A few precious essays on peasant pits

As the saying goes, people are not as smart as home. In the practice of production and life, people invented and created various labor tools. With these tools, it is often convenient to do things quickly and get twice the result with half the effort.

The first thing-sweep the kang broom

When I was young, my grandmother used to trick me into playing riddles. For example, "A yellow dog came from the south. Take the main road. " Grandma told me that this object is not difficult to guess, it is in the house.

So I searched and searched, and finally found it was a broom on the kang.

There are few beds in the country, but many people are kang. When laying a kang, build a kang hole better than the smoke in the stove chamber, lay a kang surface blank, wipe the kang surface well, lay a few strands of straw to play an elastic role, and then lay a kang mat on it to become a fire-resistant kang.

Nowadays, beds in cities are cleaned with big plastic brushes, while kang in rural areas is cleaned with brooms. Usually, I do needlework on the kang, put a small kang table for eating and sleep directly on the kang, so I have to clean the kang frequently, which is inseparable from the broom, which is very easy to remove the hidden impurities in the pattern of the kang mat.

Producers are handy, and usually sweep the kang broom by themselves. The material used is a special sorghum with long and scattered ears. Because of the low yield, people only plant one and a half ridges on the edge of private plots. When autumn is ripe, cut the ear, knock down the grain and scrape off the sorghum shell at the node. After soaking, they can be used to clean the broom of kang.

I have seen my father's pot brush, and I have seen the process of sweeping the kang broom and sweeping the floor broom many times during the slack season. After preparing the husked and soaked sorghum ears and fine hemp rope, use your fingers to find a rope several meters long, one end tied to your waist and the other end tied to a solid object. Put more than a dozen stalks on sorghum ears into the rope, and then drag your body backwards. The rope will tighten the back of sorghum ears. At this time, tie it with fine hemp rope, once every two or three inches, then tie it again, cut off the remaining straw with a knife and tie it with a brush for washing the pot.

The way to tie the broom is a little more complicated. Tie two or three brooms together, then erect two or three at will, and then tie them together, so that more than a dozen rows are arranged into a broom.

Children are sometimes naughty, so they are often held by adults with brooms.

According to the old man, there was once a woman in the village who was beaten by her man with a broom for something. She has always held a grudge and wanted a divorce. One day, a fortune teller came to the village, and she went to tell her fortune. She said she was a widow and asked the fortune teller if she would remarry. The fortune teller scratched his head and said, "Your family is doing very well. Why get married? " The widow told the story of her husband being beaten. The fortune teller smiled and said, "It's still open. He won't hit you again." No one can understand. The fortune teller said, "In a previous life, you were the owner of the car and your man was driving a horse. You flogged him 1000 times. He hit you ten times in his life, and there are more than a hundred strips on a broom. He just returned more than 1000 whips in his last life. Ha ha, you don't owe each other, live a good life. "

This story gave me a good excuse to hit people with a broom later.

The second piece-sock bottom plate

One day in the early summer of this year, I screened more than a dozen pairs of socks that had been worn all winter, and all of them were gradually eliminated. When I threw some broken socks into the trash can, it suddenly occurred to me that if these socks had been put in the past, my grandmother would never have let them be thrown away, because they could still be worn after being mended, which reminded me of the sewing box at home when I was a child, which contained two sock bottoms.

Sock soles, also called sock boards and sock holders, are tools for sewing socks. In the hard times of "new three years, old three years, sewing and mending again and again", every family has a basket or box filled with needle and thread, which actually contains not only needles and threads, but also scissors, awls and thimbles, and the biggest object should be the soles of socks.

I haven't seen the soles of socks for many years, and I don't think young people have seen them now. In my memory, the sock bottom plate in my sewing box is so kind and familiar, just like bronzing, it is deeply branded in my mind.

When grandma was alive, I often watched her mend socks for adults with big soles and children with small soles. The bottom of socks is made of wood, which looks like human feet and shoes, but there are no complete uppers, only soles and two small uppers. Socks are just like feet, and it is convenient to fill holes. Because socks are often mended with soles, the edges are polished very smoothly.

At that time, most socks were made of cotton, which didn't wear well. It wasn't long before the toes or heels were worn out. A pair of socks are often mended, so grandma often mendes worn socks for us. She put the torn socks on the sock bottom plate and let the sock bottom plate spread them out. Then tie the sock factory and sew the prepared patch in the hole of the sock. This scene is still fresh in my memory.

At that time, every winter, my parents wouldn't let me go out and run wild. I have to stay at home and sit on the kang next to my grandmother. There are really no toys, so I often put the sock bottom plate in the sewing basket on the windowsill. When the car is pushed around, I honk my horn in my mouth and play very hard.

