Wine jugs
Ancestral good wine. My father's blue and white porcelain wine jug was left by my great-grandfather.
The white porcelain on the inner wall of the wine pot has tiny convex particles, which should be wine scales, but on the outer wall, the cyan lines are clearly visible, thin cyan flowers, cascading, sparse leaves, green, bright, and more luxuriant. But my father had little heart to look at the patterns on the jug, and he poured wine into the jug day after day, year after year, and on days when the guests came, he had to pour it several times a day, until the guests had left the banquet with their feet.
My father was very hospitable, and even the craftsmen such as pot tinkerers, pig cutters, and tile pickers who went to the village and villages, my father had to be kept as honored guests, and he would cook a few home-cooked dishes, scoop up the wine jugs, and sit around the Eight Immortals table in the guest hall of the old house, and drink happily with them. We often sneak up on the banquet when our father and the guests are drunk. In that mess of cups and plates, we can still find some remnants of wine, either in the bowl or in the jug. Of course, we are not interested in the residual wine in the wine bowl.
Gently, he lifted the lid of the flask, and saw his own face reflected in the jug, and concluded that there must be wine in the jug. So, he carefully lifted the butt of the jug and poured the wine into the bowl, and sure enough, the pale yellow wine juice was poured out half of the bowl. We began to guess that it was drinking, or "tiger stick chicken", or "fifteen or twenty", and agreed that the drinking law was to drink with the middle finger, and it was not allowed to cheat. Afraid of being scolded by our father, the sound of our wine order is as low as a cicada. My age is thirty years since this time.
On weekdays, the most housework we do is probably the matter of filling my father with a blue and white porcelain wine jug. Insert a thin and soft plastic tube into the vat, suck the other end violently with your mouth, and when you notice that wine is flowing into your mouth, you will immediately put this section of the hose into the flask. That's the job of pouring wine. After beating his mother's death, his father became more and more fond of drinking. Even in the field where you work, from a distance, you can find the blue and white porcelain wine jug, lying upside down at the end of the ridge. More often than not, my father tied a rope to the flask, and when he went up the mountain to do farm work, he hung it on his buttocks. When he was tired and thirsty, he took it and smacked it carefully. The neighbor's sister and grandmother couldn't see her father drinking the most, and whenever she encountered a wine jug hanging from her father's buttocks, she would laugh coldly at her father and make a few nasal sounds. The father was more interesting, and said to the younger sister and grandmother: Manniang, don't you want to take a sip. "I don't drink the horse urine in your urinal", the little sister and grandmother replied to her father with squinted eyes every time.
My father liked to put the jug next to the incense on the shrine and use a bright red chili stick to plug the spout to prevent the wine from going too out. Some of the people in the village who liked to drink came to visit their father under the pretext of visiting him, and when they saw that there was no one in the house, they took down the jug from the shrine and stole a few mouthfuls. If you drink a lot of wine, you have to drink half a pot of good wine from your father at one time. When he returned to the house, his father noticed that the jug had become lighter, so he said, "When I went out of the house, the blue flowers on the lid of the jug were facing the sun, but now, they are facing west." My father guessed that someone had moved his flask and drank it. One day in the middle of the night, my father heard snoring in the grass behind the old house, so he crept up to see what was going on. It turned out that it was the son-in-law of the younger sister's grandmother, Lao Loach, who stole half a pot of wine from his father, and walked the road 200 meters away from the old house. No, in the arms of the old loach, he was still holding his father's wine jug tightly. My father kicked the old loach gently, and when he saw that he was immediately curled up in a ball and not dead, he was relieved to carry him back to the house, and scolded loudly on the way: Loach ghost, it's okay to drink, but you can't take away my pot. At this time, the moonlight was bright, and my father carried the old loach on his back, laughing as he walked. I don't know if it was my father's laughter or scolding that woke me up from my dream.
Many years later, I saw the blue and white porcelain wine jug under my father's bed, thick dust particles covering the petals on the wall of the pot, and the chili stick in the spout, which turned into powder when gently pinched. I'm thinking that this wine bottle is probably my father's best friend when he was alive. When his father was depressed, it was it that accompanied him, and when his father was happy, it was also that accompanied him, it was not just an old object left by his ancestors, it was his father's best friend.
Domestic dogs
The corner at the far right of the old house was originally a pile of dry straw, and an old blanket was spread on the grass, and when you looked up from the dirt road on the threshold of the wooden building, you could see a dog with oily coat on the blanket, with a pair of big black eyes, staring at you from afar.
If you come to this old house for the first time, you will definitely be greeted by a wild bark of this dog. The dog is afraid of the person who does not recognize it, lest it harbor malice towards it. The father opened the wooden door and walked out of the back room, no matter how the dog barked, but only talked warmly and greeted the visitors. At this time, the dog knew that it was boring, so he stopped, wagged his tail, licked the customer's trouser legs, and followed him into the house. The next time I come to the house, the dog will come all the way to pick up the customer.
