At that time, in the suburbs and rural areas, most roads were muddy and it was difficult to walk on rainy days. There are no electric lights and telephones in the village, and they all rely on a dirt road to the outside world. There is a post office in the town, and there is an old-fashioned telephone with a hand. Whenever someone in the village meets an emergency, they will walk or ride a bike to the post office in the town and spend five cents to make a phone call with a crank. If the long-distance contact is urgent, you can write a few simple words on the counter and ask the operator to send a telegram to the other party. There are also young people who go directly to the town to do business, take the letter to the post office, and then put stamps on their faces and give them to the clerk at the counter. Seeing that the staff stamped the letter with the postmark of the day, they left happily. This kind of communication may be impossible for children and young people today, but it was true at that time.
Later, in some places, the production team set up a fixed place in the center of the village house to receive letters, magazines and newspapers for convenience, and the extension store opened by the supply and marketing cooperative was the most ideal. This mailbox is made of wood and painted with green paint. The mailbox is hung next to the door of the extension store. There is a small lock on the small door of the box, and the words "mailbox" are marked in the middle with yellow paint. In addition, the store also sells stamps on commission. At that time, it was only 4 cents to send a letter in this city and 8 cents to send it to other provinces; For enthusiastic contributors to rural literature, this is an extra joy. Because newspapers and magazines give special discounts to authors, many authors are attracted to contribute, and the postage is paid by the other party. Therefore, no matter how thick the manuscript is, as long as you cut a small corner in the upper right corner of the envelope with scissors and write the words "manuscript" or "contribution", you don't have to pay. Over time, people around the countryside regard Shen Xia's e-mail as a silent friend. Anyone who wants to send a letter will never travel long distances to town again. They will come to the Shen Xia store with great interest, buy stamps and stick them on the envelopes while shopping, and then put the letters into the gap at the top of the mailbox. The postman always arrives at about eleven o'clock every morning, bringing newspapers and letters from far away, and then opening the door to get the letters. They regard this work as a sacred and noble cause. With the help of shop assistants in Shen Xia, newspapers and letters from far away were stuffed into the pockets of village houses marked with numbers. When people from the village house come to the Shen Xia store to buy things, he will take the initiative to help them get them back and enjoy them.
In the days to come, no matter the wind, frost, rain and snow, there is always a person next to the mailbox who comes here on time every day. He is a respected country postman in green overalls. Because his surname is Du, everyone likes to call him Xiao Du. When it comes to communication at that time, most of them were young people. When they fall in love in the countryside, they are not interested in walking around often. Most of them rely on writing letters to convey and express their feelings. Boys or girls in the embryonic stage have a soft spot for love. Once they think of each other, or want to confide in each other, most of them will take a walk in the Shen Xia store and send a letter to the mailbox quietly when they buy oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. Then I wait for my sweetheart to reply in time. Every day young people come to the shop to see if there are any letters for them. If there is a letter from a sweetheart, they will open it in a hurry, hide under the tree and read it before going home.
The village postman has a very important position in the hearts of me and the villagers. It is they who bring all kinds of external information back to the village through newspapers and magazines, and also bring villagers' greetings to relatives and friends outside the village through letters. After a long time, everyone and the rural postman will be familiar with it. In the later days, when villagers meet the village postman passing by on a green bike on the way to the underground or at the entrance of the village, they will wave to each other and call him Xiao Du, and ask some questions about letters and the like. It is the most difficult for a postman to send a registered letter or telegram to a house in a small village. When it's windy and rainy, the road is muddy and you can't ride a bike. You have to wear overshoes or carry the car barefoot for a while before you can deliver it. The postman is like the spring wind, where it blows, it is infinite joy. A soldier aunt who lives in East Village often receives letters from her son from the army. Because the aunt can't recognize a few words and her eyes are blurred, she often takes a letter and asks the township postman Xiao Du to read it to her. Sometimes I read it again until the old man nodded with satisfaction and smiled like a blooming flower. ...
I remember that in the late 1980s, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait gradually realized the indirect "three links". At this time, relatives in Taiwan Province Province who have not returned for decades have sent letters to relatives in Chinese mainland through Hongkong, with a strong desire to find relatives. However, great changes have taken place in the village houses since the founding of New China. Some letters sent from Taiwan Province Province have not only been sent to the wrong address, but also written the wrong names of their relatives, making them hard to believe. I remember once, in order to deliver a letter, a young rural postman found five people with the same name in the local area during the delivery process, and went door to door for three days. It was winter, the northeast wind was blowing hard, and it snowed all over the sky for a day and a night. However, the young postman is not afraid of difficulties. He walked through the snow to six village houses where three families with the same name were located, and finally found the real family members of Taiwan compatriots. When the host family saw the postman covered in snow, they were deeply moved by the postman's spirit of serving the people and working hard.
Speaking of which, there is a short story interspersed among them. In my east room, there is a girl named Xiuwei. She is very elegant and highly praised by ten people. She was twenty-one years old that year, and her parents won her a young man who was a doctor in the town. This young man looks good. As far as family conditions are concerned, he has a house and money. But the girl always refused to meet. Why? Is it fate or something? Later, her mother found out that her daughter fell in love with Xiao Du, a village postman who walked around the village every day, and she was already in love. They contact each other by writing letters, almost once or twice a week. The girl's pillow is filled with letters written by Xiao Du. This incident was passed down by local villagers as a model of free love.