After grandma's death, my mother and sisters used soles to mend socks. The mended socks have been worn for many years. I don't remember when the sock bottom plate was idle and I never wore patched socks. I haven't seen those two sock soles left by my grandmother since then.

The third piece-corn perforation

For many years, corn has been the main crop in rural areas of northeast China. There may be two reasons, one is that the soil and climate here are more suitable for its growth, and the other is that the yield of corn is higher than other crops. In those years, big corn was once the staple food of our family.

Every autumn, when the corn is fully ripe, all families take the corn stalks in their private plots home to dry and store them early. Sometimes, in order to save trouble, the production team often breaks unpolished corn stalks into rations and distributes them to households. So in the winter leisure season, almost every family has the Noemie Building, and there is a big basket full of glutinous rice on the kang. Families often sit around a big basket and rub glutinous rice. The kang is very hot, and the corn grains dry quickly. After drying, they can be ground into edible corn noodles in a mill.

Corn grains grow so densely on the cob that it is difficult to rub them off. You must use sharp things to make several gaps in the middle of the corn grains, so that the remaining corn grains can be rubbed off. At the beginning, people used awls and scissors to poke down, which was inconvenient and easy to cut their fingers. So, the wise man invented a simple and practical corn piercer.

The main material of corn perforator is elm or elm root, which is half a meter long and about 10 cm in diameter. Leave a stout branch as a handle, dig a shallow groove on one side of the log, make a hole in the middle, and embed a big nail in the middle of the groove.

When in use, the corn is pushed to the nail along the shallow groove, and the nail will draw a groove in the middle of the corn, and the crossed corn particles will leak out from the hole in the middle and flow into the basket. If two or three grooves are evenly cut on a corn cob, the remaining corn grains will be rubbed off. With corn to wear, rubbing corn is much easier.

In those years, not every family had corn to wear, so there was little leisure time in winter. Several families use a piece of corn to tie seeds, and they have to take turns to number them, sometimes even waiting in the previous one, and taking them as soon as the latter one runs out.

Corn seeds are simple and practical to wear, which can be said to be an invention in rural life. The corn piercer, which has been used for a long time, has a smooth and delicate surface and a red light, giving people an antique feeling.

With the development of the times, threshers have been widely used in rural areas, and corn is rarely rubbed by hand, so corn is idle.

I went back to my hometown a few days ago and saw a corn seed in my relatives' eyes. I said this thing is worth collecting. Maybe it will be a valuable antique in the future.

The fourth piece-round mallet

When I was very young, every late autumn, I often heard the sound of "banging" wooden sticks, far and near, one after another, like a country symphony echoing in the autumn wind and playing over this black land.

Mallets are usually used in pairs to iron starched clothes or sheets. In the north of China, the cold weather accounts for almost half of a year, and you can often wash clothes and bedding in summer. However, in the winter when dripping water turns into ice, the washed clothes will still freeze hard at night after drying in the air for a day. In particular, sheets and mattresses can't be folded after freezing and hardening, and it is easy to break the cloth thread if they are folded slightly. Therefore, the bedding removed and washed in autumn should wait until the next spring is warm. Bedding that can't be disassembled and washed for a long time is easy to get tired of sweat and dirt, and it is difficult to clean it when it is washed again. In order to clean the bedding next time, people often wash the bedding first, and then paste the washed bedding with rice and rice soup.

Sizing quilts is a traditional habit in rural areas, and it is impossible to prove when it started. The starched quilt will become stiff and difficult to sew when it is dried. At this time, spray a little water and fold it into a long strip. Two people cooperate with each other, holding one end in one hand. Stretching sheets at the same time is a bit like tug-of-war. Shrinking sheets will recover. Then fold several layers and put them on the mallet stone, and beat them repeatedly and rhythmically on the sheets to make them smooth and soft.

I remember that my family had a pair of wooden sticks handed down from my ancestors. Put it under the kang cabinet in your spare time. In my impression, the wooden stick is shaped like a big Spanish mackerel, about 6 cm in diameter, with a slightly smooth front abdomen and a slightly thin carved handle at the end, with a total length of about 50 cm, and is made of hard miscellaneous wood. Matching the mallet is a mallet board about one meter long and half a meter wide, which is a thick and solid veneer. When in use, put something soft on the lower side of the mallet board, so that it is elastic to knock and will not cause arm pain. "When the moon flies in the capital, ten thousand washing mallets knock", two wooden sticks rise and fall alternately, banging, which sounds like percussion and full of rhythm. It can be described as a swan song that loves life.

Time flies. Now that the countryside is rich, the living standards of farmers have improved, and with the popularization of mechanization and electrification, many tools of life have retreated into people's memories and been sealed in the long scroll of history.