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"Story" Wild Kids – What is the training class? Last Mao's training class

author:The jianghu people called Song Shaoxia

The longer I live in the city, the more I miss life in the countryside.

As I grew older, I became more and more knowledgeable and experienced, and I was indifferent to many things, but the carefree days of my childhood often came to my mind.

I can't remember if I was six or seven, seven or eight, or eight or nine, or ten years old, and "when I was a child" was a day that was put together for several years. In those years, I only knew how to run all over the mountains, and the green mountains and green water around the village had my footprints everywhere.

The most remembered is the pickpocket scorpion.

Every time the scorpion season comes, that is, in the summer of July and August, people in the village will come to collect scorpions, and it is said that scorpions can be used as medicinal herbs. The female scorpion, which we call the big scorpion mother, can sell for fifty cents a piece; the male scorpion, which we call the male tongs, can sell for three cents a piece. In order to earn a little pocket money for myself, my friends in the village often went to the mountains to pick scorpions.

My mother was also very supportive of me, because I had pocket money for selling scorpions, so I wouldn't ask her for money, and sometimes I could use the money to buy bags of salt or bottles of soy sauce for the family. If I go out for a day and catch too few scorpions, my mother will still kill me, saying how to catch so many back, white. It was a bit like the leader was teaching me, just because I wasn't doing a good job.

I have a bottle of eight treasure porridge for scorpions, sometimes I will use empty tea boxes, and even use instant noodle bags, as long as they can hold scorpions; a tweezer, used to catch scorpions, tweezers are made of chopsticks, split from one end of the chopsticks to two-thirds of the position, and then clip a small piece of wood, tweezers are made; an iron hook, used to hook stones, bare hands to lift stones, is a little tired.

These are the main tools, plus I have to bring lunch. Going up the mountain to pick up scorpions is like going to work, going out early after eating in the morning, and not returning until the sun goes down in the afternoon, and there are definitely eight hours a day.

Our village can be said to be surrounded by mountains on three sides, with Xiling in the west, Nanshan in the south, Dongshan in the east, Xiling nearest, the highest in Nanshan, and the farthest in Dongshan. But no matter which mountain there are many scorpions, my friends and I often climb from one mountain to another, tirelessly.

Dadi, Ermao, lele are the buddies who play with me, as long as they go up the mountain to pick scorpions, they will go with their companions, along the way we talk and laugh, and unconsciously arrive at the foot of the mountain.

The stones at the foot of the mountain are usually turned over many times by others, and it is rare to see scorpions, so we climb up for a while before starting. You can't gather the scorpions together, otherwise you may not know that the stones that others have just lifted, so we are all scattered, and each person picks up each other.

It is not easy to pick a scorpion, you have to lift many stones, and you have good luck to see a scorpion. Therefore, when someone lifts the stone and looks at it, there is a female scorpion lying on the ground below, and he will shout happily: "Big scorpion mother!" When the other friends heard it, they would be very curious to run over to watch. This shout is often mixed with an element of showing off.

I think that scorpion picking is like a game that can get rewards, the more stones you lift, the more scorpions you will most likely catch. Every time a scorpion is found, it is a reward for the hard work that precedes it, and this reward also has an unknown mystery, because I don't know if there will be a scorpion on the next stone, nor do I know whether the scorpion is male or female, or even one or two. I've found two big scorpion mothers under a rock several times, and that's a lot of fun than winning the lottery. This may be why we have the pleasure of wading through the mountains and rivers to pick scorpions.

However, finding out whether a scorpion can catch it smoothly into the bottle is also a problem. Before unscrewing the bottle cap, you should pat it in advance, so that the scorpions in the bottle are gathered at the bottom of the bottle, otherwise some scorpions will lie on the bottle cap, and when the bottle cap is opened, it will automatically run out, if it climbs to the hand, it will definitely make itself busy, and the new scorpion will not be able to run away and may lose the one that has been in hand.

When you want to catch a scorpion, it is also very troublesome to suddenly find that the tweezers cannot be found or the tweezers are broken. Other small partners will not always be around, can not always use other people's tweezers, no way, at this time, can only boldly catch scorpions with their bare hands.

