Before I went to school, I played by myself near my house all day long, sometimes going to my grandfather's house next door. The old man in the neighborhood can always make up a table of mahjong at his house to enrich the boring life of old age. I also learned a little bit of mahjong with his grandchildren. When the adults stopped playing, we children also began to set up a table and have a lot of fun. During the time when my sisters next door were at school, I had to play alone.

Summer is the season that I remember the most. The grandfather next door set up mahjong in front of the hall, and the shouting of the cards came and went. When it's almost time for lunch, they are always too eager to get off the table. Some people draw a good hand of cards and ask their family to bring them food, and they play cards while eating. He touched a card, his mouth grinned on his face, and he "drew himself!" After winning the money, he was willing to leave. Someone wins, someone loses, the loser pushes the cards with both hands, impatiently gives money to play, "don't play don't play...... but they are always duplicitous, don't play mahjong and there is nothing good to go, can only get together and set up a mahjong table.

People are always sleepy in the summer, and the sun is the hottest time between twelve and two o'clock. In order to avoid heat stroke, most people end their farm work during this time. After the meal, the family will take a nap in the room. There were only two beds in the house, and my mother, sister and I took a nap in the bunks. My father was greedy for coldness, so he spread a plastic sheet on the ground with compacted soil, lay down on it and began to rest. At that time, there was no electric fan in the summer, and I just took a puff fan and shook it around to get a little cool.

The uncle next door went to work in the county seat to earn some money and bought an electric fan for the family. The popular fan at that time was vertical, with a round base with counterweights, a long retractable rod on top of which was the fan blade part of the motor. This fan has four or five gears with a head shake.

Later, my uncle's family bought a big color TV, and I watched a lot of Taiwanese idol dramas with my big sisters at his house, and watched the imported Japanese comics. As soon as they got out of school, I went with me to her house to play TV. The time of one episode of Japanese comics is very short, only ten or twenty minutes, generally two episodes a day, like "Four-wheel Drive Brothers" and "Little Chinese Master". Because of this, we cherish this kind of program very much, and it is a pity to miss it, so we always wait at the TV on time.

During their school days, I was left to play by myself. On a summer afternoon, the sun scorches the earth, and the heat fills the earth from top to bottom. When the sun was not so dry, my parents started to do farm work, so they put me at my grandfather's house next door. They were playing mahjong on the side, and I was playing by myself.

Rural families always like to raise some chickens, ducks and geese, and they are also afraid of the heat, always running around in front of the hall, and also pooping some. The grandfather next door didn't have time to clean up while playing mahjong, so he would attract some flies to land on it. I had nowhere to play, and I became interested in these flies flying around, and I picked up the jelly shells that others had eaten on the ground and began to catch them, and my hands shuttled back and forth between flies and and duck droppings. When you catch it, you put it in a jelly shell and see it stuck inside and can't find an exit and bumps around. Sometimes I am secretly happy when I catch a green-headed fly, and its head and neck are reflected to show a green fluorescence, not to mention how beautiful it is in my eyes.

It didn't take long for them to find me playing mahjong. Some people are laughing, "Look, what is that guy doing?" Catch flies there. Hahahaha...... "The grandfather next door heard it, came over and scolded me harshly, "I'm not afraid of dirty, ah, go play somewhere else......" Then he took out a handful of ashes from the stove and covered the chicken dung, swept it away with a broom and poured it out. So I left in a huff and went to catch a small fish in the ditch in front of the door.

Not far from the front of the house is a large area of farmland, and the ditches for irrigation are also extended in all directions, staggered. There is only one close to the door of the house, and people living nearby come here to wash vegetables and clothes. I went and picked up two slightly larger jelly shells to use as my fishing tools, and grabbed small fry by the aquatic plants on the shore. Larger fish swim quickly, react quickly, move quickly, and can only catch small fry and destroy them. Small fry generally swim close to the shore in groups. I used the jelly shells to wrap up and down, one to block their direction, one to the back of the fish, and finally the two jelly shells together to catch some. That's how I was able to spend the summer.

It is easy to get prickly heat when you run outside to dry it often, and the back is full of pimples, which is uncomfortable. Especially after sweating, the salt in the sweat penetrates into the skin of the small pimples, which is called a pain. Still, I don't remember the pain, and I run around outside every summer as usual.

In the evening, my parents came home from their work in the fields, and my sister, who had already finished school, had already prepared dinner. The loofah bitter gourd beans in front of the house and behind the house are a meal when you pick them off. These vine-like vegetables are good climbers, and sometimes the seeds accidentally fall in front of and behind the house, and it can climb down the tree to the roof. Bitter gourd and dried sauerkraut are a perfect match, and dried sauerkraut is dried and then steamed in a pot with a maple leaf cover, which has a unique flavor. Stir-fried eggplant must be oiled, garlic seeds must be stir-fried, and then add water and simmer until soft and rotten before the flavor is absorbed. Cowpeas are fried overnight before they taste, loofah soup is the best, and cucumbers are generally mixed with sugar or salt to cool off the heat.

