Back to 80, start from gold digging

Chapter 8 I'm Going
Zhao Wenduo stared at the ceiling with staring eyes. He was used to the darkness and could see some light. There was a wicker frame tied to the beam above his head, and there were more than half a catty of biscuits in it. It was a good addition to Li Cuizhen when she was hungry. mouth.Of the family members, among the four sisters, only Zhao Wennan, the youngest, got more than half of the money while Li Cuizhen was eating, and the others didn't even taste the scum.As for Zhao Mingyu, he was often at home alone during the day, and no one knew if he ate or not.

Cake workers have a long shelf life. In the previous life, they were one of the foods that were always on hand. Someday when they worked overtime and had no time to eat, they would eat two pieces and they would be hungry. However, most of them were packaged in sealed bags like those on supermarket shelves. The first-grade ones will be placed in exquisite iron boxes, and it is rare to see such bulky ones in the basket.

Palm-sized rectangular biscuits, with a few crumbs of crystal sugar on top, it must be sweet and crunchy after a bite.

Blinking his tired eyes, Zhao Wenduo said slowly: "I'll go tomorrow, Boss, you can steam two pancakes and bring them with me, so I won't be back at noon to save some time."

"Then how do you do it? How old are you?" Zhao Wenying said intuitively, but then she thought that the third sister followed her up the mountain for half a day.

Originally, she took half a day off to chop firewood by herself, but the third child came in only half an hour, saying that the teacher had a meeting in the afternoon and school was dismissed early.

The 11-year-old girl is only three buckets tall when she stands upright, and she has a little bit of strength when she is skinny. She can usually do housework, but it’s a lot of trouble to go up the mountain in winter. Dry, cut seven bundles of firewood, and fished them down the mountain in two trips, and arrived home 10 minutes later than her.

"Third brother, you still have to go to school." Zhao Wenlan tugged at her fingers under the quilt: "Shut up, there will be a solution."

There are only a few monkeys in the family. If one does not go, the other cannot go. There is a way, what can be done?
Zhao Wenduo twitched the corners of his mouth and said, "Let Luo Siping ask me to take a leave of absence tomorrow, saying that I'm too sick to get out of the kang, and the teacher can't come to see me."

Luo Siping is a little friend in the village. They go to the same school and the same class. Usually, if anyone has something to do, they will ask the teacher for leave for each other.

The current situation of the Zhao family is like this, and there is no room for anyone who has too optimistic thoughts.Li Cuizhen was silent for a while, and then said: "The third child should go if he wants to go. He should be able to do some work when he is 11 years old. When I was your age, I used to carry a rice cooker every day. There was no shortage of things going up and down the river. Go. Go, go to practice, and you will be proficient without hacking twice."

"Mom, is that okay?" Zhao Wenlan frowned, and said, "It's so cold, but there's no one on the mountain. I'm with the boss today. If I'm alone, if I meet again Think about something, the third child can’t even yell at others.” Just thinking about the situation, she felt so panicked, it’s a trivial matter whether or not the firewood can be chopped, she couldn’t bear the fear.

Li Cuizhen 'spit': "Don't be blind, what can happen in broad daylight?" Maybe she also felt that she had no idea, so she paused and said: "Yesterday I heard your Aunt Guo say in the yard that their family I have to go up the mountain to get some firewood for the next two days, and see if we can make a companion together if we go tomorrow."

The Zhao family lived in a large courtyard with four families in total. The two houses facing north and south in the main house, the Zhao family in the upper house, the Jiang family in the lower house, the Cui family in the east wing, and the Guo family in the west wing.The four families lived in the same courtyard, and they walked through the open door facing south, leading out to the former dirt road in the village.

Li Cuizhen had spoken, who dared to have another opinion, the matter of Zhao Wenduo going up the mountain to cut firewood was settled.

A dreamless night, until the next morning. At 04:30, the team began to check the time when they went to work. The broken gong with a big handicap was knocked from the village head to the village tail. Schedule tasks for the whole day.

