At that time, as long as there were one or two straw houses and a fence, no matter how big or small, people would have a sense of belonging and identity even if they had a home. Straw houses, this special building can hardly be seen in urban areas, but it is very common in rural areas, and there are more in mountainous areas. Straw houses in dam areas are generally tall and spacious; This mountain area is very low and narrow. We are in the dam area, where there are many forests, mainly pine trees. Naturally, the straw house is made of pine branches and leaves on the mountain. There are no trees in the mountain areas or river valley areas with a little higher altitude, and thatch is a good material for building straw houses. Many farmers use straw and straw to cover, which is equally applicable, beautiful and comfortable.
This kind of straw house looks extremely simple and its structure is not complicated. The bottom is rectangular and the top is herringbone. Length, width and size are auspicious numbers. Footings are stones and strips, walls are earth walls, and partitions are earth walls. When the soil is lifted up, it becomes a house, and when it is pushed down, it becomes soil. The beam is pine, the floor is bamboo and the roof is thatched. Take it from nature and return it to nature. Generally, people in rural areas choose a land with sunny feng shui, choose a auspicious day to start work, lay a good foundation, and then build a wall. One is to dig directly by hand, erect wallboard, and tamp the soil with a wall pestle; One is to use mud to build the dirt baskets into walls one by one, and the construction of the walls is not completed at once. More than a dozen wooden boards must be installed in the middle of the base as the first layer, and the construction will continue for several days until the foundation part is basically dry. After the wall is repaired, the carpenter will be asked to install the girders and beams. When the girder is installed, it is necessary to hang red and light a few cakes of firecrackers to show prosperity, peace, happiness and auspiciousness. Finally, the rafters were made of pine and covered with grass, which basically succeeded. But in those days, it was not easy to build such a simple straw house. A house is only/kloc-0.00 yuan, 200 yuan, but our monthly salary is dozens of yuan, and a farmer can only suffer a few cents a day. Many people have to save up for several years to build a straw house. Parents scrimp and save, go out early and come back late, and don't even rest on New Year's Eve. They worked hard for several years and built a thatched cottage. More than 40 square meters, a family of five, as well as grain, pigs and cows, are all squeezed into this narrow space, and this space where people and animals live together has always remained in my memory.
My father's thatched cottage faces south. Like other thatched cottages in the village, the thatched cottages of dozens of families gather together. They are all the same gray and herringbone structure, dotted in an ancient bush, brewing a mysterious and special atmosphere against the blue sky. Walking into this house, there is a cowshed on the left, stinking, a fireplace and tableware on the right, a floor for stacking food on it, and a bed and wardrobe behind the partition in the middle of the house. The family lives here poetically. "Farmers hoe plows, crops grow acres", pulling carts, plowing and harrowing fields, and raising cattle as adopted sons are the lifeblood of their parents. Fortunately, a few years later, my parents built a low hut for cows on the west side of the hut.
When I was a teenager, I studied in the city and went to several classmates' homes in the mountains. Then, there is another commonplace discovery: the houses in the city are not big, but they are basically tile houses and stone roads; The more dam areas and mountainous areas, the more straw houses and dusty roads will be built. After moving the livestock out, I will do everything possible to make the house and the outside clean and beautiful. I will plant several landscape trees in front of and behind the house to make myself have a comfortable and tidy living environment. When relatives and friends come, I will naturally praise them, and my self-esteem is so inflated that I can't even fit in the cabin.
Perhaps it is because of the abundant or even even uniform rain in those years, or perhaps the economic situation has improved. Dozens of thatched houses in the village grow like mushrooms, and some even become red bricks in tile houses. In front of the village is a large paddy field with almost perennial water accumulation, and a gray roof overlooks the large paddy field from a distance. My father planted dozens of trees in the front and back of the house, including persimmons, walnuts, dates, honeylocust, pepper, peach trees, jujube trees, apricot trees, bamboo forests, weeping willows, locust trees and other landscape trees, as well as various medicinal materials and flowers. Hungry, picking a few fruits can satisfy hunger; If you can't afford foreign alkali (soap), you can wash clothes with a few soap feet; If you have a cold or hurt your hands and feet, dig up some medicine to solve the problem. Dig a pond in front of the door. If there are no fry, catch a few small fish in the field and put them in the pond, and they can grow to more than half a catty a year. When the guests come, put one or two fish in the pot, which is convenient and fresh. Plant another arrowhead, and there will be no food in winter.
