After graduating from the teacher training, I was assigned back to my alma mater to teach, and the class teacher who met me was my junior high school classmate and my first love, and after more than a year, he became my husband.
After we got married, we lived in three teaching workshops assigned by the school, a small bedroom, two "integrated rooms" that integrated the living room, study, kitchen, and office, and a pergola outside the door. When it started to get hot, we moved the stove to the pergola to cook. In the open space next to the window sill under the eaves, the husband made bricks into three square pools, one for matchmaking, one for coal blocks, and one for carbon particles. The husband split the match into 3- or 4-inch long pieces, and the coal blocks and carbon lumps were pounded into fists or walnuts, all neatly stacked in the pool. We spent more than ten years of simple but fulfilling, arduous but warm time in the inside and outside of this small, well-equipped three public houses, teaching and educating people, having children and raising children.
And what I will never forget most is the two small vegetable fields in front of the door and a large field of crops behind the house.
The row where we lived was all faculty dormitories, about seventy or eighty meters away from the front row of classrooms, so the teachers used their spare time and rest time to open up the open space in front of the door into a small vegetable field.
When spring comes, everyone begins to cultivate, turning the soil, dividing the furrows, planting fences, buying seeds, raising vegetable seedlings... Young people from peasant families, doing these tasks can be described as easy to get acquainted with, but sometimes due to objective factors or due to lack of experience, either the seeds have been frozen early and cannot come up, or the young seedlings have not been bitten by insects at the right time, at this time, everyone will summarize the lessons and discuss the experience together. Because the intelligence and mental effort invested are different, the effect of the same vegetable field is also completely different. Some smiles are full of joy, some frowns do not show the twists and turns, so envy, jokes, pride, sighs, all kinds of emotions are played out in turn in the vegetable field. After that, the best fruit becomes the object of everyone's division, no matter who you and I, no matter whose family, which kind of ripe is the main attack like that, thirsty and hungry, can't resist the temptation, casually into the vegetable field, the long and thorny cucumber, the round and shiny dazzling tomato, pick it casually, rub it with your hand, bite it crisply, suck it smoothly, it is really a cool ah!
There is a well in the yard, draw water from the well; there is a toilet in the corner, the toilet is fertilized, and it is convenient to raise vegetables; three or two steps out of the door, it is easier to pick vegetables, take local materials, eat and pick now, fresh, clean, green, healthy.
At that time, the monthly salary was only a few tens of yuan, and it was really stressful to supplement parents, raise children, and cope with various human affairs. These two small vegetable fields have helped a lot, saved the big emergency, and solved the big trouble, not only alleviating the family's economic embarrassment, but also bringing great joy to our spirit.
The backyard of the campus, that is, there is a large wasteland behind our house, which has also been developed by the teachers, planted with corn, beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes, fresh corn cobs and beans can not be eaten, we will dry them, and in the winter grind cornmeal, popcorn, eat dried beans, potatoes and sweet potatoes are stored, basically enough to enjoy the whole winter.
Teaching in the countryside for more than ten years, really save money, and then we transferred to the county seat, there is no such advantage. Later, the alma mater built a tall teaching building, built a wide playground, the traces of our life and work have disappeared, people are not things, the vegetable field crops, as well as the laughter in the vegetable field, green fat, red and thin has become the most beautiful memory!