An essay on the beautiful prose of the past

Stop working on the hottest day of the year.

I wonder if there is such an idyllic style in other places. Anyway, in our rural Yancheng, when it is hot in summer, most people will take the married girl home for a few nights. The name is "summer break".

I took my daughter for the summer vacation, mostly because I was too tired at the man's house, so I found such a reason to go home and reunite. I just didn't expect it to last for so many years.

During the long summer vacation, children have plenty of time, and adults let them take it. If the child is unreasonable, he asks, well, what are you doing with your sister? Adults will show their faces, don't you think Sister is tired at home, take it home to rest! By the way, you are still tired of playing. Hearing this, the child stretched out his tongue and trotted to his sister's house. It doesn't have to be hot to take a girl home, it just means it. At that time, there seemed to be endless work in the fields. The daughter married her husband's family, married a laborer, and worked in the fields all day. If you don't take it, you will definitely be gossiped by others. Your daughter is married, so it doesn't matter. Look at this, how ugly it is. It seems that our daughter is not heartless.

When a daughter brings it back, she usually treats it as a relative, which is also very serious. Catch up early to enjoy the cool, go shopping to buy fish and meat, and come back for entertainment. After lunch, I also took my daughter shopping and bought some summer things, such as oil-paper umbrellas, straw hats and sandals. If conditions permit, pull another piece of cloth. Poor conditions are different. The children at home have another trip, and eating or not is a problem. Where can I get spare money? I will eat rice and porridge. Anyway, the daughter was born by herself. Daughters are also sensible. When she goes back to her parents' house, if it doesn't go well, she will detour to the street. She knows that there are several greedy brothers and sisters at home. When they saw you coming home, they ran to the road to meet you, then rummaged through your bag and grabbed the cake fritters to eat.

I don't know when it started, some in-laws began to spend the summer vacation with their daughters-in-law who had never gone through the door. In-laws have their own ideas about them. It's a matter of course to take your daughter with you. Is it really a daughter? No, it's a daughter-in-law, a son's future wife and a first-degree relative. Can't be careless. If you have a daughter, ask her to come back with you. It is a good choice to treat guests with big fish and big meat. In short, it makes people happy. After lunch, after a short rest, I will take people to the streets. Things in summer can't be too bad. After that, I will buy something delicious like fruit candy. There are brothers and sisters in the family and children in the neighbor's house. The best thing is that all the bags bought for girls should be full. There is no money at home, even if you borrow money, you should make the girl's face look good. You can't ask people to go back to gossip. It's a small thing to lose the face of your in-laws, but it's a big thing to lose your daughter-in-law.

For this matter, my sister suffered a lot of grievances. Elder sister is ten years older than me, and married in the countryside of a neighboring town, more than twenty miles away. When I went to take her, unfortunately, my brother-in-law went out on business. She doesn't worry about chickens, ducks and pigs at home, and she doesn't worry that the grass in the cotton field will be scraped off and germinated. Anyway, I was dragged by things that day and didn't come back with me. The next day, I went again. I promised to wait at the ferry. This river is sixty or seventy meters wide, and I can clearly see the people on the other side of the river. There were many people on board, but there was no sign of her. The ship landed and everyone went ashore one by one. I also look at them carefully one by one, for fear that I will miss them. In this way, waiting is more than an hour. Maybe my sister was busy with housework at home, so I crossed the river and hurried to her house. Who knows, when I got to her house, the door was locked, and then I went to my neighbor's house to inquire and set off early in the morning. I'm afraid of crossing the ferry and meeting me on my way home, in order to make me walk less. This has happened before. On the way back, I watched one by one, chased the village entrance of my hometown, and finally got rid of her. My sister ignored me and just walked on with her little nephew in her arms. I know, she left so much and got angry. Not only angry, she said when she got home, tears came out. My mother scolded me for walking without eyes and winked at me as she spoke. I covered my mouth and laughed, then squatted down, grabbed my nephew's little hand and patted me on the head. This is my uncle's fault, and it's also my uncle's fault. When my sister saw it, she couldn't help laughing, and the injustice in her eyes began to disappear.

