30. Childhood anecdotes

When Shandan was young, the grass on the grassland was half a person high, and at that time she and Mao Dan'er went to the neighboring village to study in primary school, and the road was a small road stepped out of the grassland.

In summer and autumn, the paths are lined with knee-length grass and wildflowers, and they play in the grass after school until the sun goes down and the smoke rises when it gets dark.

The parents were busy with farm work, busy collecting sheep and cooking, and they didn't care about the dolls at all.

At that time, after school at noon in the summer, they would play on the grass, usually looking for bird eggs, catching rabbits, prairie mice, and sometimes catching a small reptile called "Sand Monk".

This small animal is a small lizard with pink skin, especially the head is very flexible, does not bite, and can be held in the palm of the hand to play.

Listening to the old people, it can tell people if it is noon, and every time Mao Dan'er will grab its head and ask: "Children, is it noon?" I had never heard the kind of nodding and cocking reaction that I had heard, nor had I heard a word from it, and although I was disappointed, I still enjoyed it.

Sometimes, when a gecko is caught, they cut off its tail and watch the tail wriggle around and stare at the gecko to see if it has a new tail coming out.

Then I put the gecko away, and after a few days, I went to the neighborhood to see if there were any geckos without tails, but I never found any more geckos without tails.

So they determined that the legendary gecko's tail could be regenerated was true.

In the grass, you often encounter birds' nests, and small birds that have not come out of the nest, some have not yet grown hair, pink, the big head, the black eyes have not yet opened, Huang Yaya's mouth is open when she hears the movement, and her neck is stretched out, thinking that the mother bird or the father of the bird has brought food back, competing for food, looking very ugly.

Some of them have some feathers and look better, they never touch the birds with their hands, it is said that if people touch the birds, the father and mother will no longer feed the birds, and the birds will starve to death.

They will often go to see the birds grow up day by day and begin to learn to fly and then fly away, and in their childish hearts they will silently bless the birds.

One summer vacation, my parents went out to the fields to do farm work.

Shandan was home alone, and suddenly something flew in from the open window, Shandan was startled, and after a closer look, it turned out to be a harrier eagle.

When the harrier eagle came in, it panicked and slammed its head into the glass, and Shandan climbed up the kang to grab it, and its sharp claws rested on Shandan's hand, but not with force.

With its eyes blazing and its mouth curved like an iron hook, Shandan was a little scared and wanted to tie it up with a rope, but its claws had already scratched Shandan so she had to open the door and let it go.

After releasing the harrier eagle Shandan, I found that there was a dead little tree bird on the kang, and it turned out that the harrier eagle was chasing the little tree bird before breaking into the house by mistake.

Originally, this harrier eagle rarely came to the village, it was very flexible, mainly lived in the small forest, and specially caught some small birds to eat. Few people have seen its true face of Lushan.

When my mother came home, she heard that Shandan could wrap it up with clothes, but unfortunately they didn't see it.

After the reform and opening up in the 80s, the Mongolian Plateau was worth a lot of money!

Cantonese people call the ground hair hair cabbage, saying that it is very delicious, and buy a large number of them.

It is also said that the ground hair can also be used to produce nuclear weapons, so it is always valuable.

So, everyone began to use a rake made of iron wire to hug the ground hair, even the grass with the ground hair together, and then rinsed with water, the ground hair becomes heavy after being wet and left below, the grass floats on it, and then picks it out by hand little by little after drying.

Everyone knows that the grasslands on the banks of the river are rich in water and grass, and are rich in local hair, so they rode donkeys and horses to rob them.

People hold all kinds of dry food, including baked eggs, fried rice, fried noodles, baked seeds, steamed buns...... In addition to eating and sleeping all day, it is to hug the ground hair.

When there are many people, thousands of people gather in the grassland to hug the ground hair.

In a few years, the ground hair was gone, the grass roots were all picked up, the pasture grass was all withered and died, and the former graceful riverbank grassland became a desert!

There is no longer any green pasture, curling flowers, and mist to be seen.

Then, the sandstorm came.

Life in the prairie is monotonous, but for children it is a beautiful paradise.

The vastness of the grassland also gave children unlimited world in childhood. Their lives are colorful and interesting.

