Our town, on the southern outskirts of Golden City.
In our small town, there are two places called building courtyards. The first building yard is on the northernmost side of the town; the second building yard is on the southernmost side of the town.
The residents of the building courtyard are immigrants from all over the world, and the upstairs where they live, there is no heating, no water, and no toilet, it is an old-fashioned Su-style building, which looks like an old thing in today's eyes.
In the winter, the residents of the building and the house will build stoves, and the coal used for heating is the coal produced in that town. In the seventies and eighties, the price per ton of charcoal was around twenty yuan, right? Not too expensive anyway.
There is also a coal trading company in our town, which specializes in selling charcoal blocks and coal bricks. The so-called coal bricks are bricks that are made of coal foam produced in the town and mixed with the loess soil in the town, watered, and expanded in a square or rectangular mold. At that time, heating, boiling water for cooking, were all stoves. But there are also subtle differences. Usually for heating, you should put some coal bricks into the stove, the heat of coal bricks is not high, but it is still possible to keep warm and drive away the cold. The charcoal block has a high heat, put it in the stove, cook and boil water, and can be done quickly.
The people in our small town rarely use honeycomb coal, that kind of coal is not burned, it is also gasy, people smell it, itchy mouth and throat, very uncomfortable. At that time, the most dangerous thing about using a stove at home was gas poisoning. The safest way is to open the window a little bit before going to bed at night, and let it be through the wind. If all the windows are closed and the room is not ventilated, people will be easily poisoned by gas, which is a very dangerous thing, and if they are not good, they will lose their lives.
The price of carbon blocks is a little higher than that of coal bricks. From the 1950s to the 1980s, every family had a coal supply voucher, and with this "charcoal book", the cost of purchase would be lower. Without this charcoal book, you will have to buy "high-priced charcoal". At that time, in our small town, every family had four or five or even seven or eight children, and the cost of living was of course very tight. With charcoal books, you can buy cheaper coal.
However, there are also families with few people and not too many people who use coal, and at this time, their charcoal books have become a deal that can be traded. Families with many children and more coal blocks can pay a little money to borrow their charcoal books to buy more low-cost charcoal. Of course, there are also some people who are not too concerned about these things, and when they see difficult families, they will take the initiative to lend their charcoal books to these difficult families, without charging a penny, that is, helping each other.
In our small town, there is a strong sense of humanity. Although it is an immigrant town, there is a friendship between people that makes people feel warm in traditional society.
In those days, in addition to charcoal books, there were also grain and oil books. When buying grain and oil, we must rely on grain and oil to buy it. People who have passed through that era have personal experience, so there is no need to say more here.
But in the world, there is no perfect thing, and I am here to talk about the benefits and advantages of our small town, is there no disadvantage?
There are natural shortcomings, and speaking of it, there is also a little heartache, a little embarrassed to open my mouth, unwilling to say to others.
In our small town, the atmosphere of fighting was relatively strong, and in the eighties, you could see young men fighting on the streets every day. People in our small town call these fighting guys "breaking into society." Later, strict management was carried out, and many young men were in prison because they loved to fight. Most of these young people who love to fight are in the theater of our town, and they are sentenced, and those who commit minor crimes have to sit in prisons for three or five years, and those who commit serious crimes have to sit in prisons for seven or eight years or even more than ten years.
Our town, it is a bit regrettable to say, that is, the economy of the town is relatively single, and there are only coal resources. The families who earned some money moved to the city to live. Young people, in order to find better development space, have also gone to economically more developed areas. Those who stayed in the town were some middle-aged and elderly people who had retired.
Well, the disadvantages I'm going to say this, there's nothing else to say. I just want to say something interesting now. In a lifetime, unsatisfactory things always account for most of them, or find more things that can make others happy, and enjoy themselves is the right thing.
In our small town, there is a theater, which I heard was built in the fifties. In the seventies and eighties, the little children in the town liked to play in this theater. At that time, there were some good movies, and the theater was crowded with people, so it was not lively. Many children, who have no money to buy movie tickets, take advantage of the audience's entry, follow the crowd, mix into the theater, and watch a movie.
To the east of the town's cinema is a small river, and in the seventies and eighties, tadpoles can be seen in the small river in the summer. The children of the town sometimes catch tadpoles from the river and put them in bottles with water, watching these little black notes of life swim around for fun.
To the north of the town's theater, facing the road, there is a two-story photo studio. To the south of the theater, also on the side of the road, there was a bookstore, which now looks like it has a unique style of the fifties. At that time, the bookstore was an important channel for understanding the outside world, and there was a book called "Window of the World", which was published once a month, from which you could read a lot of fresh information from abroad, although that information may have been a year ago, but for people in small towns, there is still a value that broadens their horizons. Children can also buy a lot of popular villain books in bookstores. What can be remembered now are the railway guerrillas, the reconnaissance of crossing the river, the stealing of fists, the water margin, and so on.
To the east of the bookstore, there is a railway, which has long since been demolished. On the east side of the railway, there was a food factory at that time, and the mung bean cake inside was very well made and delicious.
On the south side of the theater, there is a unit that manages the electricity supply of our town. There is a small bridge to the southwest of the theater, and on the south side of the small bridge, there is a shop selling groceries, on the opposite side of the shop, there is a diagonal alley, and after entering, you can see a small second floor, and the residents in the building are mostly employees of a ceramic factory in our town. The back of this small building faces the river, and from the river, you can see a small temple, called what Guanyin Temple. The temple is built in the middle of the mountainside, the road leading to the temple gate, not wide, from the bottom up, all steep slopes, encounter snow days, to the temple incense, take this slope is very oblique road, but be careful.