Elder sister is usually at home for a day or two, and I haven't seen her idle for two days. On a hot day, the clothes of a family of seven or eight people, plus my nephew's, are full of a big bath bucket. After washing, I fed my nephew and went to mow the grass on the private plot. My brother and I took turns holding my nephew in the back to play. At that time, a population was divided into two parts, with eight people and six acres. Corn and soybeans grow in the field, and weeds are everywhere. Before the production team leaves work, the elder sister will come up to cook. Parents and brothers who work are very hard. When they got home, they had to rest in the arbor. The table has been set for them to eat ready-made food. When eating, my mother scolded them, saying that she was taking you home for the summer vacation, not taking you home for the summer vacation. Elder sister said, nothing, nothing, not tired, idle is idle.

Now it's all mechanized work, weeding has pesticides, and there is not so much work in the field. Even if there is, it won't involve children. Nowadays, most girls are working. When they have children, they take them with them. When they have leisure, they often go home to have a look. There is no need to bring them back in the summer vacation. Summer vacation is no longer synonymous with family ties or giving your daughter a vacation. It will gradually fade into the memory of the years with the beauty of life.

Yiliangpeng

When I was a child, in summer, every family would build a simple arbor and eat in it three times a day. Especially at noon, it is the most useful, which can shade the sun and enjoy the cool.

At that time, the thatched cottage was very short, and the family was bored in it at noon. When eating, people will think of building a gazebo under a big tree. Shade also has a cool effect, but it is not conducive to eating. The reason is that there will be gaps between the leaves above, which will be very hot and very uncomfortable. Besides, there are bugs on the tree and bird droppings suddenly fall into soup bowls and plates. How to eat them?

Building a gazebo is a simple matter. Better have a big tree. It's much more convenient to erect it on the tree stem, and it can also save some materials. If not, find some long sticks or bamboo with thick arms at home. Dig several square pits, erect wooden sticks, bury them in the pits, and then backfill them with broken soil and tamp them. The beam above should be straight, pinch a few thatched ropes, carefully tie the beam-column joints above, and finally put reed curtains on several beams. If possible, it can also be covered with plastic film and covered with a layer of corn stalk. In another hour, a simple pavilion will be built. At noon, put the table and stool under it, and then the family get together for dinner. If there is a cool breeze, how pleasant it would be. In this way, some people are still stumped. At ordinary times, some people don't even think about it here, so they just burn firewood. Suddenly I wanted to find some decent ones, and I was a little confused. I had to go to my neighbor's house to find them. I searched for several in a row and finally found a few. At that time, decent sticks were rare!

There are also some people who are very particular. They would rather spend more time and energy to build a gazebo. They are worried that if it is not built well, people will say, hey, things look like masters! You see, it's ugly. It's hard to find a wife when a child is older. It is neither worthwhile nor worthwhile to save trouble for this. Some of them are too lazy to borrow a good saw from the carpenter's house. When they come back, they move all the trees and branches in the house to the door, then look at this, aim at that and put the useful ones aside. Take the child aside when you take it. The meaning is self-evident: learning, this is called slow work and fine work. At that time, the child was naughty and amused, so he moved a stool, stood on it, raised one end of the beam above his head, and waited for his father to tie it at that end. The adults also put on a serious look. Every time they tie a knot, they pull it with their hands to see if it is secure.

In my impression, the pavilion of Liu Xue's rich family in this village is the best, which can be said to be a landscape in the village. What is said here is that his arbor is not very beautiful, but it is very strong. Uncle Xuefu is a veteran artist in the village and has more than a dozen apprentices. He used elm branches as pillars and locust branches as beams, and then covered them with grass layer by layer. Every day when he came home from work, he climbed up and built it, and it took him several days to finish it. Cover tightly and firmly, just like a roof, it must have a slope and a surface, so that the rain can't penetrate. The wind can't help it. After several years of continuous use, the appearance remains the same except for the loss of the original bright luster. To this end, the production team asked him to build a house in the team and also asked him to build a shed for cows and donkeys.

A woman who can live will use the arbor as a shelf and point some lentils or loofah seeds at the root of the column. Before long, vines tore and covered the gazebo. In addition to adding a little coolness at noon, you can also smell the fragrance of small flowers.

Now the houses in the countryside are tall, spacious and very cool, and every household has used electric fans and air conditioners successively. Who will build a gazebo? The arbor is just the shadow of life, gradually handed over to the dust of the years.