Smoke from the kitchen in my hometown

Cooking smoke is an indispensable scenery in my childhood hometown.

This landscape appears at different times every day, and its appearance time is closely related to dawn, noon and dusk. When it appeared, it was strong or weak because of different background colors such as sunrise, sunny sun and afterglow, which outlined three different ink paintings for my hometown.

Cooking smoke wakes up from dawn with my hometown every day. When plumes of smoke rose from the chimneys of every household to the sky, a new day began to boil in the hometown that had been silent for a night: while sweeping the yard, adults shouted each other's birth names and urged them to get off the kang; The chickens that have just been laid in the nest run and scream happily, and occasionally pull down a bubble. Angry people wave brooms and cry so much that chickens fly and dogs jump in the yard. The door of every household creaked open and the chicken and dog jumped out first. Some men carry poles to fetch water from wells, some go to pigsty to empty domestic garbage, and some carry hoes to work in the fields for a while.

At noon, the smoke in the kitchen rose again, like a silent signal sent by a woman who went home early to cook to a man who was still working in the hot sun in the field: Go home and eat!

The sun went down, leaving only a faint afterglow, and the kitchen smoke came and went. On the small roads in my hometown, people who come back from the fields can be seen everywhere. Some people walk in twos and threes with hoes and shovels, while others sit in ox carts, carriages and donkey carts, waving whips and shouting to walk home slowly. The children who came back from school saw smoke from their chimney at a distance and their mother was at home.

The villagers' three meals a day are not like the four seasons in the city. They follow the season. During the slack season, it is normal for villagers to make a fire and cook, and the time for each household to raise kitchen smoke is not much different; During the busy farming season, villagers get up early and love to work, so cooking with a fire will not be on time. There is a difference of two hours in the morning and evening. In short, we must plan the work in the field first, and it doesn't matter if we eat early or late.

At that time, there were many children in our family, and only parents had two full-time laborers. Compared with those families with more labor force, eating is the most unpredictable one. Breakfast is a little normal. Dad works alone in the field. Mother stayed at home to cook, feed the chickens and pigs and wake us up. Dad came back from work for a while, and the meal was ready. Mother arranged for the family to eat quickly. After dinner, she will take the children to the fields, and she will go to school with her schoolbag on her back. Maybe lunch and dinner at night. Sometimes when I come home from school at noon, my mother hasn't come home to cook. At first, I had a bad temper and complained. Then I slowly lost my temper. I had to move a piece of cold dry food, eat pickles and drink boiled water and go back to school. I didn't know until I grew up that my mother didn't want her children to have a hot meal. The field was really busy, and I forgot the time. Dinner is later. It seems that our family is always the last to eat. Every night, we look at the smoke from other people's kitchens and hope my parents will come back to cook early. Many times, neighbors are full and come to visit. My mother, who just came back from the field with her father, started to make a fire. After dinner, I saw that it was past nine o'clock on the wall.

At that time, there was no good meal, and it was common practice to stick porridge cakes with pickles. Occasionally, cooking soup is also an improvement. But at that time, the villagers were used to it and even numb. They never pick and choose. They didn't know to cook until they arrived, so that children can grow up when they are full, and adults can work hard when they are full. On the other hand, hard work and hard life have also tempered the appetite of villagers and reduced the requirements for food. No matter how rough and unpalatable the food is, they can still gobble it up, often giving people a delicious illusion, as if they have an iron stomach in their bellies. However, villagers' noses, especially children's noses, are sharp and very sensitive, even more clever than dogs' noses. Anyone who "stealthily" cooks something delicious can smell it from a distance and know whether he is cooking, stewing fish or stewing meat. At this time, I always wander in front of other people's houses, linger and refuse to leave, deeply absorb the fragrance floating in the air, and only run home when my parents are in a hurry, telling them who cooked and what was delicious like discovering the new world. When I said it, I kept swallowing saliva, listening to my narrative and watching me greedy. My parents just said "yes" lightly, and then turned to do their own busy things, without any indication. My heart secretly expects my parents to say "I want to be better" and my heart is cold again. Well, it's no use talking. I pouted and left.

