Prose of stealing sweet potatoes

Recently, breakfast is usually sweet potato with porridge, and I have eaten too much. My son became interested in sweet potatoes and asked me some stories about sweet potatoes, which reminded me of some interesting things about stealing sweet potatoes when I was a child.

After the Mid-Autumn Festival, the sweet potato on the ridge occupied the mountainous area of my hometown. The vines and leaves of the sweet potato grew vigorously, and the sweet potato in the soil began to squeeze, and some even squeezed out of the soil, revealing pink skin. This time is the fastest growing season for sweet potatoes and the best time to steal them.

The "homework" of stealing sweet potatoes is usually arranged after school in the afternoon. Several people consciously fell behind the school team, and when they were unprepared, they slipped into the green tent in the blink of an eye and muttered a few words, thus forming a team with a clear division of labor. Use the green gauze tent, close to the sweet potato field, as long as the sentry gives the signal to start work, the person who touches the sweet potato will start work immediately. In a short time, he will touch out a set number of sweet potatoes, put them in his clothes, and quickly withdraw from the battlefield and quickly evacuate to safety. Someone dug a hole and collected firewood. As soon as the sweet potatoes arrive, they will order a barbecue. The whole process is seamless and smooth, and experienced people must have it! Indeed, this is also summed up through continuous summing-up and continuous improvement after experiencing failures and blows. When I first started doing this, I didn't have any friends to look forward to, so I concentrated on digging sweet potatoes and digging them out. I looked up, and the owner of the sweet potato field stood upright in front of me, waving his fist and trying to resist. Friends scattered, and someone lost his schoolbag. After several failures, I felt that my senior partner was more eye-catching, so I assigned my first and second grade partners to dig sweet potatoes. But this has proved to be a practice that harms others and does not benefit others. Because they were too weak to dig sweet potatoes, they pulled out all the leaves and vines of sweet potatoes. This so-called big movement, small gains, and great public anger. At first, the senior "old thief" disdained to associate with us and thought our lessons were too poor. They studied our homework scene and said that we can know who did it according to the scene: "The first grade leaves, the second grade vines, and the third grade are all dirt."

It is said that our first-year students can only pull out sweet potato leaves, second-year students can only pull out sweet potato vines, and third-year students can only pull up the soil and steal no sweet potatoes. On the contrary, it made the scene miserable and would never do such a thing as "eating ugly". We also visited their "homework" website. Indeed, the sweet potato is gone, but everything else is intact! No wonder they boast that "it's okay after the old thief", and there is no appraisal after a long time. After reading someone else's "homework" scene, we know that stealing sweet potatoes is indeed a university. Q: First of all, we must look at the soil. The sand is loose and can be operated by hand. The black soil is sticky and we can "work" with the help of hard Shi Zhuan. Second, it depends on whether the soil surface is loose. If it is loose, it means that the sweet potato below is shallow, big or big, so it is more appropriate to start eating. If it is not loose, it means that the sweet potato below is deep, very small or very small, which is not suitable for operation. Third, it depends on the growth of sweet potatoes. It is easy to take potatoes in the direction of their growth, but it is difficult to do the opposite. After offering a batch of erasers and expressing countless admiration, the "old thief" secretly taught us the experience of years of sweat condensation: "First-class lookout, second-class chopping wood, third-class digging, fourth-class burying, fifth-class old thief touching potatoes." This secret is about team division of labor: the first grade is responsible for the lookout, and the little people are easily overlooked and safe; Sophomore is responsible for collecting dry wood, and the work is not heavy; The third grade is responsible for digging holes, not too strong and with low technical content; The fourth grade is responsible for testing sweet potatoes, with high technical content, and only experienced people can do their homework; The fifth level is responsible for stealing sweet potatoes, with high risk level and high technical content, and belongs to expert operators. The secret really solves the big problem, and the effect is obviously improved by following the secret. Of course, it is not foolproof. Sometimes people will stop you before you enter, and sometimes you will be found doing your homework. Fortunately, most host families don't care about my little baby, some just say a few words, some just make a few steps, at most, they just report to their parents and let them tidy up me. The ancients said that "there is a way for thieves", and we also have our own rules: we can't be "prisoners", so if we are found, we must flee quickly; Thieves never steal or patronize the same sweet potato field continuously; Wait, it's all the result of self-learning and constantly summing up experiences and lessons.