Holding a small wooden stick in my left hand and holding the back of the scorpion to keep it from running around, it will the tail with the poisonous needle to poke the small wooden stick hard, and when it is tired of poking, then I will carefully pinch its tail with the index finger and thumb of my right hand, and the position cannot be too far away from the poison needle. As long as you hold the scorpion's tail, no matter how much it struggles, it will not help. Then, be sure to be quick when throwing it into the bottle, otherwise the moment you release your finger, its tail will be erect, and the stinger at the tip of the tail will easily pierce the hand.

I have been stung by scorpions several times, all because I can be stung.

The moment the finger was stung, it was like being pricked with a steel needle, and the pain was unbearable. To alleviate the pain, I used thin wire to strangle my fingers each time to prevent the venom from spreading to other parts. Because in the martial arts dramas I've seen, if someone is poisoned with an arm or leg, they either wrap it around a cloth, or seal the poison with acupuncture points, or even suck the venom out with their mouths. I tried sucking my fingers with my mouth, but I couldn't suck anything.

After the fingers are entangled in the wire, they will soon become purple and numb, but it will reduce some pain.

Once, when we were drinking water by a mountain spring, we met a few boys who were older than us, they were from the next village, they also came to pick scorpions, and when they saw that my fingers that had been stung by scorpions were purple and black, he told me to quickly untie the wire and let the blood in my fingers flow, otherwise the fingers would be wasted. I was startled, and quickly did as he said, and after untying the wire, I found that my fingers were not wrapped around the wire and it didn't hurt so much, and after a while the color was restored, but my fingers were still swollen, and I could only wait for the venom to slowly dissipate.

In addition to scorpions, there are many other animals on the mountain, and lizards are the most common, and may be encountered twenty or thirty times a day. The speed of the lizard is very fast, always out of sight, when lifting the stone, suddenly out of the blue, suddenly disappeared, making people instinctively think that it is a snake, and a false alarm. Therefore, hooking a stone with an iron hook is the safest, even if there is a snake under the stone, there are lizards will not be too afraid.

I have seen snakes many times in the mountains, there are earth snakes, there are red chain snakes, and other species that cannot be called. Luckily, neither of my friends nor I was bitten by a snake. We are afraid of snakes, and snakes are afraid of us. Every time I met, I would hurry away and hide far away, and even if I didn't walk away, the snake would quickly escape.

Pheasants and hares also encounter them occasionally, but each time they spot us first, and then suddenly fly or run away from the distant grass, and disappear without a trace in just a second or two. They are very vigilant, knowing that humans are not a good thing, especially small furry children like us, and it is the best policy to run when they meet the pulling of their legs.

However, there is one insect that does not think so. I'm talking about wasps. Horse bees are stunned, and if anyone provokes them, they will flock to them and see death as if they were returning home.

I had a very painful experience of being surrounded and suppressed by wasps, which caused me to go out to see people for several days.

That day I was picking scorpions in the mountains and happened to come across a sour date tree. The sour date tree I am talking about is a small shrub that grows very short and has small dates, but tastes like a large date. This sour date tree has many ripe little sour dates on it. Occasionally eating some sour dates in between scorpions is also something we often do. So, I picked dates and ate them. But I didn't notice a honeycomb under the sour date tree.

When you first pick sour dates, it is natural to shake the small tree slightly, which may have affected the wasps, and they began to think about how to guard their homes. But at that time, I didn't know they existed.

Maybe it was bad luck, I picked a red sour date but accidentally let it fall, and the sour date hit the honeycomb impartially. At this time, the wasps were really angry.

The wasps swooped in and flew toward my front door, and I was so frightened that I fled, but on the hill, there were stones and grass everywhere, and I couldn't run fast at all. My face was stung into a sieve, and soon it swollen into a ball, and my eyes swollen into a slit, and I couldn't see clearly. Finally, I went home crying.

