Prose Tribe 丨 Poplar: Four wooden houses

Four wooden houses (outer one)

Wen 丨 poplar

The other day, I went to a village on the southern slope of Qinling to give a last trip to a respected old man in the village.

At dinner, a person squeezed in from the crowd of Phi Ma Dai Xiao and shouted my nickname, and I took a closer look, and it turned out to be Lao Li, a retired worker in the construction company, who was still in the same spirit as two years ago. Old Li was very affectionate, held my hand for a long time, and invited me to his house to let me see the house that my grandfathers had built for him. Old Li said: For more than thirty years, from the roof ridge to the eaves have not changed. The houses built by the neighbors late have all been changed, and the wooden frame of his house is the same as before, and he is often proud of the house built by the Zhang family!

This suddenly reminded me that the four wooden houses of the old Li family were wooden house shelves made by me and my father and second brother. At that time, I graduated from high school, less than twenty years old, and followed my father and brother from village to village to do carpentry work to make a living. Whether it is building wooden houses and furniture, making doors, window sashes, and shoumu coffins, everything is dry. At that time, my father was old, I was an apprentice, and I formed a carpenter team with my second brother, and my father and second brother's daily salary was two yuan and fifty cents, and I was an apprentice, two yuan a day. Despite this, the delicate lord's family was still unwilling to invite, for fear that the Zhang family team would not be able to work and suffer losses. Lao Li was a technician at a construction company, and he was familiar with the carpenter craftsmanship of the Zhang family, so he specially asked us to build it.

My father did things and never let people poke their backbones. For the wooden frame of the four rooms, the number of working days required is lower. My father said that he should do a good job and not exceed the working hours, so he was particularly strict with our brothers, taking less rest after meals, not resting between work, and not telling the lord and outsiders to grind foreign workers and mixed wages. Father's beam and column rafters for the wooden frame structure, the selection of materials is very exquisite, large materials are used, small materials are used, and no waste is wasted. The production process is refined, and the ding is tight and moderate, leaving no gap error. My father also taught me to treat the Lord's family and the general workers who helped me, to speak kindly and to discuss things diligently.

During the conversation, I came to the courtyard of the Li family, and saw that the courtyard was neat, the flowers and trees were prosperous, and there was a plate of chess on the small stone table that had not been finished. Looking up, the eaves are as straight as ever. The small green tiles of the front eaves are flat and undamaged, although there are trees next to the house, and the roof tile ditches are free of dead leaves and green moss and weeds, which is not difficult to see the owner's diligent management. Entering the house to see the rafters of the front eaves and the back eaves, the arrangement and combination are very similar, there are no flaws, and there is no sloping gap where the beams and columns are combined, and the closure is tight.

Old Lee beckoned me to sit down while making tea. In the tea room, Old Li apologetically told a story that I had forgotten but was intriguing: at the dinner table of the Standing Wooden House that day, the main family, as usual, put loose liquor for my father and second brother to drink. The father and the second brother also drank a few cups of each cup as usual to relieve their fatigue. Just after we finished eating and left, the Li family came to a few neighbors of Hexi, and old Li asked them to sit down and drink, and an alcoholic drank a cup and said it was water. Several other people also said in harmony that there was no taste, it was water. Old Li tasted a bite, sure enough there was no taste of wine, he asked the whole family, only to figure out that it was the child who poured cold water into the empty wine bottle to play, the person who served the dish did not know, and the wine bottle was put on the table... When we walked more than a mile from the main house, Old Li pulled the child with a flashlight and caught up with us breathlessly, apologizing one after another. It is said that the doll played with cold water in an empty wine bottle, and the adult did not know when the wine was on the table, asked the father and the second brother to forgive, and beat the child in front of us. The father quickly stopped Old Li and said, Nothing, baby play, don't blame the baby, don't go to the heart.

After listening to this process, I vaguely remembered this little thing more than thirty years ago. Old Li sincerely said some words of apology to me, I said that Old Li is really a careful person, more than thirty years old, I still remember so clearly, I have long forgotten, my father and brother never mentioned it. Old Li said with a pious face that once a person has done something wrong, whether others say it or not, he will not be at ease for the rest of his life, and whenever he thinks of the matter of drinking fake wine in the standing wooden house, he will review himself and count the children. Old Li's words made me admire Old Li's sincerity more and more, and reminded me of my father who died early and my father's teaching that "you can't let people poke your spine when you do things".

Before leaving, I once again looked up at these four wooden houses, which were still simple and elegant, standing upright between several new brick and concrete buildings, and maintaining the same true color as the owners of the wooden houses.

My carpenter father

When my father was gone, I suddenly felt that the mountain had fallen.