Stolen sweet potatoes can naturally be eaten raw, but this is not our favorite. Our favorite is barbecue. The work ahead is tense, and so is the work behind. You need to dig a hole to bake sweet potatoes. Pits are generally located in remote and sheltered places, which are safer and easier to make a fire. The size of the pit depends on the number of sweet potatoes, and the number of sweet potatoes depends on the number of partners, which is naturally known to everyone. When digging the pit, the dry wood was basically ready, and the sweet potato was almost behind, so the sweet potato was buried in the pit as soon as it arrived and immediately made a fire. At that time, lighters were not owned by ordinary people, and matches were not easily taken out by children. The way we take is to make a fire by friction, find a few fluorites and rub each other. This is a bit technical. If you cut your finger in the wrong way, you won't have sparks, but if you have experience, you will have sparks and light firewood, and there will be such experienced talents among us. After the dry wood was lit, the barbecue began. The sweet potato in the pit needs to be turned over at the right time, otherwise it will be burnt on one side and not ripe on the other, so friends will add firewood in one hand and turn over the potatoes in the other, laughing and swallowing saliva until the sweet potato releases its fragrance. Experienced partners can grasp the time well. The sweet potato is baked just right, but some partners are not sure. Sweet potatoes are burnt into black charcoal, whether raw or cooked or well-done. Everyone is very happy and delicious. Everyone ate their hands full of dust, their faces were black, pointing at each other and making fun of each other. Eat, put out the fire, stand in a circle, take off your pants, pee together, put out the fire completely, and leave. There are also barbecues, cigarettes or sweet potatoes, and adults who cut wood or herd cattle will be invited to look around the fire pit. Not much to say, just squat and smoke nearby. After the sweet potato is cooked, I will naturally know to send it to storage. There are also some adults squatting by the pit, pointing to our barbecue technology, which is not as good as their skilled exclamation. When people point out the barbecue technology, they never mention the source of sweet potatoes, which is more vivid and in-depth than pure technical exchange. At that time, cunning friends secretly enjoyed their cleverness and adult insensitivity. Now that I think about it, in addition to simplicity, it is more about love and tolerance.

The second best time to steal sweet potatoes is in the middle of winter vacation. At that time, sweet potatoes were put into the cellar in front of and behind the house to prevent freezing and corruption. The cellar is generally deep and needs a ladder to get down; Pits are mostly round, first covered with firewood and then compacted with sand. At that time, without winter vacation homework, holidays would be free. When I jump around in the field, I naturally miss the crisp and sweet potatoes in the cellar. In the dead of winter, villagers usually close the door and sit around the fireplace to chat and do things. Therefore, it is not risky to do "homework" around the sweet potato cellar in front of the house, but it is definitely not without technical content.

Stealing sweet potatoes in the cellar has been repeatedly proved to be extremely inappropriate, and it is extremely easy for the owner to catch thieves in the cellar. But if you don't go on, you can't reach the sweet potato, which used to be a very annoying problem for me. After several failures, I don't know which partner came up with a good idea: find a long bamboo pole, sharpen one end, touch the edge of the sweet potato cellar, open a small mouth, pound it with the tip of the bamboo pole, lift it, and you will get something! With the solution, the next step is to find the opportunity of "homework". At night, when the smoke rises, the friends are sent out in groups, and the sentry, cover, construction and transfer are in their positions, cooperating with each other and completing the "homework" in one go. The best time for homework is when it is snowing heavily. The people in the village closed the door to cover Chai Fei and talked about life around the stove. We can swagger, unhurriedly and methodically do our homework, and we don't need to deal with the traces after "homework". Snow will naturally solve these problems with our friends. Winter "homework" also has its own professional ethics in winter. For example, don't leave the broken sweet potato in the cellar to prevent it from festering and causing the whole cellar sweet potato to fester; After the "operation", the sweet potato pit should be tightly closed and restored to its original state to prevent the sweet potato from festering in the pit due to water leakage; Wait a minute.

After stealing sweet potatoes in winter, there is no need to dig holes in the wild for barbecue, because every family has a ready-made fireplace. Of course, the stolen sweet potato dare not barbecue in its own fireplace, because it can't stand the torture of its parents. As a result, "easy baking" came into being: parents found that other people's children baked sweet potatoes from the fireplace, not only did not ask questions, but provided convenience and help! As a result, in the snowy fields, naughty teenagers who laughed and ate sweet potatoes in their hometown in the past years appeared.

The smoke in the dream is blurred, and it seems like yesterday when I wake up. The taste of baked sweet potatoes has traveled through time and space, from innocent children's scenes to unquestionable ages, from simple prosperity to simplicity at first sight. The white cloud breeze smoked by baked sweet potatoes has been with me for thousands of years. The misty mountain village, the old house in the fog cage and the small bridge in the rain can always find clear memories in the hazy feeling, but in a nostalgic day, you can always look back and find an ignorant, naughty and naive childhood.