The face after being stung by a horse bee is the fattest face of my life, and if I eat two or three hundred pounds of fat, my cheeks will not be fat enough. Because I provoked the wasps, the city gate caught fire, and the pond fish were damaged, and the scorpions of the earth and ermao who were not far from me were also stung twice by the wasps, but compared to me, their situation was simply not worth mentioning.

Since then, I have been very careful every time I pick sour dates, but when I pick the dates, I have nothing to fear.

In our village, there are many places where large date trees have been planted. There is such a jujube forest in the small ridge cover. The ridge is covered by the Qianlong River in our village and is a raised hilly area. The Qianlong River is the mother river of our village, which irrigates the farmland and vegetable fields along the banks of the river and brings life to Xiaolinggai.

One day, I was swinging along the Qianlong River with the earth, and before I knew it, we walked to the small ridge cover and into the jujube forest. A few of us didn't see anyone guarding the jujube tree, so we blatantly stole the jujube to eat.

The jujube tree is very good to climb, and it goes up in three or two clicks. We rode on the branches of the tree while picking and eating, regardless of whether there was pesticides or not, we picked them and ate them, the red glowing dates were big, crisp and sweet, many times better than the small sour dates on the mountain. The feeling of stealing dates to eat is like Sun Wukong entering the peach orchard, picking which one he wants to eat, and eating as much as he wants.

But after eating a few dates, we saw an old man with a stick coming to us. The old man scolded fiercely, all give me down, I will see whose bear children are. I thought, this is over, I was caught.

After we came down from the tree, the old man saw Lele and his expression suddenly became kind. It turned out that the old man was Lele's uncle. Le Le is called Uncle Da, and we are also called Uncle Da. Uncle Da smiled and said, I thought who it was, go, I will take you to eat the sweetest dates.

Uncle took Lele's hand and led us to his hut. The hut was built by uncle Da, which contains many farm tools and a wooden bed with a mosquito net. Uncle Da must have stayed here often to facilitate the care of the jujube trees, but more often to guard the jujube trees to prevent others from stealing the dates. Le Le was still young at that time, but he didn't know that we were stealing his uncle's jujube forest.

The date tree next to the hut is shorter and easier to climb, and the large dates with knots are more, redder, and sweeter. I ate one after another and were about to get me drunk. The uncle sat on the matza in front of the house, holding a fan in his hand, watching us pick dates and eat them like a group of monkeys, and smiled with relief.

I ate a lot of dates that day, and my stomach was so strong that I even saved lunch. I reckon I've eaten half my life's dates. Later, on several occasions, the remnants of red dates could be seen in the stool.

Looking back, if the old man wasn't Lele's uncle, I'm afraid we wouldn't have been treated so well as little thieves who stole dates. This may have been the good fortune that Little Ridge Cover brought me, and I also had good luck in a fishing trip in Little Ridge Cover.

Early that morning, I took a bamboo pole with me to the bank of the Qianlong River to fish, and behind it was a small ridge cover, with the jujube forest of Lele Dabo and the vegetable garden and peach forest of other people's families.

Our fishing spot was a rock terrace with a calm water away from the main road underneath, which was a great place to fish. The bait we use for fishing is earthworms dug in the nearby ground, and the newly dug earthworms are particularly active, twisting and turning, not listening to the call. I don't know who I learned the method, I put the earthworm in the palm of my hand, slapped it hard a few times, used the sound to shake the earthworm, and then stringed the earthworm to the fish hook, it was much easier.

Not long after fishing, the two of us and The Earth caught several grass carp in succession, the large one weighing almost a pound. I've never caught so much, such a big fish before. Every time I catch a scorpion, I think there is another one, just like picking a scorpion, every time I catch a scorpion, I will be full of hope for catching the next one.

It was noon when we were fishing, and I discussed with the earth whether to go home for dinner, but in order to catch more fish, we gave up lunch. In such a desolate wilderness, no one usually comes, and the stomach is really hungry, so go to the nearby vegetable garden to pick a few cucumbers or tomatoes to eat. In addition, there are peach orchards and jujube groves.