Legend has it that the snowman will go back to heaven to say a lot of good things for the people of the world after eating Laba porridge in the morning of Laba, so as to ensure that the wind and rain in the coming year will be smooth.

If there wasn't enough snow that year, the adults would go to the river to make icemen, which would be even more fun, and the children would be shouting and jumping around, helping with tools from time to time, and it seemed that they were also facing the gods with devotion in their hearts - with a sense of mystery and sacredness, as if the coming year's weather would have their own offerings.

In winter, every morning when you wake up, you will find countless different patterns on the window pane - ice flowers! It's so varied, the pattern on each glass is different, and the pattern is even more different from day to day!

There are mountains, rivers, groves, and people's houses, and it's really a colorful world! No wonder Siqin Gaowa said that the ice flowers on the window glass of her grandmother's house gave her a colorful world and provided her with space for imagination.

In Shandan's view: it is a fairyland left by angels to the world.

For nine days in winter, the temperature was more than minus 20 degrees, and in the evening, ice flowers began to appear on the window panes.

Every time Shandan came home from school, she was fascinated by the amazing patterns of clean glass that changed in minute by minute, and she watched it change obsessively every day.

Then when it was almost dark, the sheep came back, and the parents were busy enclosing the sheep, and the frozen glass could not see the outside, she climbed on the windowsill to do her homework while using the heat in her mouth to melt the ice flowers on the glass, and then there were round transparent holes, and then looked out to see that her parents were busy.

The small holes will soon freeze up, and the ice flowers will also appear in another pattern, and if there is another picture in the big picture, Shandan will blow one small hole after another, and each small hole will become another picture, another world, - it is amazing!

In winter, after the winter vacation, it is not far from the end of the year, and the children are playing in anticipation of the New Year.

Playing with ice in winter was also a very happy thing when I was a child. The creek in the south of the village is covered with thick ice every winter.

Adults will help children make a variety of "ice cars", the most common is to make a seat plate out of wooden boards, use two pieces of wood as a chassis underneath, and then nail iron bars on the two pieces of wood, and then make two "ice skewers", the head of the ice skewer is sharpened.

When you get to the ice, you sit on the ice car, hold an ice pick in one hand, and paddle back hard with both hands, and the ice car under your butt will slide forward.

The iron bar of the ice car is smooth, and the powerful stroke in the hand is really imposing.

It's a pity that Shandan was too young at the time, so he could only run behind his brother Tie Dan'er's ass, and when Tie Dan'er had fun, he would give her a ride and skate for a while.

At that time, there were still many fish in the river, the whole river surface was frozen in winter, the air under the water was limited, after a while, the adults smashed a hole in the ice, the fish would rush to the water surface to breathe, and the ones who could not compete jumped out desperately, "crackling" jumped out of the water and fell on the ice, often jumped out of the big fish, people can pick it up casually, so there will be fresh fish to eat every winter.

In the 70s, a large reservoir was built in the west of the village during the "construction of water conservancy", which contained a lot of fish, and the small fish would slip out of the sluice gate of the net every time the water was released to water the ground.

There will be a lot of small fish in the ditch at the head of the field, and Shandan and Mao Daner will take a sieve and a small pot to catch fish, and they will often have a good harvest.

Most of them are carp, crucian carp, grass carp, and silver carp. At the beginning, people didn't know the loach, the locals called it the water snake boy, no one dared to eat it, until a southern geological exploration team members went down to the river to catch loaches to eat, people knew that the loach was also delicious, but still no one ate it. In the eyes of the prairie people, except for the beef and mutton, everything else is not worth mentioning.

Southerners also eat toads, and people think that Southerners are either bold or hungry.

There are also snails, which the steppe people never eat, and they eat them too. In the eyes of the steppe people, southerners are really strange: they dare to eat anything.

At that time, when it rained heavily, the water in the reservoir swelled, people had to open the sluice gate to release the water, and the fish would naturally be released, and the adults would go down to the river to catch fish when the water was not too turbulent.

Once, the iron egg was really greedy, so the mother took the risk to jump into the river and caught a big red carp, put it in the basin and grew it out at both ends, and the family ate a beautiful meal.