Cooking smoke and firewood in my hometown are closely linked. The villagers used local materials to make a fire, such as straw, straw, cotton firewood, dry branches and dead leaves. They can burn whatever they want in any season. Straw, cotton wood and dry branches are hard materials, but they have less smoke. Straw and dead leaves are soft, with high flame and a lot of smoke, but they are not hard. When burning straw, they have to keep adding firewood. At that time, every household fed the animals, and the upper part of the straw was chopped to feed the animals, beaten into grass to feed the pigs, and the remaining half of the straw was used as firewood. It seems that every family is not enough to burn. After autumn, the villagers went to the Woods to pick up branches and hold fallen leaves. I often go to hold firewood early in the morning and one night or Sunday, and I can hold a basket full every time. Holding firewood was a compulsory course for children in those days.

The smoke in my hometown is mixed with too much bitterness I can't see. Sitting in a narrow corner, pulling the bellows in one hand and adding firewood to the stove in the other, the smoke fills the air, which often makes people cry and cough. I'm most afraid that even on cloudy or windy days, when the dry firewood stored in the kitchen is burned out, I'll go to the firewood pile outside and try to dig some firewood that is not too wet. It's hard to lead, and it's hard to burn, so you can only keep pulling the bellows. If I catch up with the wind and make smoke, it will be more difficult next to the stove. The smoke from the firewood can't get out, but it falls back to the chimney. But I have to put up with the fire again. Several times, I felt that my mother came out of the kitchen with a towel wrapped in sheep's belly on her head, covered with grass ash, her eyes red and her voice hoarse. In those years, I worked in the fields every day and waited on my mother who was eating and drinking in the kitchen. I don't know how much I have suffered. !

The most gratifying time for cooking smoke in my hometown is the New Year. In the middle and late 1980s, villagers' lives got better and better day by day. After the off-year, the chimneys of every household began to break the rule of three times a day and rose in an uncharacteristically dense way. Boiled meat, steamed bread, fried meatballs, morning and evening, smoked and fragrant. Steamed buns, in particular, are steamed pot by pot. Many people steam them until midnight, and the buns are piled up in a big basket like a hill, and they can't be eaten after the New Year. At this time, the firewood is made of hard materials, either steamed bread or cotton firewood, so that the firewood stew rots quickly and the steamed buns are cooked quickly. Generally, parents don't let us make a fire, but they do it themselves, for fear that we won't be able to master the temperature. It is our job to light the fire when steaming steamed bread. They have to be busy kneading dough and steamed bread, and they don't need to master the heat. As long as there is water in the pot, they can calculate the time to boil water. We are happy to do this job, so that when the steamed bread is out of the pot, it will be easy to open the gap and eat it!

In this way, the smoke in my hometown rises and falls in the monsoon rain all year round, accompanying the villagers through the difficult years and the children through an unforgettable childhood.

It's almost twenty years since I left my hometown. Now go back to your hometown. There are no firewood piles everywhere in the street. Straw has already been directly crushed and returned to the field by a large combine harvester. Many people don't have chimneys on their roofs, and the smoke from cooking stoves is even rarer. The life of the villagers is getting better and better. They have stripped the original stove and replaced it with a gas tank and a gas stove. They are not afraid of wind and rain, and they don't smoke. It is more convenient and faster to make on the gas stove.

After a long time, the villagers found a problem. Every family used to smoke, but it was still blue. Now every household doesn't burn firewood, but the sky is often gray. Some people who have seen the world tell them that there are fewer chimneys in rural areas and more chimneys in cities. The towering chimney has been smoking. They nodded thoughtfully after listening: "Oh, I thought it was just water pollution, and now even the air is polluted? ! "After that, my eyes looked at the vast sky again, and my eyes were always numb and vacant.

In this way, the smoke of cooking in my hometown was blown away by the wind of the times, and I could only meet in my memories. Whenever I am immersed in memories, I will always see the morning glow, the bright sun, the afterglow, the smoke from the kitchen and different pictures of houses and villages, and I will always see my mother cooking with a towel, apron and bellows.

Thinking about it, the choking smoke seemed to pervade my eyes, and I was so hot that I burst into tears.