Opposite the gate of the theater, there are some miscellaneous households, most of whom come from all over the world. Speaking, the accents are mostly different. What I often hear from it are the dialects of Qin'an, Qingyang, Pingliang, and sometimes lengbu, mixed with the dialects of Henan and Shandong.
Our town, in the 1980s, had a relatively large population, and the whole town had five or six primary schools and three middle schools. The number of students in each class is more than fifty. The northernmost elementary school has good physical education. At a school on Middle Street, math scores are well known in the town. A middle school in Gaolingou seems to be our town, with the best conditions and a relatively strong teaching force. The southernmost middle school, I don't know what the characteristics are, now I can't remember anything refreshing, it is worth talking about.
In our small town, in the 1980s, people were frantically digging for coal resources. In some places, people live on top of it, but the ground is empty. The houses built on the vacant land are cracked and deformed. Later, the families in these places all moved to other places.
In our small town, when we used to be, there was a mute who came to the town every day and heard that he was an orphan, but he could draw. People in the town sometimes handed him a piece of chalk and pointed to a chicken or donkey not far away and asked him to draw it. Dumb with chalk in his hand, on the asphalt road, would quickly draw a chicken and a donkey. Some children think that drawing animals is simple, ask him to draw a portrait of a person's head, the dumb look at the person standing in front of him, will also draw it, a few simple strokes, you can use the line to outline the basic outline of the person, vivid.
This dumb man often came to our town with a big oily bag on his back, and sometimes the people in the town, when they gave him a little good food, he would put the food into the big bag he was carrying. Some people said that there was an old man in his family, and he wanted to leave some good food for the old man. But he was an orphan, so how could there be an old man in the family? It's really not clear. But one thing is clear, this mute is a man with a talent for painting, but also a happy man. But his ending is still a bit of a sigh, one year, it was almost the Spring Festival, dumb to our town, bought some New Year goods, on the way home encountered a car accident, unfortunately died.
Listening to the old people, in the past, from Lanzhou to Lintao, we had to pass through our small town and take other routes, which was a bit too far around. The specific walking route is to come out of Hongmenzi, along the Leitan River, go south, walk through Bali Kiln, Yejiawan, Shizuizi, Shuanglong Village, Qingshuiying, Da Kouzi, Xiajie, Middle Street, ShuimoTan, Gaolingou, Dashuizi, Tieye, Shanzhaizhuang, and after passing the cottage, you will go to Moyunguan. Then all the way south, we arrived at Lintao.
In our town, I heard that in the Ming Dynasty, coal mines were mined and a kiln industry of pots and pots and pans was opened. The earliest coal mine, according to the old people, was in the area of iron smelting and cottages at the south end of the town. At that time, there were government-run coal mines and private ones.
In our town, earlier, I heard that there were many kilns, specializing in burning large pots, small pots and small altars, and black pots and jars for boiling Chinese medicine. The kiln factories run by these people, the people in the town, are called Zhao JiaYao, Wang Jia Yao, and Cao Jia Yao. But now it's time to see it.
In our small town, men love to drink more. Experienced adults say that where there is coal and mines, most people love to drink. I heard that people in the kiln street and Jingyuan area also like to drink. Maybe it has something to do with the coal mining industry.
I used to hear people say that in the 1980s, there was a man in Tieyezhuang who was drinking with a group of his friends, and after drinking, he couldn't find it. Everyone was afraid that he would have an accident after drinking, so they looked around and called him, and he did not agree, and the people who drank together panicked, really afraid that he had an accident. After looking for half a day, I still couldn't find him, but at this time, everyone heard someone in his donkey pen whimpering and crying. So he looked for a voice, but saw him holding the donkey of his family, crying vigorously, and saying in his mouth, "Daddy, I want to kill you." ”
It turned out that not long ago, his father had died. After drinking, he thought of his father's nurturing grace, and his heart was uncomfortable, so he walked into the donkey pen, hugged the donkey that his father had raised, and told him about the pain in his heart.
I heard that there is another young man who comes from a good family but loves to drink. One night he was drunk and had a verbal altercation with his family, and the small second floor of his house was facing the street, and he couldn't figure it out, so he jumped from the second floor. Unexpectedly, he died, and just passed a large cart pulling a haystack downstairs. The young man fell into the thick haystack, and he was so drunk that he lay down in the haystack and fell asleep. The next day, the master's girl found the young man in the haystack, helped him to the house, and gave him a bowl of syrup, which he drank before waking up.
In order to repay the favor, this young man took some gifts and often went to thank the owner of the haystack, but when he came and went, he had feelings for the master's girl, so the two married. This story, like a fairy tale, sounds comfortable.
There were also drinking accidents, I heard that there was a person in the mining area in the past, drinking in the home of a colleague, and then went out, urinated on a high ridge, the wind blew, people were overwhelmed by alcohol, fell down the high four-meter-high ridge, and when people found out, he unfortunately died.
In our small town, there are tragic stories, and there are also comedy stories. But now the town has a much smaller population, and there are naturally fewer stories staged. All that's left is some lamentable memories of the past.