Starting today, write a life story novel to record the life of my fourth brother, adapted from a true story! A true record of the post-70s generation!
The reason why I wrote this novel is because my fourth brother just passed away on the 18th day of the second lunar month of this year, at the age of only 48 years old, and he left this world in a hurry with countless regrets......
My fourth brother is the fourth in the family, there are six people in my family, my parents and our brothers are 4, and there are no sisters in the family!
My family is an authentic rural family, and in the past it was called a poor peasant family, the family is very difficult, it can be said that the basic food and clothing problems are difficult to solve!
Now I think back that our four brothers were able to grow up, thanks to the reform and opening up, and thanks to catching up with the good times, but they did not protect their bodies, so my fourth brother died of illness!
I wrote this story to commemorate my fourth brother, to describe the life and social changes from the 70s to the present, and to hope that more people should pay attention to health while paying attention to food and clothing!
My fourth brother was born on the ninth day of the lunar winter month in 1976, which was a year of national mourning. Because several great people died in that year, it can be said that the mainland has undergone earth-shaking changes, and the political scene has been a turbulent year!
On the night of the ninth day of the winter month of 1976, in the delivery room of the county hospital, a baby boy fell to the ground, and that was my fourth brother!
A rural family with a fourth boy can be said to be very poor. Especially in a rural family, it is not easy to feed four boys, and basically all of them are deficient in nutrition.
After my fourth brother was taken home, my grandmother should have been very happy, because at that time, patriarchy was preferred, but if there are more boys in one family, they will not be taken seriously.
In particular, my grandmother also gave birth to three sons, but did not give birth to daughters, so she hated boys very much, and even did not look at my fourth brother when he got home.
My grandmother knew that my mother had given birth to another boy, so she called my father over to discuss:
"I already have three sons in the family, and I can't afford to raise another son, so it's better to give them away, right?"
My father listened to my grandmother very much, and she was usually in charge of everything in the family. Maybe it's the ancient concept of family education, and the daughter-in-law who has been boiling into a mother-in-law for many years.
When the father and grandmother told the weak mother about their decision, looking at the children around them, they silently shed tears:
"My son, life is hard, I haven't caught up with the good times."
In the days that followed, I didn't name my brother, and my grandmother always asked who wanted a boy.
However, in those days, every family had enough children, and there were relatively few families with children. Especially in rural areas, every family has three or four children, and most have seven or eight children.
Especially in the 76 years, winter came earlier, many people would spend the winter at home, and few people visited the house.
After all, this is a life, and the child is very healthy, and in the end, the father and mother discussed that the child would be kept and not given away.
Although life was relatively poor at that time, every meal was eaten with dried sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes, and it was difficult to eat an egg or a piece of tofu, let alone meat.
In a blink of an eye, it was the age of the fourth brother to go to school, and at that time it was necessary to give a name to go to school.
Neither his parents nor his grandmother went to school, so he didn't know how to name him, so the teacher gave him a name, and because of his name, he named Ling Weiguo (pseudonym)!
The younger brother may be the material for learning, he is talented and intelligent, and he knows how to learn in the first grade. Maybe I knew that my family was difficult since I was a child, so I studied seriously, and I was the first in every school exam.
At that time, the tuition fee for the first grade required one dollar, but the family could not come up with this dollar, after all, the only labor force in the family was my father.
Because my mother's health is not good, and my grandmother is already old, my father can only earn his share of work, do farm work in the production team, and earn food and money to support the family.
However, because the family is relatively poor, they can't get any money every year, and they borrow money from the production team every year, mainly to buy some salt and soy sauce that are necessary for life, as well as the tuition fees of the four brothers.
At that time, the mother raised a few old hens at home, and the eggs should have been supplemented with nutrition for the four children, but the mother saved the eggs and sold them at the rural market, and an egg was only 5 cents cheap, and it was sold for a dime when it was expensive.
The mother used the money in exchange to buy tofu, and only bought five or six cents of tofu each time, because she had no money in her hand, she could only buy this for the child to eat and supplement nutrition!
The neighbors around us saw our four brothers screaming with hunger, and sometimes they would take a little delicious relief at home, after all, our family was too poor.
The child's childhood was happy, although he was worried about food and clothing at that time, but he was carefree. Because at that time, there was no comparison mentality at all, and the rural children were all the same, wearing patched clothes and eating the same porridge made of sweet potatoes and vegetables.
Of course, the children at that time all wanted to grow up, because there were many children in the family, so there was a saying that "the children of the poor are in charge of the family early", and they all wanted to make money to support their families when they grew up.
When I was in elementary school, the school was in the village. Sometimes when I was hungry during recess, I would sneak home, and then climb the wall to get a piece of black sweet potato pancake to eat.
For those days, there were so many children in the family that there was almost nothing to eat at home. But once the spring is over, it is comfortable, because there are wild fruits in the field, you can pick some of them and eat them, and in the autumn you can go to the field to steal some sweet potatoes or peanuts to eat.
At that time, studying was not important, so when I came home from school, I needed to dig wild vegetables in the field, on the one hand, to cook some food to satisfy my hunger. On the other hand, I also dug some to feed the pigs, because at that time, every family raised a pig, just to sell it for the New Year, in order to pay off the debt for the New Year.
There is more labor in the rural family, that is, the problem of food and clothing can be solved, and the pigs fed are killed and eaten for the New Year, so part of the meat is sold, and the other part is eaten by himself, so he will have a very good life next year, and the people call it the Fat Year.
At that time, when digging wild vegetables, my parents often asked that I put the feces in the wild vegetables when I saw someone pulling in the field. The reason is that the poop can be fed to the pigs at home after they are taken home, which can make the pigs grow faster.