His father was a very ordinary farmer in Southern Qinchuan on the southern slope of Qinling, and his father was a reputable carpenter in Southern Qinchuan. The father was the oldest among the brothers, and the father had no father at the age of fifteen. I was also one of the oldest brothers, and I had no father at the age of twenty-two. There was a lot of age difference between me and my father, and when I became a dignitary, my father was already old, and my father could no longer stand in front of people to help me speak; when I asked for money, my father was already old, and my father poured out the box and poured the only eight hundred pounds of bud grain. Nevertheless, I am very solid in my heart, I have a father, I have a backer. The father is there, the patron is there.

His father suffered all his life, and when he was a child, he herded cattle to the Caidong people in the village to cut grass and sow seeds and plough the land, and later was introduced to learn carpentry skills with a master from Luoyang, Henan Province, who came to Shangzhou. My father had never studied, but he was skillful and diligent, and honed his first hand in wood carving. On his self-drawn sketches, he can carve vivid and exquisite flowers, birds, fish and insects, Fulu Shouxing, and Meilan Bamboo Chrysanthemum. My father often told me that it is difficult to be a superior person without suffering, and he taught me to be tough first when I strike iron.

His father studied art to improve, meticulously carved and polished his craft, and pursued an ultimate perfection; he was lonely and persistent, single-minded, only staring at the wooden work in his hands, without distraction; he was diligent and dedicated, focusing on carpentry skills all his life, and devoted his life to an art, a career, a faith... This may be the spirit of the father, the spirit of the craftsman! This spirit of the father was not innate, but was accumulated and cultivated in the practice of carving day after day. In the eyes of my father, craftsmanship is the faith of life, and work is the devotion to this faith. The father's heart slowly sinks in the hammer and chisel, stable, pure, and no more distractions; the father's skills are skillful, elevated, exquisite, and pure in the heart of an axe and a hammer; the father's spirit is accumulated, precipitated, gathered, and condensed in the repetition of year after year.

In his lifetime, his father taught many apprentices, some of whom he collected, and some of whom were arranged by the commune and the brigade to learn art from his father. The father does not distinguish who is close to whom, in the process of teaching carpentry skills, always silently teach the apprentice, do things to be Ding is Ding, 卯 is 卯, to be a square person, decent as a craftsman, to abide by the rules, even if it is to eat and pick vegetables, chopsticks head can not exceed the middle line of the plate. The apprentices taught by my father were also all top-notch.

In addition to carpentry, my father also worked on farmland. He never let others poke at the spine, did carpentry without flaws, and never let the crops in his fields be inferior to those of his neighbors. In the autumn of the year I was in junior high school, the rain continued to pour, and the two reservoirs behind the village began to overflow. Fearing that the flood would destroy the ripe crops, my father carried the cage, carried the basket on his back, and wore a straw hat, and braved the rain to go to the school on the east side of the village and asked me to take a leave of absence to break the bud valley with him. My family's bud sticks are a foot long, and the spikes are full of grains, while the bud sticks next door are very small, and even have slips. Father said: "You must not be lazy in planting crops, and people are coaxed to the ground for a day, and the earth is coaxed for a year." If you don't plant a good crop and miss a season, you can't marry a bad daughter-in-law for a lifetime. "I was breaking the heavy ear of buds and grains while I was learning my father's teachings.

When I graduated from high school, my father bought me a set of carpenter tools and asked me to follow him and his apprentices to build wooden houses, farm tools, and coffins for farmers in Southern Qinchuan. At that time, the mechanic was paid two and a half cents a day. I was an apprentice and only earned two dollars a day. Fortunately, it is good to cook work for whoever eats at whom, and does not pay for food. In the countryside to do carpentry work, the labor intensity is very large, often tired can not stand straight waist, ten fingers can not be held straight, straightened and can not hold. I looked at me with trepidation, and I was also a little half-hearted. Coupled with the development of the situation, farmers have also evolved from civil engineering to brick mix, new furniture is assembled, and carpentry work is becoming less and less. Coupled with my father's old age and no longer going from village to village to do woodwork, I was unable to concentrate on inheriting my father's carpentry carving skills.

After I joined the army, my father always asked Mr. Wang Huacang in the village to write me a letter, always telling me that I should be trustworthy in my duty as a person, and that I should try my best to be cautious when doing public affairs, not to harm things, not to make mistakes, not to take advantage, and not to let people poke at the backbone. In the winter of my second year in the army, my father was old and dying. I was in pain, and I suddenly felt that the sky had collapsed, the trees had fallen, and I was lonely.

It wasn't until I retired from the army and returned to my hometown to work that I gradually came out of loneliness and found a pillar from being alone. That pillar is the family rules and family training and the father's craftsman spirit that the father summed up with his life, and whenever he recalls these family rules and family training and the craftsman spirit, he feels that the father is still there.

The spirit is there, the father is there, and the backer is there.

(Excerpted from the second half of Yanhe Magazine, Issue 11, 2021)

Bai Yang's original name was Zhang Hong, "post-70s", a native of Shangzhou, Shaanxi. He is a member of the Shaanxi Provincial Prose Literature Association.