The famine continued, and the hungry and cold people, in the long night, called for the dawn, but did not see the rooster announcing. The broken houses and huts are empty, the moonlight is like water, spilling on the curly bodies of men, women, and children, and the cold wind is like a knife, cutting on people's faces and hands. Bandits, who could not be defended, frequently robbed and robbed the villagers of what little food they had for their lives, and sprinkled salt foam on people's wounds. The officers and men who came to harass them from time to time could not collect money and grain, so they hung up and beat the chief of the armor and practiced sword techniques on the people! Poor old people, they have already dried their tears; the children with skin and bones are too hungry to cry out loud; the incense in the temple is swirling with incense, and the iron heart of the gods cannot be beaten! Ganlin does not fall, the four fields are red and yellow, the disaster is still continuing, and the broken temple is overcrowded!
In their later years, in the 1960s and 1970s, such a shortage economic era, they often recalled the tragic scene of "eighteen years of bread", and said to our brother countless times that their family was relatively well:"You are a happy generation, your father is a cadre outside, you have eaten enough, you are warmly dressed, you were born in a peaceful era, and you have not suffered from such a chaotic year!" We must cherish every grain of grain, we must not waste a single grain of firewood, waste is to suffer, and when people encounter famine, they are worse than ants! ”
When my brother and I asked curiously, "Why is there no watering in the field during the drought?", My grandfather smiled bitterly and said to the young and ignorant two of us: "In the years of the great famine, I and your grandfather (guanzhong people call great-grandfather), the fifth master, the sixth master (family ranking) father and son four people, in order not to starve to death, during the day in the field to dig wells, at night in the field watering, under the moonlight, a bucket of muddy water poured into the ground, suddenly, a white smoke came out of the ground, but the water disappeared." Your sixth grandfather was young at the time, hungry and tired, and he really couldn't stand such a white work, so he sat on the ground and cried, and I and your grandfather persuaded him not to get up..."
When my grandmother was alive, I told me that during these extremely difficult years, my grandfather, as a knowledgeable person, thought of many practical ways to make a living, and helped the poor, intermittently took in some relatives and friends who came to the south of the city to spend the year, and also laid the groundwork for a long period of discord between him and his great-grandfather and his two younger brothers. Grandpa used his own good strength, in the year of the great drought and famine, in addition to helping his great-grandfather cultivate the 40 acres of land of the big family in the southwest township, he also tried to dig a well alone in the 12 acres of land that lived alone in the south of the city, and pulled a two buckets of water to water the ground, in order to lay some grain in the field. There were too many people in the house, and the poor little grain was brought back from the field, and they did not dare to grind the noodles, and after smashing them into powder in the stone mortar, they locked them in the cabinet. The grandmother sprinkled a handful in the rice pot of each "meal" for the elderly and the little ones to relieve their hunger. Whenever the grandmother went to the "rice" pot where the bran was cooked, when she laid this handful of grain, the two young aunts and the children of several relatives, the hungry eyes, kept staring at the grandmother's hand, hoping that the handful of grain could be grabbed as much as possible!
In those extremely difficult years, every year during the harvest season of autumn vegetables, every day before dawn, my grandfather took my great aunt and second aunt who kept my heavenly feet to help a well-known family harvest turnips and cabbages in the beach where shallow wells could be drilled in the Weihe River beach. The father and daughter brought their own dry food, and did not want to pay, but only asked the rich man who was very good at living a good life, for some cabbage roots, cabbage gangs, and radish seedlings left in his family's field. Every day when it was dark, my grandfather pushed a cart with a trolley, two teenage aunts carried two baskets, and the father and daughter went home together. These cabbage roots, cabbage gangs and radish stalks, precious things from the Great Famine, were washed in the front yard, dried with foil in the backyard, and then put some into a large vat at home, pickled into sour yellow cabbage, and hung most of them under the eaves of the yard for later use, and in the winter, they were used as food and vegetables.
In the winter, when there was no firewood in the house, and the ice and snow sealed the road to Nanshan, he took two aunts with heavenly feet to the field to harvest the smelly but undesirable dried basil, and stacked them in his yard for cooking. When cutting basil, when they found a little dried gray ash, Grandpa and Aunt if they got the most precious treasure, lest they pull down a little, very cherished, very carefully put away, put it in a bag, and take it home - this dry gray ash dish, after boiling in the pot, is the most effective anti-constipation medicine without spending money.
In the spring, there was no money to buy back salt and alkali noodles as expensive as gold, and my grandmother and the old and young women and children who had come to spend the famine guarded the family, and my grandfather took my two aunts and aunts to scrape off the poor salt and alkali powder little by little on the white-glowing soil blocks in the salt and alkali fields of the Weihe River Beach and under the decadent old walls of the outer villages. White soil foam, go home with a soak in water, clear water, this clear water has become a natural saline alkali.
In the rice pot in the famine, the boiled bark and grass roots, grain bran corn cobs, etc., are all things that are difficult to cook and need to be melted and decomposed by eating alkali. In addition to cooking "rice" directly in the pot, such saline water is not only used to pickle radish stalks and cabbage gangs to make pickles in winter, but also for bitter leaves and cotton leaves such as willow trees and poplars that are eaten in summer. These bitter things, through the soaking of this saline water, can make the bitterness a little lighter, and with a little salty aroma...