Prose in sorghum red

In those years, in my hometown, it was autumn when sorghum was red.

So the children went to eat sorghum stalks, and there were sorghum stalks, wine jars and new brooms to sweep the floor at home.

The name sorghum was learned orally by adults. Later, I read an article called "Autumn has arrived", in which I remembered that "sorghum blushed and rice bent over with laughter", and the sentence "cotton turned gray" seemed to be changed to "corn was thick and strong". I remember that the book also has the name of sorghum, but it is not the staple food in our south.

Recently, Mr. Mo Yan won an award, and Mr. Zhang Yongquan also wrote an article. The article "Analysis of Life Factors" contained in the book made me learn, unplugged the red sorghum, and provoked my childhood sorghum complex for no reason.

During collective farming, the production team also left a few centimeters of private plots for members. Except for planting vegetables, the crops on private plots are basically the same as those on collective plots, such as wheat, sorghum, sweet potatoes, peas, gourds, corn and rape. Harvest, just according to the different family scenery, eat differently. In our family, when my great-grandmother was alive, she liked to make wine and steamed Baba to satisfy her taste, and we also improved our diet.

Peasant wine, not a small workshop, can't be dried in vain, only fermented grains and wine. Fermented grains are the staple food, and rice, rice and corn can all be used as raw materials, but the fermented grains used for confinement and Chinese New Year emphasize the use of fermented grains. In fact, the mash made of leftover rice and white jade rice is unique and fragrant. It seems that only sorghum can make cooking wine. As for rice sorghum and waxy sorghum, I don't remember it clearly. Anyway, when the sorghum is ripe, my great-grandfather will arrange, sometimes personally, to harvest the sorghum in the private plot, lay it well, sun it well, raise it well, and give it to his great-grandmother. Then he will clean up last year's cooking jars and give them to his great-grandmother to wait for coarse cooking wine.

Wheat cakes, duck cakes, tortillas, red cakes and sorghum cakes were once good cakes of our generation. Now, apart from Dapo people who occasionally sell a few sorghum cakes in Shangjiawan, they only remember "red-backed sorghum soup cakes"

During the wheat harvest season, I returned to my hometown. Urban and rural areas have been built, crop varieties have been divided, sorghum fields are still there, wheat seedlings are gone, beans are gone, rape is gone, and sorghum is not red.

When Mr. Mo Yan won the prize, the first thing that came to mind was red sorghum, not the wildness of that sorghum field, but the shock of the original ecology, which really made me linger. Sorghum stalks are really sweet, but later they are not sweet and empty, but just tie a broom. I tried to restore the sweet water seeds, waxy sorghum and rice sorghum on the poor oil sand on the back of the ancient cattle in my hometown, so that my children and grandchildren could remember that sorghum seeds can make wine, Baba and rice. Just passing through the thirsty sorghum fields and drinking an old wine, these thoughts have been forgotten again.

Right? A little old.