In the 1960s and 1970s, the villagers were generally poor. At that time, only during the summer wheat harvest did the white-faced pot helmet have the opportunity to briefly hug the villagers for a few days. After that, she was forced by poverty to stay away from everyone. Like a flower that bloomed in the cold years, before it could bloom, it was destroyed by the merciless wind.
In those years, the white-faced pots and pans in the public-private canteen on the street were always smiling and waving to the villagers, but everyone turned a blind eye. It is not that these people who are inherently kind do not want to be close to her, but they are shy, and they can't get two dimes out of their pockets to taste her. That is, if there is, who is willing to do it? In those difficult years when they were eager to break a piece of money into several petals, people always had to use the money in the most urgent and critical places. Two dimes is not much, but its weight is very heavy. It takes a hard day of hard work facing the loess back to the sky, and it can buy a pound of salt for the family, or a bottle of kerosene, or a pack of iodine noodles, or... Therefore, the pot helmet in the canteen is like a moon hanging high in the air for the poor villagers, although it makes people feel kind, beautiful, and eye-watering, but it can only be hidden from a distance, and it is really powerless to hold.
The era of lack of food has spawned many bizarre and poignant stories closely related to eating.
Young people in neighboring villages bet that they could eat ten pounds of steamed sweet potatoes at a time, and the result was eight pounds. Since then, it has left the reputation of "eight jin" in this life and this life in Danfeng County.
A few other young people could not work in the fields because it was raining, so they gathered in the canteen of the public-private partnership on the street. One of the young men looked at Bai Shengsheng's hot pot helmet and was hungry, wanted to eat but suffered from no money in his pocket, so he moved his mind to find a topic and said: Hot pot helmet I can eat one back at a time (a pot helmet cut six pieces, the average person eats at most two pieces), do you believe it? B said that you bragged, you are not allowed to drink water, and you are not allowed to stop in the middle to see if you can still eat? A said what if I ate it? B said that if you eat the money to buy a pot helmet, I will pay you, but if you can't eat it, what can I do? A said that if I can't eat, I will give you ten jobs, if I eat you and you play lai and don't pay money? B answer we both have to talk and count. In the end, the two of them issued the most practical and sincere poison curse of the rural people in front of everyone: whoever speaks does not count and kill his whole family! So, Yu B came forward and put a pot helmet on credit in the collective canteen, and A took it and ate it in a big mouthful.
This young man who was full of youthful vitality and boiling with blood had not let go of his stomach and eaten a white-faced pot helmet since he could remember. When I was a child, the days when the new wheat came on the court, I couldn't wait to eat the white-faced hot pot helmet, but my mother only broke a large piece of his palm at a time, and then hung the rest in the air that he could not reach standing on the orange. When he asked his mother to ask for it again, her mother said that if he ate a piece of incense, it would not be fragrant if he ate it again.
Since he entered the agricultural cooperative, he often had chaff in his stomach and rare rice soup, and he had to carry dung and urine to climb the mountain every day, which was something he could not accept and could not think of in any way. He often asked himself in his heart, how long will this burden of feces and urine be carried out without darkness? When will this daily starvation and poverty come to an end? Why do you work in the fields all year round, but why are there always no end to the hard days? The production captain could not give an answer, nor could the brigade branch secretary give an answer, and his heart was confused. He didn't like to read, and he rarely cared about any major national affairs. He only knew that Marx and Lenin were the greatest figures in the world. As for who Gorky was and wrote several world famous books, he did not know or want to know. Even if you know, what? Can I get half a bowl of sweet potato rice soup? When you are hungry and have a fever in the middle of the night, you still have to drink a scoop of cold water to stop it. Therefore, the only pursuit in his heart is to work the yellow land of the agricultural society, and strive to leave a good impression of being willing to work hard in the eyes of the production captain and the branch secretary of the brigade, and when he has the recruitment target, he will have the opportunity to rush out of this place where he really does not want to stay for more than a day.
At the moment, he wanted to thank the spring rain that had been raining outside the canteen door for several days in a row, whether it had slowed down his pace of going to work in the fields, and because it had won him the opportunity to make a bet with others this time, and to be able to eat the white-faced pot helmet that he thought about day and night without spending money. Therefore, he thinks that it is a very glorious thing to bet with people to eat pot helmets today. But the joy that had just flooded his heart was shattered by the other kind of thinking that followed. It was like a stone thrown into the calm water, and although it made a few ripples, it quickly disappeared before it could make waves. Now he felt very humiliated, and his mood began to become complicated and heavy. It is a matter of course for croppers to eat white-faced pots and helmets, so why should they take the means of betting with others? He felt that the pot helmet in his hand was getting more and more tasteless, as if it was a bite of huanglian that was bitten into it. Eat, eat! B was urging, and he couldn't help but take another bite. Suddenly, a loud burp resounded from his throat and echoed above the canteen, and although this voice could not overwhelm the sea, it would do its best to help him drive away this old day full of poverty, and usher in a new time that everyone longed for at the moment when the rain passed.
Water, water, I want to drink water! He had never felt very depressed in his heart like today, and he urgently needed a clear sweet spring to nourish the bitter heart.
Today, in this season of flowers blooming and birds singing in spring, when he is over seventy years old, he has one thing in his heart to tell his children: We must remember that the party and the government have carried out reform and opening up before the people have lived a good life of inexhaustible white-faced pots and helmets and inexhaustible white rice noodles.
About the Author:
Feng Yuanxing, male, born in 1958. Shaanxi Danfeng people, primary school culture.
Love literature, love life. Often write some short essays to share with classmates and friends, not for gambling, but to express the feelings of today's beautiful life in the chest.
Since 2017, his writings have been published in newspapers and magazines and online literary platforms such as "Writing Carnival", "Shangluo Daily", "Today's Headlines", "Shaanxi Rural Daily", "Shangshan Hongye", "Shangluo Writers", "Sun Danfeng", "Mr. Coming", etc.
He is currently an academician of the Jia Pingwa Institute of Local Literature, a member of the Shangluo Writers Association, and a member of the Shaanxi Provincial Prose Literature Association.