Sometimes my sister is at home on weekends and comes with me to catch fish in the ditch with a bamboo basket so that we can have a meal in the evening. We can catch more minnows, long strips, the body swims in the stream all year round, and the meat is soft and firm. After deep-frying, it is dry and crispy, and it is a must-have with wine. However, our family usually frying, so it doesn't cost oil. After frying, the fish is fried with green chili, minced garlic, and tempeh, so that the small fish that is cooked out is really good for rice, and you can eat several bowls of fish soup bibimbap. Sometimes there will be people in the upper reaches of the fish who will use spicy knotweed or other slightly poisonous grass that can make the fish faint, mash it to get juice, and then pour the grass juice into the water, so that the fish can be caught effortlessly. Later, I heard that there was an artificial fish medicine, which was more toxic and more effective. After that, we can pick up more fish downstream. Sometimes, when there are more fish to be found, my mother will fry the fish in oil and then burn the charcoal left over from dinner in the stove overnight, so that it can be stored for a longer time.

After dinner, we sat at the door to cool off. The sun had set in the west, and there was still a little light left in the sky, and a crescent moon could be faintly seen, but a star next to it was extremely shining.

I was curious, "Dad, what star is that?" ”

"It's the broom star, he's the brightest star in the sky. He's the busiest, so he sweeps and sweeps with a broom, and the other stars will slowly appear. ”

Sure enough, the sky got darker and darker, and then there were more and more stars, and they became brighter and brighter, and the stars in the sky kept blinking in the night sky, which was amazing. It wasn't until I studied geography later that I learned that the star that accompanied the moon was called Venus. In ancient China, it was astronomically called "Chang Geng Star" or "Morning Star".

As the night wore on, the air temperature gradually cooled down, and the dirt floor in front of the door was not as hot as the concrete floor was today. We took out the bamboo bed in front of the hall and lay outside in the cool breeze and looked at the starry sky. The grandfather's house next door also moved the bamboo bed out to enjoy the coolness, and also moved the black and white TV out. "Come and watch the TV,......," he shouted enthusiastically. So we moved the bamboo bed over and watched TV together. I'm always the quietest one, and I don't understand the TV show because I think it's boring, so I run around.

In the distance, there were a few small dots of light that flickered over there, sometimes flying, sometimes falling. They fly very slowly, but they are relatively easy to catch. There was a firefly that stopped on a reed leaf, and I ran over to grab it and stepped into the puddle. I staggered to the bamboo bed and showed them the fireflies I had just caught.

"Wow, firefly, did you catch it? It's amazing!", the sisters next door praised me.

At this time, my mother smelled a bad smell, "Why is there a smell of stinky gutter?" ”。

Looking left and right, it turned out to be me. My shoes were covered with mud and smelled of dirt, and they immediately angrily took me home to wash my feet and change my shoes.

It's time to go to bed, the only electricity in the house is the electric light, which is the kind of tungsten light bulb. The tungsten filaments inside glow brightly and illuminate the entire bedroom. "From now on," said the mother, "see who falls asleep first, who falls asleep first, and who will be given a candy tomorrow." "When I heard that there was candy to eat, I lay quietly, watching the tungsten light in the light bulb, adjusting the focus of my eyes. When the eyes focus hard, the light is very clear, and when the eyes are relaxed, everything in front of them is blurry...... Wow, that's amazing! As I played like this, my eyelids gradually became heavy, and my eyes slowly blurred, and I fell asleep like this......

When I woke up the next day, I saw my mother cooking breakfast and cooking broth. It turned out that the family had to make some benches and invite a carpenter to come to the house.

My father invited a carpenter, and it was my third son. Father came in at the door,

"It's called Sangong!"

"Three Princes"

"Well, I'll get a new stool for your house today, and I'll have a new stool to sit on in a few days......"

At that time, furniture was generally made at home by craftsmen, and there was no such thing as buying it. Generally, it takes as little as ten days to make a set of furniture, and as much as a month. Just prepare wood at home, and then eat three meals a day, and live in the owner's house. The bamboo products used at home are also woven by craftsmen, who are called carpenters.

There is also a shaver, the shaver's clippers are manual, the kind of stainless steel clippers that emit a silver glow, and cutting hair will twist the hair in, so cutting hair in some places is called "twisting the head". In my memory, I was torn apart by the stainless steel fader once. The stainless steel scissors blades weren't sharp, and I cried while cutting, crying and struggling.

"Don't move around, the more you move, the harder I will cut. Come, hold him down......"

"Don't cry, don't cry, just cut this time, don't cut next time......"

Even if the barber shop in the village opened later, and all the clippers were used, I didn't like to cut my hair, and I always kept my hair long......