When the material conditions are extremely difficult, the happiness index of our village is very high. A village, dozens of families, each has a certain space. They are all straw houses, and occasionally several tile houses are thick walls, but the information will not stop flowing because of a wall. The people in the village will know in a few minutes which family bought a bicycle and a black-and-white TV set, which family got married and which old man died. In the evening, all the men, women and children in the village have a good meal, or make fun under the big tree, or sing folk songs in the moonlight, or gather in front of the TV.
Different from the city, the houses in the city are basically tile houses, which are a street and indirect. In fact, there is only one wall between households, which is thin and wooden, and this wall is the direct medium of information dissemination. When I was a child, I studied in the city and lived under the lamp of my uncle's house from my cabin. There are two houses next door, one is upstairs and the other is downstairs. I often hear the sound of something hitting the wall. The sound has a different texture, sometimes it is a chair, a clothes rack, a book, and sometimes it is a complete human body. So, living in this glamorous urban community, I feel that the whole public space is desperately squeezed, leaving only a narrow aisle, a kitchen and a toilet.
The wooden wall in the city is too thin, not as thick as the earth wall in the countryside, and there is a certain space between the walls, so the neighbors' secrets can be shared with everyone. Just like taking a bus or a train sleeper, people with different lifestyles, different habits, different personalities and complete strangers are pushed into a narrow space by random selection, so that they can expose their most decadent, exhausted and careless side to each other after the glory of the day disappears. As soon as my uncle drinks, he regards me as the object of education, which is much more powerful than the teacher. As soon as the high notes are turned on, the scolding lasts for an hour or two, and the neighbors are restless, and they will come over and complain about their uncle at any time. One night, around eleven o'clock, I heard a girl crying seriously nearby. This is a very elegant and beautiful girl. The crying is full of unspeakable sadness and injustice, accompanied by the sound of cooking-she may have to work the night shift, so even if the sky is falling, she still has to eat dinner and work the night shift. All the midnight assembly lines belonging to this city can't stop. Perhaps, in this city, it is easy to meet thousands of kinds of sadness, but it is often not suitable for telling others in detail.
In the 1990s, there were many tile houses in the village, and my father's new tile house was completed. In a lonely autumn, the straw house at home seems to collapse, just like a fallen leaf that is about to wither in the wind. The autumn rain is continuous, and the roof has been leaking. Wardrobes, altars and dining tables are always filled with pots and pans, and spilled rainwater should be dumped at any time. My mother, who was thrifty all her life, was able to eat leftovers for several days in a row. Unfortunately, she got liver cancer. She has been lying in bed for months, looking at the dark roof and raindrops, and her chest keeps bursting with blood and pus. A pair of empty eyes often look at the harvested fields through the window. My mother left quietly in a golden autumn, and the whole family was heartbroken. I didn't expect my mother to have cancer. For more than a year, my mother has lived in hospitals, cities and provinces, and doctors dare not even move the procedures. I searched all the anti-cancer and analgesic drugs found on the Internet and introduced by my friends, and bought her some things that she likes to eat, hoping to have a certain effect, but her condition is getting worse every day, and there is nothing anyone can do. At the junction of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, a withered weed, a pile of loess and a tombstone constitute the scenery of mother's cemetery, just like her indifferent and plain life. Sadly, until my mother died, I was afraid to tell her what the real illness was. Even worse, my mother didn't feel the process of urbanization, didn't live in a high-rise building, didn't even enjoy a decent house for a day, and even quietly left this beautiful world without seeing her great-granddaughter.
After my mother died, we built a reinforced concrete bungalow in the same place and a bungalow in the market town, and the family moved to the market town to live. I hope my father, who has worked hard all his life, will enjoy the happiness of the new era in his lifetime. Unfortunately, this is just our wishful thinking. My 80-year-old father always wants to live in his hometown and is reluctant to leave it. It is useless for relatives and friends to persuade him again and again. If he talks too much, his eyes will be filled with tears. Always go back to your hometown and buy some food, clothes, pots and pans and other daily necessities at any time. However, my hometown is a mess. There are all kinds of discarded cartons, paper bags and plastic packaging bags everywhere. Peanut high-calcium drinks, Zhaotong mung bean cakes and cakes sent by relatives and friends are never willing to open and eat, and most of them have expired. A puppy is accompanied by its father. There are many old things at home, mother's relics, such as mother's worn sweatshirts, shoes, cotton-padded clothes with holes and so on. Everything looks useless, but his father can't bear to throw away everything and won't allow anyone to throw it away. For my father, every grain, every inch of cloth, a tile and a needle are extremely precious.
The years are silent, there is no straw house warm in winter and cool in summer, and there is no mother. Less elegance and warmth, more helplessness and sadness, more bitterness and silence. The low hut and my mother's figure have become memories I will always remember.