Ruthless years have plowed through dozens of spring and autumn in my heart, from ignorant teenagers to lush teenagers, and then to the vicissitudes of the year. In countless stormy days, when the sun is about to set, I am tired on the road to catch my breath. I can't remember how many times I suddenly looked back. The footprints engraved in my mind always brought my eyes and memories back to my village in the deep mountains and forests in the late 1960s.
The black land with four distinct seasons beyond the Great Wall breeds the wisdom of the mountain people. My parents have helped me learn to walk since I was a baby. My little feet are wearing embroidered nest shoes sewn by my mother, and my malnourished big head is wearing a black silk forged tiger head hat made by my mother's manual needle and thread.
In those years when the production team was still a large group, it actively responded to the call of the great leader Chairman Mao: dig deep into the pits and accumulate grain. In the yard after the autumn harvest, rice grains piled up like mountains. In order to ensure that there is enough war-ready food at any time, horses' necks jingle, wagons full of sacks of food are transported to the people's commune grain depot day and night, and the production team of Dehegong Village is rated as "advanced production team of public grain" by superiors almost every year.
All high-quality grain is handed over to the state, and the remaining "unqualified" withered grain is distributed to the members of the production team as rations. Food is not enough. Great and intelligent people want to supply nature. They shaved elm bark, dried it, crushed it, sifted it into powder, mixed it with buckwheat flour, and added boiling water to knead it.
Put the Helan bed made of elm on a big woodpot. After the water in the pot boiled, my father cooperated with my mother to press the Helan bed pole. Accompanied by the creaking sound of Helan bed, wisps of wild vegetable mixed dough are pressed into Helan noodles, and then served with sauerkraut and halogen. Liu Liu, the little chef of hippopotamus, wolfed down noodles. The chirping of house birds and the sound of wind and rain on the old apricot tree outside the window became the most beautiful primitive mountain village music. With our thin stomachs when we were young, we put down our rice bowls and chopsticks and made a "jingle" sound. The days of that era were so tasteful.
The elm bark flour made by my mother is kneaded with my parents' feelings, made of flat millet flour into batter and baked into "pot stickers" to raise us to grow up. There are many brothers at home, but I have never met my sister and brother. I died when I was young. My mother often talks about it, and my eyes are full of tears. I listened quietly, thought, and imagined my eldest brother and sister.
When I was as tall as the stove, my mother sewed me a big schoolbag with old clothes, rags and colorful miscellaneous cloth, sold ten eggs and earned sixty cents, and happily sent me to the primary school in the village to study.
After coming home from school, I never left my mother's side and watched her make a fire and cook. My little hand, covered with black chapped hair, was lying on the earthen stove, and I watched my mother's branded "pot slip away" with rapt attention. While adding firewood to the stove chamber, my mother stirred it in a big clay pot with a wooden spoon. The wooden spoon was full of batter, and the batter poured down evenly along the edge of the big clay pot, and the stove chamber "crackled".
My mother eats well and is famous in Shiliba Village. No matter what dry coarse cereals are, or all kinds of wild vegetables planted in the field, fresh poplar leaves, elm, wild mushrooms in the mountains and elm bark in early spring have become "delicious dishes" that we can't finish after mother's clever processing. Mother cooked the most famous bitter potato, and ate it while it was hot. It was delicious. We two brothers had to eat it until our throats were full of Quma dishes and our wives and wheels were soaked in strong salt water.
Mother has a unique "research" on wild vegetables, making all kinds of wild vegetables, poplar leaves, elm leaves and elm money. That set of exquisite cooking skills has become famous in Shiliba village.
Every night in the mountain village, there are stories that I cannot forget. Members lined up in the order of first come, first served, and took turns to crush everything that could be eaten in the big stone mill in the village, racking their brains to crush everything that was born in the ground and grew on the mountain and might be eaten into powder. Hungry people can't wait to grind the stones in the big Hetao into stone powder to satisfy their hunger.
The air is crisp in autumn and the wind is dark in the moon. There is a big mill next to a century-old well in the village. In the lamp nest on the earth wall of the mill, mother twisted the sesame oil lamp and pulled it brightly, and baskets of potatoes were washed and chopped from the stone trough next to the old well. In the mill, the donkey pulls people to push, and the whole family goes into battle, taking turns to push the donkey, and buckets of potatoes are disdainful. Under the command of their parents, the brothers are working in full swing. When I was a child, I was holding my younger brother who was still walking unsteadily in one hand and holding a hemp rope whip made of a small stick in the other. I watched and thought quietly, deeply remembering such a year and every charming night.
Breaking potatoes, drying, mixing with buckwheat noodles or oat noodles, and storing for winter storage.
Autumn is a fascinating season. There are endless delicacies in the cauldron. Fill a big wood pot with beans and potatoes, pour a bucket of cold water into the well, put a bowl of big salt, and dilute the crushed sesame seeds with water. A layer of yellow sesame oil beads will appear in the big wood pot, and a circle of potato cakes will be posted on the wall of the pot. The taste is thick and dry, and there is a golden yellow layer under the cake.
Mother's salted mustard knot in one's heart stew is also a must. Salted mustard knot in one's heart is cut into strips, a few pieces of old bacon skin, homemade potato vermicelli, steamed a bowl of millet dry rice in clay pots, and sat around the kang table with the whole family to eat, listening to the cheerful laughter of neighbors coming from the window. I had a happy childhood.
In those years, people were dissatisfied with food. Wild vegetables, elm bark, elm kernel, Queena Ding, poplar leaves and acorn noodles were vividly interpreted by the people's committee members in the hot years, which basically solved the problem of food and clothing under the background of the big environment at that time.
Decades have passed, and it is unforgettable that our parents raised us with sad blood and tears. Father loves us like a mountain, and mother loves us like the sea. Our brother didn't starve to death in a special time. Under the careful cultivation of their parents, they thrived on meager food and wild elm bark. They are grateful that their parents raised their kindness, remember the happiness and bitterness of childhood, and know how to be a grateful good person and how to repay their parents' kindness.
The party's good policy of benefiting the people and enriching the people has made poor and backward mountain villages rich in the past. But no matter how the days change, the childhood memories left in the depths of the brain will never be forgotten; No matter how many times the times have changed, the big mill next to the old well in the village, the kerosene lamp nest on the earth wall of the mill, and the hard parenting kindness of parents are unforgettable.
The draft was finalized in Jizhou District, Tianjin on March 6, 20265438 +09.
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