It takes three months for a puppy to be considered a full moon dog. The dog was given by a relative on the day of the full moon. Adults say, "Cats come to be poor, dogs come to be rich." My father was also looking forward to the days of wealth coming soon. The dog came, and our family rejoiced. The dog is also well-behaved, he follows his father all day long, going uphill together, going down the field together, going out together, and returning late together. When the dog is five months old, it can go uphill and chase the wild animals in the mountains and forests on its own. Hares, wild cats, pheasants, wild sheep, and even wild boars, it has been driven out quite a lot. On the opposite side of the old house, there are often wild animals infested, and my father planted a few buds there, but before the seeds could sprout, he gave these wild animals a fine meal, although there was a rare harvest. Since the fierce battles between dogs and wild animals, the bud valley has been produced year by year. That year, his father, who planted bud valley in Yangling Realm, was injured by a wild boar, and a bloody mouth was broken from his neck to the back of his back. Afterwards, my father said that if he didn't have a dog, he wouldn't have died.
My father loved dogs, and he would always give the dogs more than half of the game they took out of the mountains and forests. None of us were at home, working, working, going to school, going to school, plus my mother went early, the old house was empty, and my father and dog were left there. When there was no companion to speak, the father spoke to the dog. In the past, if the next-door neighbor had a red and white wedding or something, in addition to calling his father to write couplets, he also had to ask his father to sing drinking songs and play suona. Over the years, many of the old customs in the village have disappeared or been simplified, but my father still likes to sing mountain songs and drinking songs, and likes to play suona. At home alone, my father sang mountain songs and suona to the dogs.
In those years, I was in college out of town, and when I came home every year during the holidays, the dog still remembered me. While my father and I were making a meal, the dog would curl up under our trouser legs, squinting sweetly and listening to our laughter. At night, we have to close the door to rest, and the dog is always reluctant, and it grabs at our door, hoping that we will open the door. After a long time no one opened the door, he left, and ran to the old blanket on the dry straw heap to keep vigil.
At the slightest movement in the night, the dog always got up to find out, barked wildly, and when the water came to light, he felt that nothing had happened, and then ran back to his pen and lay quietly. The father went out and went to Xiangxi, which is adjacent to the village, to sing drinking songs or play suona for others, and the dog also followed. The father went to the house of relatives in other places, and the dog also had to follow. But as soon as the sun went down and the night was getting thicker, the dog knew how to go home and guard the house. The next day, he got up again to pick up his father. The father said that the dog was his personal bodyguard.
The son is not ugly, and the dog is not poor. How I love this quote. Many times, I always think that a dog, who can be so loyal to my father, for many years, has not disliked the poverty of my family. Guarding the house, watching the house, chasing prey, talking to my father, and quietly listening to my father's songs and suona...... It has many obligations that I should have shouldered.
Plough Cattle
Once the ox is put on the farm tool by the father, the cow no longer lives in the cattle world.
The ox always walks ahead of the father. Early in the morning, my father got up, ran to the mouth of the cattle pen, and removed the latches one by one, and he was going to put the morning cows. But at this time, the cow was still lying in the haystack laid by his father the night before, and he was reluctant to get up. The father gently patted the cow with the palm of his hand. The ox crawled and rose to its knees reverently.
The cows came to our house in the winter of the previous year. My father always said that it would be impossible to plant so much land, such a wide field of seedlings, without cattle. But the family was poor, and the cattle were bought on credit.
The father bought the cattle for a clear purpose: to plough the fields and sell the calves. In a word, we use cattle to feed our whole family. Cattle began to understand farming, were disobedient, had a short temper, and often went their own way. My father, who had a wealth of experience in raising cattle, cut a long bamboo pole, put it on the nose of the ox, and then tied the calf to a false plough or a false rake, and it only took three mornings to teach the ox to be obedient and obedient, and if it was to the left, it would never go to the right. At this point, a cow, it can never return to the cow world.
After the rice was harvested, the cattle had to go down again. It already understood its father's thoughts, and together with his father, he strode in great strides, and when he walked into the entrance of the rice field, the cow obediently stopped. So the father put on a farm tool for it, and sometimes secretly said something to it, but the ox pretended not to understand, shook his ears vigorously, and quietly mustered up the strength before going down to the field. But my father, shouting and scolding, told the oxen to be faster, faster, and to finish the work that could never be done sooner.
