In 1959, I was six years old, a little man, and I was going to do something for the family.
I carried the small cloth bag made by my mother on my back, went to pick up the coal core, the first time I picked up the coal core, the impression was very clear, in the hedong along the garbage dump not far from home, took a small two-tooth hook, kept pulling, and picked up a small bag of coal cores.
Speaking of which, picking up coal cores is also a technical job. First of all, we have to figure out which ones in the cinder are liu steel, which are burned gangue, which are real coal cores, poor me a six-year-old child, where can I tell these. Just by impression, everything that is black and black is picked up in the bag. After half a day of hard work to pick it up, my mother checked it, and most of it was burned gangue. Although the color is also quite dark, it can no longer provide energy. The small pile of so-called coal cores that my mother picked me up, pointed out which coal cores could be burned, which coal stones, and fortunately did not pick up the sulfur steel home. Practice makes the truth, and you know it after picking it up a few times. Sulfur steel is naturally grayish-white, and I knew this before. Gangue, although also blackened, is relatively heavy and can no longer provide energy. The coal core is relatively light, and the black color has thin holes.
Since then, picking up coal cores has become something I do almost every day.
As I grew older, I gradually picked up some broken copper and rotten iron in addition to picking up coal cores. Copper includes brass brass, iron pig iron wrought iron and steel, and sometimes aluminum, lead and tin can be picked up. What broken wood, rags, oil yarn, linoleum paper, etc. Anything that can be used in the homes of the poor, or that can be sold for money, is among those that can be picked up. When I was eight years old, I took my eldest sister to pick it up, and since then, my family has rarely bought coal and burned firewood, which our brothers and sisters have picked up. Later, the stones were smashed without picking up the rags, and the coal cores accumulated in my family burned for three years.
Picking up rags is not easy to do, and it often hurts. Hands and feet, in particular, are most likely to hurt.
Because you have to pick things by hand, the nail cap will have an inverted thorn, easy to infect, infected and no money to treat, the family does not even have a bottle of red potion or purple potion, once infected, it can only be purulent and then slowly heal itself. However, self-healing is not easy, suppuration will make the nail cover from the root purple hair black, and then slowly rot from the back to the front, until the entire nail cover becomes white will completely fall off. My mother said it was called a turning finger.
The most vulnerable injuries to the feet are the four foot membrane bones, where the skin is thin, and when you rub it, you will break it, and if you break it, you will be infected, and if you are infected, you will suppurate. My four poor foot membrane bones, I don't know how many times they have rotted. I can still see layers of scars in my ankle bone.
In the winter, it is better to say that in the summer, the legs are exposed and the arms are exposed, and the chance of infection is more. For a few years, every summer I would have a lot of sores on my legs. Criticized for this, the teacher said: You can't talk about hygiene. The teacher criticized me for not daring to say anything, but I was wronged! Is my poor kid who picks up rags qualified to be hygienic?
None of my ten fingernail caps are in their original form, and some have been replaced several times. I can't remember whether the toenails were original, and the two big toes must have been replaced many times.
Until now, I often lament that the regenerative ability of the human body itself is so powerful that my fingernails and toenails are still complete.
Once, my left ankle bone broke and infected, and a red envelope bulged, and then the ankle rotted like a child's mouth, and the flesh was turned over, but it could only be slowly recovered by itself. This infection is generally good after half a month. But this time, it refused to get better, and it has not improved for two months, probably a repeat infection! The mother was helpless, and I didn't know what her old man's mood was. Now that I think about it, the mother looks at her only son, dragging a wounded foot, holding a cloth bag on his back, and then going out the door to pick up the rags, that feeling cannot be described in pen and ink.
Maybe God pity me! On that day, the eldest sister picked up two dollars in the garbage in the ditch south of twenty-nine and gave it to her mother. My mother said to me, "Take this money and go to the hospital to see!" "It was a cold winter, I dragged my foot, and I walked alone to the Shibei District Hospital, three or four miles away from home, hung up the number, and the doctor used a scalpel to cut off the rotten flesh on the ankle. There was no anesthetic, so I used a knife to cut it, my hands clutched the chair, at that time I felt that the chair was about to be broken by me, but I didn't hum, a poor boy, always have to have a little dignity, right!
After the operation, wrapped in gauze, it feels much easier. Dragging my feet, I went back to the house, and the next day, I was supposed to do what I was supposed to do!
That year, I was ten years old.