Even though it's dirty and disgusting, it's still going to be done. Because I knew in my heart that only in this way the pig would grow faster, of course, I didn't understand it at that time, but I just listened to the words of the parents and thought that it was right to do that.
In fact, looking back on the past days, although I lived poorly, my happiness was sufficient, and I was not as under as much economic pressure as I am now. Looking back, it feels ridiculous, but there was no way around it at the time.
Now I think back to how happy I was when I was young, but when I was young, I always wanted to grow up quickly. When I grow up, I feel that there is a lot of pressure, a lot of responsibility, and there is no happiness, especially now that there is no happiness at all.
As a person born in the 70s, in the early stage of reform and opening up, the responsibility is also very great.
At that time, the fourth brother was the youngest in the family, and no one knew his big name, just called him: Four! That's the number in the ranking.
As the youngest in the family, of course, he is also deeply loved by his parents. After all, there is a saying in the countryside that "the grandmother of the world loves children", so you can eat more delicious food at home, such as occasionally eating an egg!
Because the younger brother is talented and smart, and with the three elder brothers going to school together, they also went to school a little earlier. After all, the fourth brother is usually taken care of by the third elder brother, because his parents have to work in the field.
So the three elder brothers went to school, and the fourth brother followed to play in the school, and the teacher let him stay in the classroom in order to make him more honest, and didn't let him run around.
At that time, the teachers were all from rural areas, and they also had junior high school or high school education, and most of them were students from their own villages, and they graduated and substituted in the village schools.
In rural schools, only the principal is sent from above, and the other teachers are substitute teachers from villagers who have gone to school in the past, and their monthly salary is only 5 yuan. Later, these people were called private teachers, and later they were converted to public teachers.
So the age of the fourth brother is 5 years old, so he may have a talent for learning since he was a child, right? After going to school, my academic performance has always been at the top of my class, or I have been at the top of my class in every exam.
After graduating from elementary school, the fourth brother was admitted to the town's middle school with the first grade. After middle school, he paid more attention to his studies.
When the fourth brother was in junior high school, he was only 11 years old at that time, so he could be said to be the youngest student in the class.
Since all four of our brothers go to school, the key is that they are about the same age before and after birth, and the oldest is three years old.
The fourth brother is very sensible after going to junior high school, because there is no good food at home, and the key is that he needs to live in school to go to school.
The fourth brother went home every Friday afternoon and went back to school on Sunday afternoon, which meant that every week he had to go home to get pancakes and pickles. That's the staple of the week.
At that time, food stamps were used, but we didn't have extra food stamps at home.
There is also a cafeteria in the school, but although the food in the canteen is very cheap, the fourth brother does not have a penny in his hand. So every time I just ate pancakes in the dorm room and then pickles, and there was no hot water.
There is hot water in the school cafeteria, but it costs two cents to make a pot of hot water, or a food stamp of one tael. But the fourth brother usually drinks cold tap water, or others give him some boiling water to drink.
The fourth brother was also growing up at that time, but he only brought 21 pancakes a week, the same pancakes at that time. It is also relatively thin and often hungry.
It is generally eaten one pancake in the morning, one and a half pancakes at noon, and one and a half pancakes in the evening. There is not much nutrition for sweet potato pancakes, and the young are in the time of growing their bodies, so they are often hungry.
Of course, after I went to junior high school, it was already 86 years, and it had been five or six years since the rural reform, and many rural families had already solved the problem of food and clothing.
However, as our family, we have not solved the problem of food and clothing, because the labor force in the family is relatively small, and the work is divided according to the population, but there is not so much money invested in the field.
At that time, the technology of mulching peanuts was implemented, but the mulch film still needed money, so it could not afford it, and it could not afford pesticides and fertilizers, which made the yield drop significantly.
What is more important is that the public grain must be paid twice a year, for example, the wheat public grain must be watered in the spring, which is paid according to the population. Hundreds of catties of wheat are threshed every year, but the good wheat needs to be carefully selected and sifted out, and then handed over to the grain management office. For the remaining bad wheat or shriveled wheat to be eaten by yourself, a part of it must be left for wheat seeds, so there is very little left.
In the autumn, it is necessary to pay the public grain, and at that time the peanuts and dried sweet potatoes will be watered. In the same way, after the payment of the public rations, there is relatively little food left, and it is only enough to solve the problem of basic rations, and it is more difficult to eat more.
Some families have a surplus of food, and they can use wheat and dried sweet potatoes to mix together to make pancakes. Such pancakes are not particularly black, but the nutritional value is relatively high, and the taste is not to mention.
In particular, some families produce more wheat, and people eat noodles and pancakes directly. Such pancakes were sand white, which was covetous at the time, not to mention that the taste was very good. In our family, we can only eat noodles and pancakes for a few days during the Chinese New Year, and the rest of the time we still focus on sweet potato pancakes.
I remember that my younger brother was growing up at that time, and I was also studying in the school next door, and he was so hungry that he had no choice but to climb the wall of the school directly, and then asked me for a few pancakes.
Of course, I don't bring many pancakes, so I save money every week and leave a few pancakes for my fourth brother. After all, as an elder brother, this is what should be done, because the family takes care of each other when the family is in difficulty.
The fourth brother is very hard working in school! While others slept, he studied under the street lamp. So the principal and teachers of the school at that time took him very seriously, and he was praised after every exam.
At that time, the most pitiful thing was not only the problem of eating. More important is dressing. After all, when I went to junior high school, the clothes worn by rich families were very good, and the families without money wore Baoding, and more importantly, they were all tattered clothes......
Next article:My fourth brother (2) - the first in the county to enter the top class of high school, but was stopped by his father......
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