As far as I can remember, there are four tile houses in my family, including a barn built by my father later, a total of five. The warehouse is actually a place where rural people pile up farm tools and other items, such as saddle drawers, plows, cages with bamboo poles, baskets, Mu Cha, flail, rollers of shelf cars, pea poles for pigs ... In short, it is called a barn, which is full of piles. Sometimes I want to go in and get a farm tool, but the door won't open.
The courtyard faces south, and the building faces north. The kitchen and the mansion are side by side in the east, next to the mansion, which is the warehouse mentioned above, also called the barn. The only stable is in the west. This is the yard where I lived since I was a child, and it has also sheltered me from the wind and rain for 18 years.
After I was eighteen, I went to the provincial capital to study in a technical secondary school. Since then, the yard and I, the old house and I, have become increasingly alienated. At the moment, when I sit in front of the computer and call it an old house, and I can only repair the yard that no longer exists by memory, I am actually repairing the spiritual home that has become a ruin in another way.
According to my mother, my hometown used to be a primary school in the village. From my birth to growing up, and then to leaving, there was a slate planted in the soil under the platform of the building, and the part that exposed the soil skin was the starting line. When I was a child, I had the idea of digging out these stones, but after all, I was too weak to dig them.
Exposing the stone line outside the soil has become an indelible dividing line in my memory. I quote a poem by Taiwan Province writer Yu Guangzhong: I am here, and my old house is there.
Mother also said that I was born in a stable on the west side of the yard. Of course, it didn't belong to a horse at that time. Oh, yes, in my memory, there is a kang in this room. When the kang was still there, this room was already my uncle's sheepfold. Goats and sheep are mixed together, white and black. Late at night, there is always the sound of Sao Hu chasing sheep around a circle and kicking it upside down. When relatives stay at home, you can't sleep, not at all.
Kicking the ball down is a trivial matter, but what is fatal is the endless bleating of goats, just like a group of people speaking a foreign language. A relative next door who doesn't know why once said: Does this family stay up late? -He must have taken SAO Hu's crying as an adult.
How many mornings, several neighbors stood under the willow tree in front of the gate, chatting about the farm work in the field and discussing the growth of crops, always turning the topic to the complaining sheep.
Why is there a kick? First, a flock of sheep are running. Second, Sao Hu jumps up and down from the kang.
I don't remember when the kang was dismantled. It's always torn down. However, the kang eye door has always been preserved, and it is wide open in other seasons except winter when a lump of rotten clothes is stuffed in. One autumn, the weasel got into the kang eye door and took away two hens. Mother scolded father, and father moved a stone to block the kang eye door. But it didn't last long, and it opened again. Why did it open again? Because mom doesn't keep chickens anymore.
Why are chickens and horses locked together? It's very simple, and it's convenient to draw a picture, so as not to build a henhouse again. It's not strange to say it. Many people in the village are like this, and some people keep pigs and cows together. As a result, some amazing deeds have appeared.
Maybe pigs and cows have been under the same roof for a long time, and they are ripe. Piglets are not afraid to walk among tall cattle. One day, a pig mixed into the bustling herd, followed it into the mountains, was killed by a cowherd, and was roasted and eaten. This also alarmed the police station. This is beside the point. It's all beside the point Skip it for a while.
I have written in many articles that when I was young, we lived with my uncle's family. One year, my wandering cousin finally kindly took her uncle and aunt to live in other places. When my uncle left, all the sheep and the wool on the beams were sold out. It can be said that when uncle left, he sold all the valuable things at home. There are only a few dilapidated houses and an old horse that can't get up.
Uncle left, the sheepfold was empty, and the building was empty.
Father and mother did their best to renovate the building. Since then, the home has become spacious. When I was young, my father and I moved out of the almost collapsed kitchen and lived in the upper room.
In the smoky kitchen, the beams were hollowed out by moths, and flour-like sawdust fell into holes with holes and eyes from time to time. The roof that has been in disrepair for a long time leaks rain, and the most important thing is that there are several depressions. Whenever it rains, big sister doesn't dare to cook in it, for fear that the roof will collapse. In order not to collapse, my father cut down two pole trees from the forest, hired a carpenter, and put two legs on the kitchen beams.
This insistence has been going on for several years. Father thought about it, rebuilt the kitchen and prepared the wood. However, the news of the relocation came, and it took three to five years.
On the day the house was demolished, many people came, which seemed to be a happy event. Moving is not a happy event, but it is undoubtedly a very painful thing for the parties to push all the old houses out. The other four roofs dare to climb here, and no one dares to go up in the crumbling kitchen, nor dare they go up. What should I do if I step on a rotten pit and drop someone?
Finally.
All the old wood and rotten doors and windows were loaded into the car. After half a day's work, several rooms are gone, only the earth wall that has not been pushed is left, and the teeth are very clear. Facing the broken wall and broken tiles, it makes people sad. Father squatted under the wall outside the gate, his eyes were sad, and he smoked one cigarette after another.
A home, a yard, filled with a Cummins; A Cummins, with a home and a yard.
When the bus started, my father had tears in his eyes and didn't say a word to his relatives and friends who came to see me off.
……
Up to now, I have been away from that demolished yard for seventeen years. In these seventeen years, I have been back many times because I can't let go of my hometown. Every time I go back to my hometown, I can't help crying. Every time I shed tears, I was more disappointed.
Facing the ruins of the courtyard submerged by wormwood, the people who have lived in the house are still shaking in front of my eyes, and the things they have accommodated are still inexhaustible.
If you have to ask me why I have such a strong feeling for this familiar land, I will tell you: my heart has already set off very early, and after these years, I have been looking for my way back.
The old house disappeared and a village called Tai Su died. Tai Su village and yard, as well as the old house in the yard, only live in my memory!