glass
This is really one of the most common things, glass.
But as a child, not necessarily.
When I was a kid, it was the 1960s and 1970s. Although windows, mirrors, picture frames, and some furniture were inlaid with glass at that time, they were still scarce. Otherwise, if a classroom window glass is inadvertently broken while playing football in the school playground, the teacher will not force the students to go home and ask for money. Then, beat up the parents again.
This is true, and many boys have experienced it.
But today, I don't seem to be saying this.
The white house in front of the grain station is next to the train track, and when you cross the train track and go to Nanshan, there is a blister, which is said to be formed by the nearby residents who often dig earth to build houses there, and the groundwater seeps out over the long days. The soil can no longer be dug, but you can bring the ducks and geese in the house to swim and eat the small fish and shrimp in the water. The bubble edge has gradually become a garbage dump, and the old high is piled up in a broken place.
You guessed it. I was the boy who often came to the blisters to graze ducks and geese, and stopped by the garbage heap to look for treasures.
Slingshots, glass balls, rim rings, nails, matches, old books and periodicals, and even the golden portrait of Chairman Mao have all been picked up. But none of this impressed me. What excites me is that one day, I actually picked up a piece of glass that was 5mm thick. Although it is only the size of a book, it is a standard rectangle - this must be who cuts a large piece of glass, and the remaining small piece, such as the glass on the coffee table, usually uses this thick 5 rice hairs (well, about the thickness of the glass, we are willing to say a few rice hairs, not a few millimeters). This thick glass, surrounded by dark green, glows with a jewel-like luster in the sun.
Taking the glass home, I immediately pulled out the long-cherished diary, which contained a colorful photo of Premier Zhou Enlai, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, and a slightly smiling face, which made people feel extremely kind. This photo is slightly smaller than the glass pane, so it was cut. Using cardboard and glass from a box of fruit (pastries), sandwiching the prime minister's photograph in the middle, I went to the barn to find a wire, bent it into a bracket with pliers, and placed it in the most obvious position on the floor table.
This was in the spring of 1976, shortly after premier Zhou's death.
In my memory, I seem to have only picked up such a thick piece of glass, and more of it was the common thin glass of 3 rice hairs. Fragile, no dark green around. This kind of glass is usually left over from the cabinet doors or windows that are installed in the home. Usually it is not so regular, but they still have their uses, such as in front of the house and behind the house, we children often dig a few earth pits on the ground, put the caught insects, grasshoppers, centipedes, centipedes, earthworms, dragonflies, butterflies, etc., put them in the pits, and then cover them with glass to see how they struggle inside. Sometimes, kindness finds that it will also leave a gap in the corner of the glass and throw in some smaller bugs or grains of rice. With food, these troubled guys will forget the danger for a while, dance and dance, especially earthworms, and do their best to eliminate things. The most spectacular thing is that in several pits not far from each other, because there are tunnels dug, they will shuttle back and forth, as if living in a luxury villa, living a home.
But butterflies can't fly. The butterfly can only bend to perfection, allowing the beautiful wings to keep flapping.
Often at this time, the girls can't stand it, they will open the glass and release butterflies. Even other small animals are released, and the picked flowers are placed in the pit, which is called the flower cellar.
As mentioned above, it should be regarded as a childhood fun.
And the long, I further discovered the magic of glass.
At that time, in the mining town, some offices were very popular to hang portraits of Chairman Mao, some of which were tin and some of which were wooden, but more of which were paper prints. If the rooms were large enough, such as workers' clubs, canteens, shops, conference rooms, hanging a set of five large-scale colorful portraits of Maon Les Mao, not only wooden frames, but also inlaid glass, in order to demonstrate solemnity, solemnity and longevity. There was such a set of great figures hanging in my father's class. At that time, there was also a portrait of Chairman Mao on the front wall of the residents' homes, and after Chairman Mao's death, a portrait of Chairman Hua was posted next to him. Once my father was on duty, I went to his unit to bring him food. Before leaving, my father said you should take these two picture frames home! As soon as I looked, there were two empty picture frames, as big as the ones hanging from the walls of his class. Father said that these were the two of them left, and asked me to go home and take off the portraits of Chairman Mao and Chairman Hua on the wall and put them in a picture frame. It was a pleasant surprise to me – it was two big pieces of glass! Despite 3 mihair's.
