Sahuan, tell me about it

Boys naturally like to play with water. If they are addicted to it, it is of course the most enjoyable to run wild in the wild river in summer. Fortunately, there is a Shahe River not far from our village, which is definitely a good place to cool off.

Before the summer evening came, my father took me to the Shahe River to take a bath with simple bathing supplies: a piece of soap and a towel. Through our village, we walked down a dry ditch along a path, through Yang Shulin, a deserted adobe kiln, climbed up the dry ditch and crossed the vast fields along the path, then went south through a small village to the river slope, and then walked along the river slope to the river.

From the cuckoo's cry to the fragrance of stubble, washing began until the noisy cicadas stirred up the fragrance of cultivated soil, until endless green peanuts and corn seedlings, and countless watermelons rolled across a large area of Gua Tian.

This riverside stadium will also bring a lot of fun to children. Sometimes, a watermelon will slip out of the watermelon field and some tomatoes will be stolen from the tomato field. Sometimes, we will look for kingfisher caves on steep slopes, or dig springs with wooden sticks on the shore.

Many times a year, it is suitable for bathing in the river, mainly during the summer vacation. From the beginning of the summer vacation to the beginning of school, it seems that the whole summer vacation is immersed in that extremely happy river.

We always go with some people, and sometimes only my father and I come back. The path in the moonlight exudes a faint white light, insects in the field fluctuate up and down, and there is a melon-watcher's cough and a shaking flashlight in Gua Tian's hut. The moon is bright and the stars are sparse, the night wind is gentle, and the dark green fields are rippling with silver ripples.

Under the dry ditch, people with multi-colors whose moonlight is covered by dense Yang Shulin will inevitably feel a little timid. Those ghost stories that I have heard many times seem to happen in the dense forest at night. Every step I take, I always feel footsteps behind me, which scares me to look back. I just followed my father closely.

The most terrible thing is that long-abandoned earthen kiln full of weeds. Strange to say, I always play in this earthen kiln with my friends during the day, and sometimes I go to the cave to look for treasure together. At night, I will feel that there is an unknown and mysterious world in the dark hole, for fear that some monsters lurking in it will suddenly rush out.

In a word, I always have my heart in my throat when I pass by the earthen kiln to go home at night. I didn't breathe a sigh of relief until I walked into the dry ditch, heard the barking of dogs and saw the bright lights in the villagers' yard.

So, dad won't take me to the river to take a bath so late. It will be a little earlier, but most of the time I take a shower in the big plastic basin in the yard. Only at this time, the big plastic basin obviously can't make me lie comfortably in it.

Fortunately, there is a river next to grandma's house, and grandpa is good at growing melons. Every summer vacation, grandpa's home is my amusement park, and it is also a lively scene.

Grandpa's melon is very big and sweet, and can be eaten from morning till night. That's a real treat.

We can also eat in different ways. We can cut a huge watermelon in half with a knife and then cut it into small teeth, so adults can pick it up and eat it directly. And we children always enjoy the privilege. Grandpa will carefully peel off the melon skin with a knife, then cut off the black watermelon seeds one by one with the tip of the knife, and finally give the watermelon meat to us children.

There is another way to eat watermelon, that is, divide it into two parts, hold it in your arms and eat it with a small spoon. After eating, he looked up and drank soup together. My favorite food is those small watermelons that don't grow up. We call them watermelon girls. It is these little girls who eat the most, because a big and beautiful watermelon is to be loaded and pulled out to exchange wheat for money.

The way of eating watermelon is even more enjoyable. Grandpa will peel watermelons like apples, leaving the melon tails for us to chew one by one. A watermelon can make a sound after eating its stomach. Grandpa will smile and say, "The big watermelon is ripe!" "That was a real blow.

Grandpa's village is very small, maybe only twenty or thirty families. There is a small grass river next to the village, with a deep slope and a high Yang Shulin. The river is not wide, but it is clear. There is a small piece of soil on the river slope, and people will take turns drying grain during busy farming; Usually, whoever washes the wheat and prepares to grind the flour will come here to bask; Sometimes women will play with quilts here.

In the summer evening, this small mud yard is very lively. When people cook dinner, they come here one after another with bowls in their hands. In summer, the evening breeze blows along the river bank and I eat my own food. It seems that the same bowl of vegetables is sweeter to eat in this earthen yard than at home.

People talk about crop harvest, weddings and funerals, ancestors and descendants, neighborhood relations, conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, filial piety to children and grandchildren, anecdotes and so on. People can always magically discuss a topic in different ways for many days, and children are not very interested in it.

Children are always the first to finish their meals. As soon as they lost their bowls and chopsticks, they ran into the river slope. Adults will stand up with bowls and shout, "Don't go into the river yet, you can't see clearly in the dark, and go down with adults later." The children replied, "Let's climb the fork." Slide down the river slope in an instant. Adults scribbled food, men dropped their chopsticks and walked down the river slope, and women and girls picked up chopsticks and went home.

In summer, after-dinner entertainment bears the brunt, and the Yang Shulin on this river slope is flourishing. The day is the kingdom of cicadas, and the night is the world of fork crawlers. Of course, this is also the season when people harvest forked climbing plants. The light of the flashlight shone back and forth in the Woods, and the trees were carefully examined. Whenever a climbing fork is found climbing the trunk, the children always enjoy it and sometimes gain a lot.

Of course, not everyone is keen on climbing forks. After several contacts, they got bored. They took off their clothes and plopped into the river. This plop tickles everyone's heart.

People immediately sent a small group of children to send the harvested climbing fork home, then stripped off their clothes and jumped into the gentle river. After a while, the children who sent the climbing fork home returned to the river and played naked in this small grass river like happy fish.

Those who can swim can swim within the safe range specified by adults, and those who are good at swimming can swim to the other side. I am not familiar with the water, so I can only play in the shallow water near the shore, grabbing the roots exposed in the water and tossing my feet hard, trying to float myself. The faint moonlight sprinkled on the river, causing a sparkling laugh.

I don't know who made the rules or the established tradition. After the men and boys have taken a bath, there are delicious climbing forks on the kitchen table at home, waiting for the men and children to come back and taste them.

When the last few men climbed the river slope, the women took the girls to the river. The smell of climbing forks in the kitchen of every household, as well as the waves of happy laughter of women brought by the river wind, rose from the quiet village, rose from the dense poplar forest, mixed with the smell of wet aquatic plants, and floated in the cool moonlight.

Attention: Please don't go into the river without permission. The water depth is dangerous. Those who like swimming can go to the swimming pool or be accompanied by an adult man who is familiar with water.