To tell the truth, I am very fond of the poems describing the scenery of the water town in Tang poems, especially Wei Yingwu's "Chuzhou Xijian", which is very deep and poetic. "There are yellow orioles and deep trees singing on the side of the stream, the spring tide brings rain and comes late, and the wild crossing is not crossed by any boat." The reason why this poem has endured through the ages, I think its most beautiful mood is that it has no quarrel with the world, does not sing and praise the qingming of the imperial court, only talks about the fun of being in the wilderness, and only finds the true meaning of life in ordinary nature. This is a very natural little picture, the quiet grass growing by the small river is also a solo music, and there are small yellow orioles singing in the deep jungle on the shore. After a burst of spring rain, the natural pattern of the small river was disrupted, and the wild ferry boats were unmanaged, and it was also very comfortable to place them horizontally at the ferry port. It seems that it does not matter who crosses the river in this society, no one pays attention to it, there is no one in the picture, in fact, this natural rhythm is indeed very vibrant, and it is better to be silent than sound.
To tell the truth, my childhood was inextricably linked to this wild crossing. The life of the water town is water and boats, every family pillows the river, the feet are water, the fish hold up the boat, and the wild ferry is unattended. At that time, there was basically no car dealership in my hometown, and the feet were water, and the feet were boats. There are three kinds of hometown ferries, one is a canal ferry, to carry dozens of people, childhood canal is very narrow, has not been dredged, when the canal boats rarely machine boats, mostly civilian boats drum sails, and ferries are almost a checkpoint. It is a tall man with a steel railing, and the tall ferryman master, who only grasps the steel rail with his hand and quickly drags it to the other side, so that there is no need to brace up. But this can be a bad canal boat, so far away to see the small red flag in the middle of the steel fence, had to drop the sail and bow its head, corresponding to the old saying: where people do not bow their heads.
The second is the White Horse Lake ferry, when the lake east to the west of the lake is more than a dry run around the lake, from the new river head to the fork river there is nearly fifty miles away, to the Huahe Bridge to turn a large circle, and in Li Xu to the fork river Chen Zhuang is the narrowest lake mouth, about three miles road, from here to take the waterway to cut close can save fifteen miles of road.
Li Xu belonged to Fan Ji, and there were twenty or thirty families on the embankment, whether they were fishermen or farmers. There are two or three small fishing boat ferries waiting for pedestrians to share boats on the embankment, one passenger only charges a dime, two or three people can swing, and a pair of oars quickly float across the lake. At that time, my grandmother lived in the fork river uncle's house, my father every time to the fork river, rarely take this boat, a dime makes people sweat, because two cents can buy a big burnt cake, run fifteen miles more to save this money, every time my father always arrives at home until dark, my brother and I have to wait at the intersection for a long time, then each person a piece of burnt cake is particularly relieving.
The third kind of ferry is an inland river ferry, this inland river is the Wenshan River, through the Yundong River, the diversion river, etc., these rivers have no bridges, there are agricultural boats passing by the river, these river ferries are more than no ferrymen, because the special ferry workers are not cost-effective, two cents ferry money, less than ten people a day across the river, not to mention the left and right neighbors travel, can not take the face to collect money, the Zhuangzi people collectively raise money to buy a boat, with the hemp rope root at both ends of the side of the pile eye, and then tied to the wooden stakes on both sides, so it is magically turned into an unmanaged ferry. Wild ferry unmanned boat self-crossing, each person as long as they get on the boat after their own operation and grasp the rope root can naturally reach the opposite shore, both sides of the passenger can operate, can reach the other shore.
This kind of unmanaged ferry gives people the idea of a selfless spirit, requiring everyone who crosses the river to abide by the principles, adhere to selflessness, and consciously tie up the end of the boat, and cannot let the boat flow to the center of the river and affect the boat. Everyone must consciously manage and protect this unmanaged ferry. Do not collide with the stones of the water dock, do not crash into the boat on the river, and reasonably moor the boat on the opposite bank.
