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Xia Xiankui, born in 1956, retired teacher of Fuzihe Central School, backbone teacher of Huanggang City, senior teacher of middle school, member of Macheng Calligraphers Association, member of Macheng Poetry Society. He loves literature and has published many works in Huanggang Daily, Chutian Metropolis Daily and municipal media publications.
An old wooden box
Xia Xiankui
An old wooden box, perhaps a very ordinary, ordinary object, is now basically something that has been forgotten and abandoned by people, and the old 00s and 10s may not have seen it at all, and perhaps even if they have seen it, they cannot be named at all and regarded as rare. However, in the memory of time, it has always been with me, becoming my eternal memory and nostalgia for my father.
This old wooden box, which was not made by a craftsman, was not painted or decorated. The material comes from the packaging box in which the supply and marketing cooperative transported pesticides at that time, and the father dismantled it, and then put it together into six sides according to the custom specification size, and then nailed it into a box. This is a piece of "furniture" that my father gave me when I was in junior high school.
At that time, the junior high school was only a hundred steps away from the supply and marketing cooperative where my father worked, and my father was also the director of the supply and marketing cooperative, and there were spare rooms in the unit, and there were hot meals and hot dishes every day. Therefore, my mother consulted with my father and wanted me to go to school, eat and live, and have someone to take care of. Father Zhengse said: "The unit is not a home, it is a place for supply and marketing business, if the employees bring their families, what kind of system will it become?" Eating three meals a day in the canteen, how does the family look? "Isn't it money?" Pay the living expenses as required! Mother said without anger. Probably feeling that the tone of the tone at that time was too heavy for my mother to accept, my father quickly explained: "Money is one aspect; more importantly, this is a material powerhouse, and it is certainly not suitable for an irrelevant person to come and go at will. Therefore, Guatian Lixia avoids suspicion and is still not good to live here. After listening to this explanation, the mother did not insist any longer. Then my father said to me, "I have prepared your school box and washbasin, and I will send you there on the first day of school." ”
My father, who had always been suspicious of family affairs and was called "shaking his hands" by my mother, actually prepared all my school needs, not only did my mother say that the sun came out from the west, but also made me excited. In our poor little world, there can be a father who eats imperial food, and I don't know how many peers envy him. In the envious and jealous eyes of others, my young heart had already swelled with a sense of superiority. When people asked whose children it was, I always said my father's name with my head held high. Near the beginning of the school year, I took the box that my father had not yet seen for me, and by my own imagination, after some description, I showed off in front of my classmates, just like I used to show off school supplies in class, and my heart was filled with a sense of vanity satisfaction.
On the day of school, I got up early in the morning, ate a bowl of poached eggs cooked by my mother, and walked more than ten miles to the supply and marketing cooperative, and as soon as I entered the door, my father pointed to a bunch of things and said, "You pack these first, and then send you when I finish eating." "After saying that, I went to the canteen. Looking at the box that has no image and no color, I was dumbfounded for a moment, this is the box code I imagined? Remembering the previous show-off in front of my classmates, remembering that this box will make me lose face in front of my classmates, a tear of grievance can't help but burst out of my eyes and sit there stupidly. After eating, my father saw me motionless and weeping, and he had already guessed that I was inseparable from ten, pointed to the box and said, "Don't look at this box is not good, or I made it for you by myself." "This box is not even as good as ordinary people's families, even if you are still a state cadre, this will be taken to the school, so that people can see how faceless!" I, who had never dared to confront my father, coldly threw out a sentence. Hearing me say this, my father pointed to his room and said to me, "You say I am a state cadre, what do you think is in my room?" "Yes, father's room is a bed, a table, a chair and a cup, and there is nothing else to do, the clothes are stacked on the side of the bed, and the two towels hanging on the wall and one with two holes. Seeing all this, I slowly got up and packed up my things. My father also squatted down, and while helping me clean up, he said in a serious tone: "You can't pay too much attention to face, your main task in school is to study, you can't compare with each other, you have to learn better than to learn, better than progress, you have good academic performance, you have real talent to learn, you have face than anything." We must not forget our roots as a human being, and we must not lose the tradition of thrift and thrift and the true character of the working people at any time. ”