The oxen were pulling the plough in the dry paddy field, and the sound of the plough came from the depths of the earth, and the oxen obviously felt that it was too much effort, and that if it was necessary to finish the work in the morning, the father would be a little harsh on the oxen. The oxen began to gasp heavily, bluff-I was hiding in the chestnut tree at the top of the wild ridge, and while the ox was plowing the field, I went to steal the sweet wild chestnut. Looking through the pale yellow chestnut leaves, through the light branches that hung with chestnut fruits, I spotted the cow. Its rough cry lingered in the valley, but its father's shouting was noticeably louder than the cattle's panting. Apostrophe-hey-apostrophe-hey. Finally, I heard a "click", and the cow stopped, and so did my father. Beneath the lips of the cow was a smear of dry yellow grass, rotten and lying. The cow stretched out its purple-red tongue, and with a light roll, the grass was swept to the cow's mouth. The cow chewed on the grass over and over again, as if it would never be able to finish it. Sometimes, the cow has to kneel down and poke its head out and pluck it diligently, just for a grass.
The next year, my baby cow was born smoothly. It was the cow's firstborn cub, and the father was so happy that he gave the cow three months of maternity leave. When the baby cow was about one year old, he had a serious illness and was paralyzed in the pen and couldn't get up. The cow licked the baby cow's body again and again with tears and lips. Before the baby cow was three years old, he was sold by his father to the neighboring Xiangxi. For a long time after that, the cow was listless, and it would always stand silently, looking at Xiangxi infatuatedly, and crying out in pain from time to time. The cow must be missing the cow.
Many times, when I think of the cow and its painful and unyielding appearance, I can't stop for a moment. The food I eat condenses the sweat of the cow, and the tuition fee for more than ten years of my study is condensed with the hard work of my parents and the hard work of the cow. No matter where I go, when I meet a cow, it's like meeting my own food and clothing.
Chinese New Year
On Chinese New Year's Eve, before dawn, my father got up, took the sickle from the rusty old plowshare under the tiled verandah of the old house, and groped his way out of the house. In my sleep, I heard my father walking through the window: "Thirty Ya (night), sweeping Cannes (garbage)." ”
For hundreds of years, the village has had the tradition of cleaning on Chinese New Year's Eve, and my father was particularly concerned about it. In front of the corridor and behind the house, under the beams in the hall, they must be cleaned clean to rest assured. Early on, my father prepared cleaning tools for each of us, and bought each of us new clothes for the New Year, new schoolbags for school after the beginning of spring, and artillery for the New Year. It is still early before the Spring Festival, but we have already smelled the joy of the New Year from our father.
During the Chinese New Year, the Spring Festival couplets are definitely to be written. My father, who only read to the fifth grade of primary school, wrote well, and many of the Spring Festival couplets in the village were written by my father. When my father went to help others write Spring Festival couplets, he always called me to be a helper. Grinding ink, cutting paper, supporting paper, pulling paper, folding, drying, and pasting, these tasks are all done by me. When my father wrote the Spring Festival couplets, no one was allowed to make a sound, but he could only hear the faint sound of flames in the charcoal basin under the table of the Eight Immortals. I stood directly opposite my father, holding up the two corners of one end of the couplets with both hands, and stood steadily, holding my breath, not daring to move around at will, nor daring to speak at will. When my father dipped the ink with a soft brush soaked in hot boiling water, and with a slight wave, he finished writing the first word and made a gesture for me to pull the paper back, so that I dared to move my body back slightly, and at the same time pull the red paper supported by my hands back slightly. "Stop!" My father stopped me suddenly, and he continued to dip his ink and write down a word.
Sticking is the job I am most afraid of, firstly, because I have had a very poor sense of direction since I was a child, and secondly, because I don't particularly like the sticky feeling of sticky glue. Holding a brown leather brush, the father made the porridge cooked earlier on the doorpost of the old year, and then carried the dried couplets and stood on the wooden bench to paste the spring couplets. In the open space two meters away from the doorpost, I shouted to my father, who was pasting the couplet, "It seems to be a little more pasted, it seems to be a little to the right...... which made my father in a dilemma."
My father is very fond of artillery battles, even if the year is bad, this is one of the indispensable New Year's goods. Seeing that the end of the year was approaching, the children of the village went from house to house to pay respects to their early years. Of course, the best gift for adults is the artillery battle. Before the night deepened, I saw a light suddenly rise in the sky above the village, and a "swish" sound passed through the treetops, and a dazzling fireworks burst into bloom in the gradually darkening night. At this time, my father was sitting under the sandalwood tree outside the threshold of the old house and said with a smile: "I bought that cannonball, and it is a good product." ”
On Chinese New Year's Eve, the mountain road that enters and exits the house becomes my father's main place of labor. The mountain road is covered with yellow bamboo leaves, withered weeds lie on the roadside, broken bluestone slabs lay across the roadside, and some weed seedlings pulled branches and leaves from the dung on the roadside. It seems that there is chaos along the way, and only this year can I take the time to clean it up. In April 2007, my father passed away, a pain that I will never forget. However, I hadn't been back to the village for the Chinese New Year for many years, and I knew that the trail must be getting more and more unmanageable.