Later, it was raining lightly, and neither of us had an umbrella with us, so we went to the taro field and picked a few leaves to cover our heads. Although the leaves of the taro are very large, they can only cover their heads, and the clothes on their bodies are still wet with rain. Even so, we didn't go home, and fishing in the rain was more fun and easier to catch.

It wasn't until it was almost dark that the earth and I decided to go home, and we each caught a bunch of fish, and the harvest was very good. Back in the village, before I got home, I saw my mother. She must have been in a hurry.

I used to go out fishing for two or three hours and then go home, but this time it was different. I was out all day and didn't come home to eat, even when it rained. My mom was worried about it.

When she got home, she said she looked for me everywhere and went to Qianlong River, but she didn't see me either. That fishing place is very hidden and really not easy to find. Unable to find anyone, she was so anxious that she even thought I had drowned or been abducted by the bad guys.

But when she saw me and The Earth walking happily on the road carrying a bunch of fish, she smiled. I was able to come back unharmed, to prove that those worries were superfluous, and that the fish I caught were a big surprise to her.

There used to be a lot of fish in the Qianlong River, and some people may think that both fishing and netting are too inefficient, and they thought of a way to catch more fish quickly, that is, to take drugs.

Every two or three years, Qianlong River will be drugged. I never knew who had taken the medicine, it could have been from our village, or it could have been someone from the upstream village. Moreover, every time someone medicated fish, I was hindsighted and hated that I couldn't be the first to find out that the river was drugged. Because the sooner you know, the more fish you are likely to catch.

Every time I heard about the medicinal fish, I would get very excited, pick up the small iron bucket from home and run in the direction of the Qianlong River. On the way, you can see many people returning from the river full of loads, they all went early, and there were many fish.

When you get to the river, you will find that there are more people catching fish than fish. There are both men and women, young and old, especially children like me who like to go down to the river to catch fish, they are all over the river, carefully observing the movement in the water.

Everyone's fishing tools are also various, there are better conditions to take the net, to the river by the drug stunned fish down the net to catch up, others some with dumplings for the fence, some with washing vegetables with the drainage basket, some with baskets, some with dung baskets, as long as there is a water permeability function of the guy Shi'er can come in handy.

Fish that have been drugged usually have two states, one is completely dead, some floating on the surface of the water, and some sinking to the bottom of the water.

When I first went to the river, I saw a lot of dead small fish floating on the river, and sometimes I would encounter one or two big ones, so I went to pick up dead fish, but I found that most of these dead fish were already smelly, and it was no wonder that no one went to pick them up.

Later, I saw that there were a lot of fish in the basket of a big brother, and they all looked dead, but they didn't stink. He said most of the fish he had divened to the bottom of the water to pick up. I learned that the fish that had not been drugged for a long time would sink to the bottom of the water, and when they died for a long time, they would float up, but at that time, the fish had rotted. I also wanted to dive into the water and dive to the bottom of the water to touch the fish, but I was too young to know the water, did not dare to dive, and could only hang out by the river.

The other is half-dead and still alive.

Such fish swim slowly in the water, and they are like drunk, almost unconscious. That's what the fish I'm going to catch is. I have seen many of these drugged fish by the river. However, when I went to catch them, they suddenly came to their senses and swam to the middle of the river again. I thought, if I had a net, I would be able to catch a lot of fish. Unfortunately, I don't have any tools.

However, I am still passionate about catching fish. I walked along the river from upstream to downstream, and walked for several kilometers until the crowd had dispersed and there were only a few people on the river, and I did not give up. Although I had only caught two or three decent fish at that time, it was not as much as fishing.

Although I didn't catch many fish every time I was drugged in the river, I couldn't pull me down every time. I didn't know that it was illegal to drug fish in the river, nor did I know that there would be fewer and fewer fish in the river, but I knew that it was very happy to go to the river to catch fish, and it was also very happy to eat fish.

None of the people I met, including my family, had said anything about the harm of medicinal fish, or about the physical effects of eating fish that had died of poisoning. Medicine fish, catch fish, eat fish is a carnival activity of the whole village, and I enjoy this activity tirelessly.