In 1976, Chairman Mao died, and the intellectual youth who went to the countryside began to return to the city, and the second brother was one of them. Unable to find a job, he went to the school carpentry room to learn the art, and for a long time, he finally became a carpenter who could not only make desks and benches, but also learned to beat furniture and pull glass. In the pocket of the overalls, there are always two things pinned: a pencil and a glass knife. Friends! Squeak a few times, snap a sound, no matter how big and thick the glass will become the window glass, cabinet door glass, coffee table glass of whose home, become a mirror, become a fish tank. As needed, sometimes it will pull out round, oval, very charming. The second brother not only replaced the missing corners and cracked door and window glass in our home in time before the cold winter came, but also gave the home a floor table, a kang table, a wardrobe, a quilt cabinet, a cabinet, etc., of course, some also had to be inlaid with glass. At this time, I had begun to learn to paint, and my second brother encouraged me to paint on the wooden planks and glass of the furniture he had hit. Without a single grasp of forming, I first typed a draft on the paper, and finally pressed the glass on it to trace. Several times down, flowers, birds, fish and insects, Meilan bamboo chrysanthemums, sun and moon mountains and rivers, even have a look like lifelike. At that time, there was a kind of frosted glass, half light and half dark, which was used to paint fish and aquatic grasses, and there was no need to paint water anymore.
The second brother said that frosted glass is expensive and not easy to buy. However, there is a way: using frosted stone or stainless steel sand dipped in water to polish, it will darken the light glass, become rough, and become gray. But time-consuming.
Mr. Lu Xun said that where there is a genius, I use the kung fu of drinking coffee in my work. We don't work, we grind glass. The kung fu pays off, and the polished glass not only has a hazy beauty, but also falls on the pen astringent and not slippery, such as meeting good rice paper. A few years later, the second brother said that once I squeezed the oil paint, because I did not use it for a long time, the nozzle had been blocked, and I thought that the oil would come out. As a result, yi yi leaned out and got a hand. He also said that I should not throw away the painting, I should stick to it.
The second brother said that he threw it away, but I didn't paint later, which is a pity.
table lamp
More than ten square meters of old houses, a fire to take up half of the position. The roof is cramped, except for a pair of wooden boxes against the wall, naturally there is not much white space. The second brother took a tape measure in his hand, measured left and right, and finally said: Well, I can put it down.
The second brother is a carpenter, and the furniture in the old house, except for the ash willow kang cabinet, which was made by his master, the rest are from his hand. At that time, the second brother worked in the school's carpentry workshop. I went to school with my third brother and younger brother. We often begged him to give him a writing desk so that he could save his homework from writing on the edge of the kang. The second brother said that there was no writing desk in this place! Squeezing a table is not even close.
Is the floor table a writing desk?
If you can write on it, it is a writing desk.
Half a month later, the second brother pushed back a floor table with a car - it really can't be called a writing desk, because it only has two drawers and two opening doors, unlike the wide atmosphere of the neighbor's little fat house. Of course, it was the desk of The Little Fat's father, who was the principal. The second brother hit this, although a little ashamed of the shape, the color is not the usual rosewood, but brushed with bright oil of burnt yellow, elm pattern are in one direction, but placed in my house is really good.
The second brother said that the two pieces of glass on the cabinet door had to be painted with something.
This task, of course, was entrusted to me. Taishan sunrise, Guilin smoke and rain, it is not too difficult to paint.
With a floor table, writing homework and reading books, you no longer have to lie on the edge of the kang or on the kang table (dining table). Entertaining guests, tea and pouring water also have a place to stay. The four treasures of my study room are placed at the end of the table with a straight face, and I can't write big characters or draw big paintings, but they are still very wide than the previous Kang table.
One day, the third brother said: If only there were another lamp.
That's expensive, right? I say.
It's okay, let's do it ourselves. Out of nowhere, the third brother found a plexiglass plate (not thick, 3 rice hairs), measured and drew on it with a ruler and pencil, and then used a saw blade to pull out two identical diamond-shaped plates along the line, four long plates, sanded their periphery smooth with sandpaper, and then drilled a small hole in the diamond plate. The third brother said, you can draw, just draw something on the four long strips, it is best to use a knife to carve out, white drawing that kind, and finally fill in color - or draw three! The letter on the front. What to carve? Of course, it is Premier Zhou's famous quote: read for the rise of China!
So, Meilan Zhuju, I chose the first three, multi-colored. The word is double hooked, pure red. It's all anti-drawing and counter-writing. In this way, four long strips of plates form a column, and two diamond-shaped plates sandwich a piece of floral colored paper in the middle, making a base, the four corners under the seat, and four green plastic checkers on the mat. In the end, they were all glued together tightly with 502 glue — the skeleton of a table lamp was finished, and all that was left was the bulb, the lamp head, the light line, and the lampshade. The latter, the third brother has long been made of a thin white plastic and fine iron wire, the former is more than every one of our mining families can find, just connect them together, the thin light line through the hole in the diamond chassis.
