to our hometown and set foot on our way home. The wind blows the branches on both sides of the road, and it also blows my complicated mood. The hometown is far away, and the villagers are still there. Those simple and realistic eyes, that weather-beaten face like bark, are full of perseverance and persistence. When I look back again, the picture that suddenly appeared in my mind, the broken bricks in the village, was replaced by the tall and neat floor, and the villagers sat in the shadow of the ancient village, telling the story of the past. ...