In our village, there is not only the Qianlong River, but also large and small ponds, most of which are distributed near the Qianlong River, but there is a pond that is very close to my home.

It was once a sand mining pit, low-lying, and abandoned for a long time to become a pond that would not dry up all year round. Since its location is in the west of the village, we call it Xidawang.

How many fish there were in Xidawang, and whether there were big fish or not, at first no one knew. It wasn't until someone pumped the water inside with a pump to the bottom that they found that there were even two or three pounds of big fish in xi da wang. But the water of the West Dawang cannot be pumped dry, because there are many springs at the bottom of the water, and the water is constantly bubbling.

When Xi Dawang was pumped, the adults and children who lived nearby came over, and many people watched the bustle on the shore and watched a group of people standing in the muddy waters that did not reach their knees and fish. I also went down, all the mud under my feet, and every step was very difficult, and I saw the silhouette of the big fish flash by, but I couldn't catch anything. In the end, he got dirty, but only caught one or two loach.

There are a lot of loach in Xidawang, perhaps because there is more mud under the water, and loach likes to drill into the mud the most. In the rainy season, the rain is continuous, and several small streams are often formed on the inclined dirt road extending to Xidawang, like small rivers, and the water in Xidawang will soon be filled. At this time, the loaches will climb up the stream.

I'm curious why those loaches originally had a stable home, so why did they have to risk migrating elsewhere? What if the water flow becomes smaller as you crawl, and you can't go back if you can't crawl? What if a predator like me finds out? Maybe they have an instinct to swim against the current, whatever the consequences, to go upstream.

But then again, when I saw the loach bouncing around on the road, I was happy. Hurry home, get a small iron bucket, and catch loach. At that time, I was the only one who knew that the loach of Xidawang was flowing up the river, and even Ermao, who lived next door to my house, did not know, and I did not tell anyone.

Every time it rained heavily, I could catch twenty or thirty loaches on the sloping dirt road of Xidawang. However, I never thought of making loach into a dish to eat, and my mother never mentioned it, she saw that I caught so many loach and did not praise me like I caught a fish, she may think that this thing eats sludge, it is not clean. So, I fed all the loach I caught to the cats.

There are not many chances of loach being so easy to catch, after all, it rarely rains heavily throughout the year and the water flows into a river. In order to supplement my cat, I try to catch small fish in canned bottles.

I also forget who I learned this method from. I put some pancake shards or bun crumbs in the transparent canned bottle as bait, and then sealed the mouth of the bottle with plastic film, but not completely sealed, leaving a small hole in the film for small fish to enter, and finally using a long nylon rope to tie the canned bottle. A simple ground cage is thus prepared.

I took the finished canned bottle to the cage, threw it into the water, and then sat on the shore and waited for the fish to enter the bottle. After about half an hour, I pulled up the nylon rope and slowly pulled the canned bottle ashore. In general, two or three small fry can always be caught at a time, and occasionally a loach can be caught. Although the harvest was not much, I felt content.

In addition to catching fish, Xi Dawang can also play as an ice skating rink.

Every winter, when the temperature drops to minus seven or eight degrees, Xidawang will form a thick layer of ice, and it will become a natural skating rink. The boys who live nearby often go skating in Xidawang, and although they don't have skates, they still skate happily and are not afraid of falling down at all.

However, within a few days, many large and small stones were thrown on the ice, cracks appeared on the ice, some places were smashed, and the broken ice and muddy water formed a new thin layer of ice. What's even more infuriating is that there is a pile of ashes of corn stalks in the middle of the ice, and someone has roasted it on the ice.

The West Dawang Ice Skating Rink has not been fun this winter, and the only way to skate is to wait until the next year.

Not far from Xidawang is the Xiling I mentioned earlier, which is not a lofty mountain, but a large hill located in the west of the village. My family lives on the western edge of the village, so Xidawang, Xiling and my family are relatively close. When I went out to pick up scorpions, I didn't want to go far, so I went to Xiling. There are many scorpions in Xiling, and there are also many mountain spring cattle.