At this time, the sky is not yet lit, and it is normal to go to work with a lamp and a flashlight. Getting up early has long become the habit of the villagers.

The Zhao family woke up before four o'clock, and there was no heat on the kang in the middle of the night. Lying in the bed, the more you sleep, the colder you get. If you wake up early and light the fire, you can take advantage of the warmth to get up again. Nap.

Zhao Wenying was the first to start work, and she usually cooks the morning meal.

Boil half a pot of corn porridge, then stew a Chinese cabbage, and slip a circle of corn pancakes around the sides of the pot.There are rice, vegetables and dry food, and eating two big bowls while it is hot can relieve the body that has been frozen for half a night.

Among the three meals a day, that is, the morning meal, I can see some dry goods to fill my stomach.Corn grains are ground and broken noodles, and the navel is rough enough to scratch the throat, but in this age of lack of clothing and food, it is already considered good food.

There are only a dozen or so pancakes in a pot, and there is not much left after the meal in the morning. Zhao Wenlan has to bring a meal at noon, and the only aluminum lunch box at home is for her. There is nothing extra to serve put.

Li Cuizhen opened the chest of drawers, picked up the most worn-out cloth corner from the fur skin inside, wrapped two pancakes and handed them to Zhao Wenduo, and then told Zhao Wenduo twice that don't forget to take the cloth corner after eating the pancakes return.

Zhao Wenduo, the palm-sized rag head, really didn't pay attention to it. In the past, when the material was most scarce, it was something no one wanted to throw on the road, but here it is also a good thing.In the past two months, she has somewhat figured out some things.

Bailangli is a rural area, unlike cities that require food stamps for food, meat stamps for meat, and oil stamps for oil.During the autumn harvest here every year, the team will divide the food for each household for a year, mainly coarse grains, mainly corn, supplemented by miscellaneous grains, such as soybeans are two catties per person, and the average family can probably divide it into ten A few catties, the oil mill in the town calculates that three catties of soybeans produce one catty of oil, and each family can get four to five catties of soybean oil a year.

There are six or seven members of the family, four or five catties of soybean oil a year, and an average meal is only one tablespoon of oil, which may not be enough.Cooking a dish in a pot, this idea can be ignored directly, and it is almost the same as cooking in water.

Fortunately, some people can raise a pig, and at the end of the year, they can use some fat and oil residue to cook vegetables, which can also make up for it.It's just that this pig can't grow too big, and people can't eat enough, so where can they get spare food to feed it? It's nothing more than giving some grass and corn grains crushed into grains, and it can grow a hundred and eighty catties in a year. If you remove the bones, you can still have three or twenty catties left, and you can eat it in the spring of next year while it is frozen in the sky.

In addition to the basic three daily necessities of grain, oil and meat, most of the others are the same as urban residents, and need to be purchased with tickets, and cloth tickets are one of them.According to local standards, in the past two years, the average amount of cloth tickets distributed to each person per year has been around three feet five to four feet two. If this amount is to be used to make new clothes, the cloth tickets of the whole family must be gathered together. The child has become a good thing. If it is worn out, you can mend the seams. It is three years old for three years, and three years for sewing and mending. This is the preciousness of this cloth.

Tucao return to Tucao, the reality is left here, Zhao Wenduo has no extra thoughts.Even though he felt that the rags were dripping with ashes and the sanitation was worrying, he still silently put the wrapped pancakes into his pocket.

Food is settled, and then there is drinking. It is inevitable to be thirsty after chopping firewood for a day, even if you eat without water.

"Third brother, take this." Zhao Wenlan took out a military kettle from her small bag, filled it with a scoop of boiling water, and said, "It must be cold to stay in the mountains for a day, and the water in this kettle can cool slowly Come on, when the time comes, drink more while it’s hot to keep you warm.”

Zhao Wenduo looked down at the kettle in his hand. It had a new light green sleeve and a smooth dark green body. It was new at first glance, the kind that had never been used.

(End of this chapter)