Along the way, my father also said a lot of things that seemed to be understood, and some of them were not slowly understood until I understood things later. And this little wooden box actually accompanied me through the four and a half years of study from junior high school to high school. Whenever I encounter difficulties and setbacks in my studies or desert my thoughts, I think of my father's words. Fortunately, he has been a member of the learning committee of the class for four and a half years, which shows that the learning attitude and grades at that time were still recognized by teachers and classmates, and it was not worthy of his father's expectations. When I graduated from high school, my father went to pick me up, and I thought that in order to avoid the pain of shoulder-to-shoulder walking, he would definitely ask someone to drive them to pull the goods, so several classmates on the same road had already said hello to me and wanted to take a ride. Unexpectedly, the father appeared in the bedroom with a rope and a flat burden. Looking at my father, who was walking in front of him with a wooden suitcase and luggage, and looking at the big-character posters that were all over the campus to "evaluate the law and criticize Confucianism" and judge the "bourgeois legal power", I seemed to understand something at once, and it was as if I understood my father at once.
Born in 1929, my father studied for a few years as a child and gave cattle to landlords when he was a little older. After the founding of New China, because he knew a few words and played a good calculation, he was arranged to work in the supply and marketing cooperative. For more than 20 years, he went to four communes in Baiguo District at that time, including Liushuping, Fuxing, Lujiahe and Jianguo. In less than three years, he was promoted from a small clerk to a director. Saying that it is the director, in fact, it is pitifully small, and it is the three or five people in the store, but in the planned economy era when everything needs to be supplied by ticket, it is also hot and powerful. Even if it is an ordinary person, who is far away from the chai rice oil and salt? Therefore, supply and marketing cooperatives are in charge of the needs of one side of the people, and the livelihood of thousands of people is related. Don't say that every New Year's Festival is a red and white happy event, that is, in normal times, the leaders of the commune organs, the emperor of the brigade, relatives and acquaintances, go to the door to approve notes, pull relations, and go through the back door are not in the minority. His father was upright and principled in his work, so he offended many people, wearing the "little shoes" of the commune leaders, listening to the cold words of his neighbors, sitting on the cold bench of others when asking for help, and two relatives who did not interact with each other because their requests were rejected. Some people said that he could not be a man and could not greet himself, but he proudly said: "Although I have not achieved much in my life, I am worthy of my conscience!" "Later, I also went from an ordinary teacher to the position of principal, from Lujiahe Middle School to the town center primary school, and finally to the central school as the chairman of the trade union. My father used to ask me and remind me with "to be worthy of my conscience." Today, I have retired for a few years, and looking back on the road I have traveled, I can also quote my father's original words with a clear conscience and draw a satisfactory end to my forty years of work.
This old wooden box, which itself is not good and has long been mottled and yellowed, is still stored in the Confucius River home, and several times wanted to move to the city, but finally failed to do so because the house was flat and narrow. The wife has said many times that the wooden box is useless at home, and it occupies the place, so it is better to throw it away. But I was always reluctant to do so. Although it is not collectible, in my mind, it has an unusual experience and significance. Thirteen years after my father's death, every time I saw the old wooden box, from which the smell of old wood mixed with the smell of old paper, I seemed to smell the smell of tobacco on my father's body; touching the rough box, I seemed to see my father's wrinkled face; when I opened the box, there were several yellowed old books lying inside it as if telling a long-sealed story - my growth story, the story of my father's insistence on principles and hard work, the story of my father's example of inheriting the family style...
I will treasure this old wooden box as an heirloom and use it to educate my children and grandchildren, so that no matter how much society progresses and how rich the material life is, the tradition of thrift and thrift cannot be lost; no matter when and where, no matter what work is done, people must do things without shame in their conscience.
March 25, 2022
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