The scientific name of the mountain spring cow is the big tooth earth cow, some places are called mountain cattle, some places are called mountain water cattle, we call it mountain spring cattle there. The mountain spring cow is black and red, has a pair of tentacles on its head, and has two large teeth on its mouth, which will be very painful if it is accidentally bitten by it, and it will not be able to shake off.

Mountain spring cattle generally appear after a heavy rain in the autumn. When there are many spring cattle in the mountains, some even fly from the ridge to our homes. As soon as I saw the mountain spring cattle, I ran to Xiling with a small iron bucket. As long as you find mountain spring cattle in the grass, you can pick them up in the iron bucket, and it won't take long to pick up a full bucket. Catching mountain spring cattle is much easier than catching fish and scorpions.

There are many graves in Xiling, buried in many deceased villagers, old graves with decades of age, and new graves in recent years, both in terms of area and quantity, Xiling can be regarded as a public cemetery in our village. From the perspective of the mausoleum, the correct name of Xiling should be Xiling.

Perhaps because I've been bouncing between these graves since I was a kid, I've never been afraid of cemeteries where the dead are buried. Whenever I encounter a group going to the grave or burying them, they will set off firecrackers, and I will happily go to the cannon fight.

I say this because the graves that are covered with weeds have greatly increased the area of the grass, so there are many mountain spring cattle in Xiling, especially in the grass at the head of the grave. Once, the iron bucket I had brought with me was already full of mountain spring cattle, so I hurried home to get another one. On the way, I was running between the two tombs, and suddenly dozens of mountain spring cattle flew up from the graves, and the scene was very spectacular.

The fried mountain spring cattle are very delicious, so the mountain spring cattle Caught let my mother fry them.

Blanch them in hot water before frying them in the pan, then pull out all their wings, and eat them anywhere except for the hard and tasteless wings. After the fried mountain spring beef is directly sandwiched to eat, crispy and tender, one bite at a time, now in retrospect, it will still drool.

However, my mom doesn't like to eat this kind of thing, she feels disgusting, and I can't understand how such a delicious food can be disgusting. My mother also doesn't like to eat fried turtles, but in my opinion, fried turtles are more delicious than mountain spring cows, and they are much more delicious than those big fish and meat.

Knowing that the turtle is the golden cicada. Caught turtles can not only eat themselves, but also sell them for money. The price of the turtle is higher than that of the scorpion, and one can sell for a dollar, so most of the turtles Caught outside when I was a child were sold by me.

According to the habit of knowing that the turtle will climb out of the ground after dark, I will charge the flashlight in advance, eat dinner early, and when it gets dark, I will carry a small iron bucket, take a bamboo pole, and call Ermao to go with me to the East Beach to catch the turtle.

I have to add here that the small iron bucket was used to hold paint, and it followed me in the southern conquest of the northern war and made great achievements. In addition, the bamboo pole was prepared to be used to climb to a high place to know the turtle, otherwise you can only climb to the tree to get the turtle down, time-consuming and laborious. Also, Dongtan Beach is located in the lower reaches of the Qianlong River, and there is a poplar forest, which is the largest poplar forest in our village, and countless turtles are born here every summer.

When you come to the poplar forest on the East Beach, you will see many horizontal and vertical lampposts shining on it. Someone always came earlier than us.

Ermao and I began to look for the slowly crawling turtle, and every poplar tree we saw in front of us would be scanned by a flashlight, starting from a radius of one or two meters under the tree, from bottom to top, turning in circles, not missing a corner. When looking for the turtle, don't worry about some poplar trees have been swept by others, because it is possible that when others take a flashlight to take a picture, the turtle under the tree has not yet climbed out, and when we pass by, we happen to encounter it.

It is said that the turtles will take three to four years to grow under the dark ground before they burrow out of the ground, but what they did not expect was that the first light they saw in this life was a human flashlight, and what they did not expect was that they might become a delicacy on the human plate the next day.

It's a sad story.

