In the morning, I saw a man on Dongfanghong Avenue holding a pole in his hand collecting locust rice, and I couldn't help but stop and look up at the national locust tree. "Oh, this year's national locust tree is full of locust rice, a cluster, a spike, tender yellow and yellow, big and many, hanging branches", I looked under the tree, the man's plucked a grunt locust rice has been picked up by the same person on the tricycle. Looking at the locust rice hanging from the trees next to the street evokes my memories of the past and the funny story of my childhood when I picked locust rice.
When I was a child, there were black locust trees planted next to the old wall of the village, the doorway or yard where the farmers lived in the street, and there were seven or eight hundred people in our village, and the novel had to plant fifty or sixty black locust trees, and in the summer, the locust trees had deep roots and thick leaves, and the rainy days could be separated by two fingers of rain, and people could rely on it for shade on sunny days to cool off under the trees. When summer comes, a lot of locust rice is produced on the trees. Locust rice is different from yellow locust flower, it can not be eaten, bitter taste, it has "clear liver diarrhea fire cool blood hemostasis effect, can treat constipation, anti-stroke lower blood pressure, fire detoxification, by doctors called "cool blood medicine". In the summer, when the locust rice does not bloom, the shape is like a grain of rice, the tender and delicate body is slowly bulging up, one after another, the flower fragrance is light, with the wind, sending a strand of floral fragrance for the people in the hot summer, sending a comfortable refreshing. From the first small flower on the flower spike, we all care about it, on the way to school, we have to look up a few times, it is time to pick locust rice, we choose a good weather, after school we take the long pole and bag tied with the sickle, go with our partners to pick locust rice, when I was a child, I liked to "co-produce" with my partner to pick locust rice. When he went to the black locust tree, the same student was clean and fast, and he was a clever ghost, and he climbed the tree. He wrapped his arms around the trunk of the tree, stomped on his legs, and slipped like a monkey, and in the blink of an eye, he climbed onto the branches of the big tree, sat on it and gasped, so he asked me to give him the long pole that was enough for the locust rice, and he picked up the locust rice one by one on the top, and I picked up the locust rice one by one and put it into the bag below. It was too dangerous to go up the tree, the wind blew, the branches shook wildly, and I shouted below, telling him to be careful and pay attention to safety. I remember once, he was busy picking locust rice in the tree, I don't know what happened, hooked a horse honeycomb, provoked a group of horse bees to fly wildly, he hid in the tree for a long time did not dare to move, or was stung by the horse bee, he put the pole down, and rushed down from the tree bald, I helped him squeeze, the poisonous water was not squeezed, the swelling got a big pimple, and it took a few days to go down.
Picking locust rice, we took home, my mother made a good day, helped us dry on the sorghum straw mat, after the sun exposure, locust rice from the tender green to milk yellow, this is dried, in order to sell their own selling can sell the price of high, we do not sell to the streets and alleys of small merchants and drug dealers, together on Sunday we both carry the fruits of their labor "locust rice", go to the supply and marketing cooperatives four miles away from home to sell. The staff of the supply and marketing cooperative's acquisition station saw that the two of them came from afar, and the locust rice was dried and clean, and gave us the highest price, three cents and two cents per kilogram, and we sold four yuan for seven cents and two cents this time. At that time, so much money was shared between us, which was enough for us to buy school supplies to use for more than half a year, and with the money we got, we were the happiest and most self-sufficient. We picked locust rice, underwent the exercise of labor, tasted the fragrance brought by locust rice, and our faces were full of smiles and our hearts were full of happiness.
The years passed, and in the blink of an eye, decades passed, locust rice bloomed every year, and people picked it every year. The time of childhood is no longer coming. Picking locust rice has become a good memory of my childhood, looking at the locust rice on the tree, thinking about the interesting things of childhood, feeling that one by one came out of nowhere, and slowly came to me from my mind.
Yang Junchang of Peony District, Heze, Shandong Province, wrote in Yuecheng International
