The excitement of the 1980s was filled with innocence and yearning. History is noisy and leisurely, but years pass by in a blink of an eye.
? ? ——Zong Pu's "Three Poems and Others"
Grandma is not tall, has kind eyebrows and kind eyes, and her short, ear-length hair is neatly combed. In my memory, she sometimes wears a black of wavy steel headbands. In the rural areas of the central mountainous area, old people with such a clear and cheerful image are actually rare. She is indeed a blessed old lady.
In the early 1980s, in order to supplement the family income, my grandfather built a grocery store on the side of the road at the entrance of his hometown village. He sold daily groceries during the off-season, which allowed him to make a living and serve the surrounding villages. The grocery store has two rooms, inside and outside. The outside room has wooden shelves, cement counters, a table, and a lounge surrounded by four benches; the inside room is a bedroom and storage room, with a wooden bed and several old wooden cabinets. And the old jar. In an era when supplies were scarce, this small shop in a yellow adobe house was the first grocery store in the small mountain village of Shilibaxiang. Because it is located at the intersection of the village's main traffic road, passers-by must stop there. The grocery store is mainly run by grandpa, but there are always times when he is busy. Whenever grandpa carries a pole to go to the town more than ten miles away to stock up on goods or is busy in the fields, grandma will help inside and outside the grocery store. get together. Grandma has not read many books, does not know how to calculate money and keep accounts, and her knowledge of words is limited. In fact, she cannot complete the work of selling goods and keeping accounts very well, but she is warm and kind, and is willing to help travelers who are tired on the road. A greeting and a glass of water, so when grandma was looking at the store, there were still people coming and going in the store.
On a rainy summer day, thunder rumbles. The climate in Jiangnan is very rainy, and it often rains non-stop. The small shop was the busiest at this time. Passers-by on the road in front of the shop had forgotten to bring their umbrellas and often came into the shop to take shelter from the rain and chat about the day, gossiping, trivial matters, and gossip. Sometimes, there will be people with bare arms, spread out a deck of playing cards on a simple table and chairs, take out a small bag of pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, or a small plate of dried sweet potatoes and fried peanuts, and spend the entire afternoon noisily eating melon seeds. The skins and peanut shells were spat all over the floor, and the atmosphere was as lively as possible. In that era, in China at that time, the information exchange center in the vast rural areas was basically borne by small rural shops like this.
I especially like playing in the grocery store on rainy days. In my memory, my brother and I would sit behind the cement counter and watch our grandparents doing business. The old jar under the counter exudes the rich aroma of old country wine, which makes people intoxicated. The dazzling array of small goods on the shelves behind me makes me feel particularly full and rich. It breeds a young man's ridiculous view of wealth. It seems that he owns this small store. The richest man in the small village. On the left side of the counter is a small wooden window. Outside the window, you can see the gurgling river meandering forward among the farmland. The green hills at the end of the river are lush and the trees are lush. The red leaves of the maples and the green leaves of the pine trees sway in the wind, intertwining into distinct colors. Chinese pastoral pictures. I often quietly listen to the chatter in the noisy local accent and the patter of raindrops hitting the blue tiles on the roof. A few pieces of glass tiles shine through the soft light in the shop. It is not very bright, but it is very warm. The mottled white wall opposite the counter was painted with a brush by some talented scholar with patterns such as Huangshan's welcoming pines, cranes, and jade ruyi. With just a few strokes, the pattern is distinct. There is also a poem recorded next to it, "When you talk about the bitterness, the absurdity becomes more pathetic. The same dream comes from, so don't laugh at the stupidity of the world." The philosophical verses in "A Dream of Red Mansions" are written on the white wall of a thatched grocery store on the roadside in a remote country. It has been written into my childhood mind and long life, and it will be unforgettable for many years.
In addition to the welcoming hall and counter shelves, there is also a small space in the grocery store. It is the bedroom where grandpa often keeps vigil, and it can also be regarded as the small warehouse of the grocery store. A simple wooden bed, a time-worn mosquito net, and two coir raincoats and bamboo hats hanging on the yellow mud wall are the traces of the agricultural era for thousands of years. There are two treasures under the pillow of the wooden bed. One is a silver flashlight. Today I seem to remember the detailed patterns on the flashlight and the red battery that poured out after unscrewing. The other is a long knife full of rust. When I was a child, I couldn't seem to hold it up. I heard my grandfather say that this seemed to be the weapon he used when he joined the militia to fight against Japan. I felt a sense of awe for that knife.
?My grandma loves my brother and I. When greeting us in the store, she will often bring us snacks such as Hong Kong cakes and rice crackers to satisfy our cravings. I think all children cannot refuse snacks, but if their mother finds out, they will be in trouble. My mother was a doctor at the time and was very opposed to my brother and I eating snacks. I don’t know how many times I argued with my grandmother about this matter. Grandma may not have thought so much. She thinks that children, how can they not like snacks and how can they not eat snacks? However, eating snacks is not a good habit after all. Of course grandma gave up the argument in the end and acted like a child who did something wrong. It’s just that it won’t happen so frequently in the future. When my mother isn’t paying attention, she will secretly give my brother and me a biscuit and eat it, but my mother won’t know.
But after all, the tug-of-war between my mother and my grandmother made me have a strange attitude towards snacks since I was a child: the more attractive something is, the more cautious it must be treated. Of course I didn't understand at that time that "life is full of hardships and you must learn to delay gratification", but when a little boy guarded a shelf full of snacks and candies without excessive demands, it seemed that life was growing.
After I graduated from college in 2005, the population of the original village was constantly exodus. Two young families in the village opened rural supermarkets, and there was market competition in the small villages. My grandparents were getting older, and my father no longer agreed with my grandparents to continue running this small store. Therefore, the grocery store completed its historical mission.
The grocery store in my childhood was the place where my grandma spent the most time with me, and it was also the learning classroom where I learned my first lessons in life. In my entire family, this adobe grocery store has become a symbol. Years later, when we set off from here to the outside world with our bags on our backs, my grandma will definitely wave goodbye and say goodbye with tears here. Sending; when we later established ourselves in our respective cities and returned to our hometowns on some special days, on the hills a few miles away, the first thing we saw at the coordinates of our hometown was this grocery store with yellow walls and black tiles. , and the grandma waiting eagerly in front of the grocery store.