Read for the rise of China. How can you do without a table lamp! We are not happy.
Now that I think about it, I may not have read many books at that time. After all, there are only a few books to read.
As the son of a miner, in that era, living in a remote town, in addition to going to school, more time was spent helping his parents work and making a living. Collecting firewood, cutting pigs and grass, herding ducks, serving vegetable gardens, feeding chickens and geese, quite a sense of life and endless struggle. Dinner, always wait until dark. Reading books and writing homework are even last.
I was not a good student, but I was deeply fascinated by painting and calligraphy, and I was influenced by my third brother and also loved literature. The town is remote, there is no professional teacher to teach, you can only teach yourself, fortunately, at that time, the third brother has graduated from middle school to work in the field, and whenever he comes back, he will bring me some books and periodicals. When night falls and my parents, who have been tired for a day, go to sleep, I can walk into my own side of the world: turn on the lamp, read a book, write a diary, paste and cut newspapers, copy famous sayings and aphorisms, and copy calligraphy and paintings. At that time, there was no picture clip, let alone an easel, the second brother put together a square wooden board for me, when drawing sketches, I carried the wooden board on the edge of the table, there was no Venus David plaster statue, I put melons and pears on the table, practicing still life sketching. I have also copied the "Mustard Garden Painting Notation" and "Xu Beihong Sketch", and the most impressive thing is a foreign body sketch book, which contains many nude paintings of men and women. Such books are put into the bottom of the drawer during the day, and can only be taken out to read in the dead of night.
Such a night, there is some mystery. The lamp with its orange aperture became more and more precious.
There are no girls in our family, five brothers and one light rod commanders. In my memory, I have painted my second brother, third brother and younger brother, as well as my father and mother, but they are all sketches, and in the buzzwords of the time, they are scenes of the lives of working people. I may have also painted xiao fat sister Xiaoli, but it is not a sketch of the scene, but a 3-inch photo of her, with big eyes and thick and long braids. After the painting, not only Xiao Chu Xiaoli said like, the neighbors were also full of praise. Now that I think about it, whether it was a sketch or a sketch at that time, it must have been immature, let alone any technique. Drawing like it seems to be the only criterion.
But there was one painting that I never forgot.
Together with his father, he came from his hometown of Haicheng to work in the Shujigou Mine, about a dozen of them, and the closest of them may be Uncle Yang. However, Uncle Yang's family was not located in the town, but tens of kilometers away from the north three hometowns (then called communes). Sometimes after work, I can't catch the car to go home, and Uncle Yang will stay at my house temporarily for one night. Every New Year's Festival, Aunt Yang will also bring her children to visit my house, of course, we will also go to his house.
One year during the summer vacation, Aunt Yang's girl Xiaoli (actually called Xiaoli) came to my house with Aunt Yang, she was the same age as my third brother, 4 years older than me, I should call her sister. I work for the family during the day, and at night I still turn on the lamp and paint. Xiaoli sat next to me and watched. When the time was late, Aunt Yang asked her to go to Kang to sleep. Kang, she went up, but still refused to sleep, but lay on the pillow and continued to look at me. In fact, the lights in the room were turned off, and only the lamp on the floor emitted a faint light. Where can she see my paintings? When the adults snored, she quietly went down to the ground and whispered: Little brother, you paint me! I said, then you have to give me a picture. She said that without taking pictures, she would draw real people. I said no, photo.
She stubbornly did not go. I said, if you don't go, you won't draw pictures.
All right! Bring it to you next time. After saying that, a shadow flashed into the bed. My heart, a stone, also fell to the ground.
As you know, Xiaoli never came again, and I didn't go to her house. Also didn't see her picture.
About the Author:
Cheng Yuan, writer, cultural tourism planner, ink lover. Literary works are scattered in dozens of newspapers and periodicals across the country, such as Shanxi Literature, Fujian Literature, Northern Literature, Yalu River, Novel Forest, Grassland, West Lake, Contemporary Chinese Ecological Literature Reader, Southern People Weekly, China Culture Daily, Liberation Daily, etc., and some works have been serialized in newspapers, columns, and annual selections or awards. Author of the non-fiction text "The Pearl of the Bottom". The collection of essays and essays "Alive, Walking and Thinking" won the first Most Beautiful Book Award in Liaoning Province in 2016. He currently lives in Shenyang.