In the old society of one family and one family, there were also people by the river who did good deeds and provided a small boat for everyone, which was equivalent to the value of building two houses, and it was necessary to prepare wood, invite a few carpenters to nail the boat, and also need to bake lime tung oil with wire and iron, and the single work money would cost dozens of dollars. This is a kind of charity, there are also a few poor people to do jointly, after all, this is for the benefit of pedestrians, especially those who are far away, there is no ferry, let people bend for several miles to go on the right road, as the saying goes, "the long road is afraid of water", in the summer you will think of wading through the water, I don't know the depth is to suffer greatly. But it is much better to have a ferry, and perhaps only people who cross the river will remember the grace of the ferry. If you don't cherish the ferry and let the boat crash into the rocks, the boatman will sprinkle salt on his heart, so why should you bear it?
In my childhood, there was a small ferry boat that was unmanaged in my village, a few friends always liked to play with the boat and shake the water, the old man on the shore was very concerned about us, the old man had no children, a person lived alone in a small shed by the river, he was very affectionate to us, in the summer he always put mosquito smoke at his door, put a few very smooth tree root paragraphs, we all sat there listening to the old man tell those strange stories.
Unexpectedly, once, the naughty calf alone in the small river to play with the ferry accidentally fell into the water, seeing that it has sunk to the bottom, that is the summer water, the water is particularly evil, Shi Lao Bo shouted no one, had to rush into the water alone, the calf is saved, and Shi Lao Bo swallowed the breath. That was the saddest moment for one of us Zhuangzi people, the father of the calf smoked the calf with a wicker branch, the butt was full of cucumber seeds, each family paid for the aftermath of the shi lao bo, the calf father did three days of filial piety, holding a sieve, dragging a weeping mourning stick, kneeling in front of the corpse of the old man shi all day, burning paper. Since then, we have never dared to play with that little boat again, believing that there will be water ghosts at the water's edge.
At present, The calf is also more than seventy years old, and every year on the Qingming Festival, he alone goes to the grave of Shi Laobo to burn paper on the round grave, and he said that the most painful thing in this life is to be sorry for Shi Laobo.
Oh, that unmanned ferry left us with too deep a memory, that kind old man, what you left us is the eternal spirit.
At this time, I remembered the poem "Wild Ferry No Man Boat Self-Crossing", and thought about it carefully, the water town of childhood is all water, the feet are boats, and the ferry seems to be a landscape of the water town under the poet's pen, but it is actually a bitter story. From my memory, the number of casualties on canal ferries in the past few decades has been several dozen, because the boats collided with the boats, and some of them were too strong and the people standing at the bow of the boats were thrown down the river by the waves. Therefore, over the years, the maritime department has been very strict about the management of ferries, equipped with dozens of life jackets on board, and the side railings are very solid, otherwise bitter stories still happen often.
As I write this, history has taken a new turn, traffic is speeding up everywhere, water transport in the Grand Canal is also speeding up, and those thousands of tons of boats are speeding up, which is bound to affect the safety of the canal crossing. Human life is as great as the sky, and now the ferry has been forcibly dismantled, and the ferry has disappeared accordingly. Haha, the history of "wild ferry unmanned boat self-crossing" no longer needs to be nostalgic, and this story will have no meaning to repeat.
About the author: Jin Min, born in 1952, college culture, member of the Chinese Folk Association, the main representative of the provincial representative of the national intangible cultural heritage Nanzha folk song, the first member representative of the Jiangsu Prose Literature Society, the vice president of the Huai'an Music and Literature Society, the first batch of cultural masters in Huai'an, the first cultural and artistic celebrities in Huai'an District, and the chairman of the Huai'an District Folk Writers Association. He is good at creating local literature and folklore literature, and has won many literary works in national provinces and municipalities.
One Point Canal Paddle Sound