If the turtle can climb the tree smoothly, climb the tall branches, and then after a night of transformation, break out of the chrysalis, and feather into a cicada, then it can enjoy a precious time, this time may be two weeks, maybe a month, but no matter how short, it will use all its strength to scream, to live, to love, to multiply.

This, in turn, becomes a touching and inspirational story.

However, when I was a child, I only knew that a turtle was a dollar, and catching a turtle was to pick up money, and the more I caught it, the more I earned. If you can catch forty turtles in one night, you can earn at least forty yuan of pocket money, which is a lot of wealth for me.

The East Beach is far from my home, and if it weren't for the turtle catching, I would rarely go there. However, when I was a child, I was idle all day long, and I might have unwittingly shook to the East Beach.

Because of the many tall poplar trees planted, The East Beach is a good place for leisure and vacation because of the many tall poplar trees, the branches are luxuriant, the sun and rain are shaded, and the trees are cool and refreshing. When Ermao and I were playing on the East Beach, someone tied a sheet between two trees and made a hammock, which looked very comfortable to sleep on. However, I think it is more comfortable to sleep after eating.

The memory of roasting sweet potatoes on the East Beach is still impressive.

The ground in the woods is full of fallen leaves and dry branches, it is very convenient to pick up and make a fire, some fields nearby have planted sweet potatoes, white, red, yellow, all, but there is no purple potato, not only no one in the East Beach grows purple potatoes, our whole village has no one to grow purple potatoes. Years later, when I arrived in the south, I learned that purple potatoes are suitable for growing in the south.

I like to eat yellow soil, the sweetest yellow soil, Ermao also likes to eat yellow soil, so we look for yellow soil sweet potato to dig. Ermao digs sweet potatoes more than I have experience.

He told me that when digging sweet potatoes, you can't catch a sweet potato seedling to dig, so it is easy to be found to be less sweet potatoes, if you dig four sweet potatoes, find four plants, dig a piece, and these four plants are best not to be next to each other, after digging, remember to bury the pit, and then cover up with the melon seedlings. I was amazed at Ermao's experience of stealing melons.

After digging up the sweet potatoes, we found a hidden place to make a fire to roast the sweet potatoes. I thought I'd just make a fire and throw the sweet potatoes in. Ermao told me that it was easy to burn sweet potatoes. So how to bake it?

We first dug a pit, burned the branches in the pit, burned them until they became charcoal that did not burn out, then buried the sweet potatoes into the charcoal, and then buried the pit gently. In this way, let the charcoal bake the sweet potato in the soil, roast it for about half an hour, and then dig out the sweet potato. The sweet potatoes baked in this way have almost no burnt skin, but the inside is already roasted.

Sitting on the beach by the river, listening to the babbling water, blowing the cool autumn breeze, and eating sweet roasted sweet potatoes, it feels great.

I boasted that the technique of roasting sweet potatoes was very strong, and he said that he learned it from his brother. His brother,whose name was Da Mao, was more than a decade older than Ermao and worked in a brick factory. Ermao also said that the sweet potatoes baked in the brick kiln of the brick factory were more delicious than this.

The brick factory in our village is at the foot of Nanshan Mountain, south of the Qianlong River, and the big smoke pipe that towers into the sky can be seen from the next village. Whenever we go to Nanshan to pick scorpions, we will pass by the brick factory. The brick factory fired red bricks, and the brick kiln can burn the clay into red and hard bricks, and the temperature inside must be very high.

I thought that if I put the sweet potato in, within two seconds, the sweet potato would be burned into black charcoal, and it would not be possible to roast it so deliciously. I don't know if Ermao is bragging, or if Damao cheated Ermao. Anyway, I've never eaten sweet potatoes baked from a brick kiln.

I wanted to bake, but people were not allowed to take care of the brick kiln, not only that, but the adults in the brick factory were busy working, and they didn't let us children run blindly. We had to wander around the perimeter of the brick factory.

I remember that there was a loess slope near the excavation area of the brickyard, and we would pass through it when we went up the mountain to pick scorpions. After the rain, the slopes become unusually slippery. As a result, it became a slide in the dreams of many boys.

The vertical height of the slide is at least ten meters, the slope is more than forty-five degrees, the slide looks long and steep, and the timid one does not dare to experience it.

However, none of the dozen boys on the scene were afraid, and they all scrambled to slip, so that later everyone had to queue up according to the first to come, and everyone was bare-buttocked.

Why bare-butt?

It is like this: if you wear pants, you will definitely get the pants dirty, and when you get home, you will probably be scolded by your parents, it is better to strip off and slide again, and then go to the river to take a bath after the matter; the friction between the pants and the slide will be greater than the buttocks, and the effect of rapid decline will not be achieved, and the sense of speed is the most attractive place of this slide; if there is a layer of cloth between the ass and the slide, you cannot really feel the fiery feeling generated by the friction between the skin and the slide, and the friction is severe. It turned into a very irritating burning sensation, which is why I am still very impressed with this many years later. Now think about it, in fact, this is like the difference between wearing a condom and not wearing a condom during sex, the effect is not the same.

So, after everyone slid down, their butts were ground into two lobes and red, like a monkey's ass. After a few rounds of skating, we were all mud monkeys. Some friends finished playing the slide and went to play with mud. There is no shortage of mud in the brick factory, but the mud here is not as good as the yellow mud in a quarry pit on the west side of my house.

The quarry pit and Xidawang are only one road apart, as long as it rains, the yellow mud on the wall of the quarry will become wet and sticky, and it is best to dig down and pinch the mud.

Ermao and I often went to the quarry pit to dig yellow mud and play with the mud. Although the things that are pinched out are very different from the real thing, you can see what it is. For example, tanks with gun barrels, cars with wheels, shell guns common in anti-Japanese dramas, and so on.

There is also a very simple balance that I remember very clearly, that is, first pinch a cone, insert a thorn at the top, and then group two small balls of the same size, connect them with a piece of wood, shaped like a small dumbbell, and finally put the small dumbbell on the thorn thorn, so that a small balance that can be rotated is ready.

I don't know what the point of making this little balance was at the time, but I just thought it was amazing to be able to keep the two balls balanced and make them spin. I thought to myself, I have made such a magical thing, which shows that I am also very powerful.

I also made a little basketball and I could pick it up with one hand. At first I just wanted to make a ball of yellow clay as round as possible, and then I thought, why don't I draw some lines on it to make it look like a football. However, the pattern of football is too complicated, and volleyball is not often played, so let's draw it as a basketball. The pattern of the basketball is simple, just tick out four lines.

I loved the little basketball I made and ended up using it on my desk as an ornament. Little basketball has been with me for more than three years. Later, when my brother was playing with it in his hand, he accidentally fell to the ground and broke it. I knew he liked the little basketball too, and the break was completely unintentional, and he said sorry to me several times, and I just silently watched the three-lobed dirt on the ground, and the little basketball had disappeared from this world.

There are too many stories when I was a child, and I am afraid that I will have to say it for a long time.

Climb trees, poplars and locust trees climb the most, encounter the most spicy seeds; dig bird nests, which is probably what every boy who grew up in the countryside will do, if you touch a bird from the nest, you will catch a small grasshopper to feed it and raise it; a fluttering dragonfly, a red dragonfly is the most beautiful, but no matter how beautiful it is, it will be caught and thrown into a mosquito net to let it catch mosquitoes; catch crickets, and when it comes to autumn nights, I can always hear their calls, but crickets, crickets, grasshoppers, and even now I can't tell who is who...

Now it seems that many things I did when I was a child were not right, either petty theft or mutilation of living beings, but at that time I only knew that it was funny and interesting, and I had no scruples and no pity. I don't know if it's innocence or ignorance.

Once people grow up and mature, they have right and wrong, responsibilities and obligations, and troubles and concerns. Sometimes, I especially want to go back to my childhood, but I clearly remember that my biggest wish when I was a child was to grow up faster, because at that time, I felt that when I grew up, I would be more free, I could do more things, and I could live happier.

Perhaps freedom and happiness are in the far-flung future, in the distant memories of the past, but not in the present here and now.

<完>

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