On the eve of the 1990s, it was also the golden age when I set foot on the road of literary creation. Every day when I come home from work, when I am inspired by my creation, I often write down the stories I met in my life in the form of literature, express my deep feelings with a pen in my hand, write them on checkered manuscript paper, and then send them to a newspaper and publication that belongs to my dream for publication. At that time, I was young and energetic, and I often wrote until dawn. Therefore, almost every three days, a manuscript is put into relevant newspapers and periodicals inside and outside the city. When I handed the posted letter to the postman, watched the village postman open the green package, carefully put the contributed letter into the bag, and then waved away, I would still stand at the entrance of the village inexplicably, watching the postman's back until I disappeared into the country road. Are you afraid of dropping the manuscript? This kind of mood cannot be explained clearly. Really, this person who doesn't write may not understand.
After submitting the manuscript, I hope the editor can modify the employment and then reply. The editor I met at that time was very good. I would reply to any manuscript I sent. It often happens that I contribute to the editorial department, and the newspaper receives a reply in ten and a half days, and the magazine receives a reply in three months. When I received the remittance receipt from the postman. My heart will beat with excitement; When I received a letter from an editorial office from the postman and saw that my novels, essays and poems were printed on books and newspapers with ink fragrance, I would read them quietly in one breath and a long sweetness rose from my heart. So waiting for an answer has become a habit of mine. Whenever I rest at home and the postman comes into the village, I always look around at the intersection of the yard. Seeing the green bicycle and hearing the bell of the car will be inexplicably moved. I hope that a letter from the editorial department will be good luck in hiring manuscripts. This is a daily - happened thing. I can't describe the excitement when I saw the square manuscript in the letter turned into lead printing paper.
Of course, many times when I saw the postman waving to me, but when I saw that he didn't stop, I knew there was no letter for me and I felt a little lost. Later, I kept telling myself that there is no best creation, only better! Therefore, even if I didn't receive a reply, what I left behind was not disappointment, but extra motivation to cheer for myself.
In the early 1990s, with the reform and opening-up, the village houses took on a new look, and a new era of electric lights, telephones and upstairs and downstairs came. Many roads in rural areas began to be transformed into cement roads or asphalt roads. The development of post and telecommunications departments is also rapid, and the travel of rural postal workers has also changed greatly. Their means of travel has changed from cycling to motorcycle, which is a big change. What a proud country postman! They wear green work clothes and ride green motorcycles across the country. All this is so familiar! When the postman delivered newspapers and other mails door to door and sang songs on motorcycles, the retired old people sitting in the sun stopped chatting, took out their reading glasses, leafed through the subscribed newspapers, smelled the fragrance of ink and began a happy reading moment. ...
Nowadays, many families in rural areas have computers, and the Internet has become popular. Great changes have taken place in the way people get information and contacts. Personal communication no longer depends on writing letters; Reading newspapers can be easily obtained from TV and the Internet. When contacting people, SMS, WeChat and Weibo are all fashionable. You can choose which one. Writing contributions, except for some older authors who still insist on using checkered manuscript paper when writing, most of the other authors send electronic manuscripts to each other's mailboxes, or they can directly click into online literature to release their brilliant dreams. In rural life, many things previously done by rural postal workers began to change greatly. Nowadays, in addition to delivering very few letters, rural postmen mostly deliver books and newspapers to houses and units in some villages and send some items ordered online to villagers. However, many people in the village, especially the elderly, still greet the rural postman, and they have not faded.
Whenever I go back to my hometown for a holiday and see the green motorcycle of the rural postman passing by the cement road in front of my house, I will think of those unforgettable creative years, and my dream of flying will fly again. Later, posts and telecommunications were separated by 1999, and the post office became a post office and a telecommunications bureau. There is a postal bank in the post office. When I went back to my hometown that time, I found that the post office of my hometown had moved to the new street of Xincheng because of land acquisition, and a row of residential high-rise buildings had been built on the original site. When I found the post office I missed in Xinjie. I found the decoration there magnificent, and the staff inside were all new faces.
Moved by this scene, I remembered Xiao Du, a young postman in the countryside, and went to the delivery room to inquire. When I asked Xiao Du, a rural postman, an old post office leader who was about to retire told me: Since you left your hometown to work and live in the city, Xiao Du, a young rural postman, was rated as an advanced worker in the city system because of his excellent work and soon became the person in charge of delivery. Three years later, he was transferred to the county branch as the delivery supervisor. One day, a postman suddenly fell ill on his way to work. In order not to delay the delivery of letters and magazines, Xiao Du immediately helped to cover for him. When he was riding a motorcycle to help deliver a valuable item, he met a thief who robbed with a knife on the bridge of the Yangtze River levee. In order to protect the people's property, he fought with the thief, and finally the people's property was protected, but he died of excessive blood loss ... At the memorial service, he was chased as a martyr by the organization. Everyone who knew and knew him came, and wreaths filled the hall and all the aisles ... His wife Xiuwei, the girl who could fall in love freely by writing letters, wrapped her husband's urn in green overalls and insisted on taking it home. According to the relatives who accompanied her, she hugged Komori's urn, kissed it with tears in her eyes, and talked to him tenderly for three days and three nights. ...
What a good postman he is! At that moment, my tears couldn't stop flowing out. In the dim light, my eyes seemed to see the countryside again. I saw the young postman Xiao Du riding through the countryside. The ringing bicycle bell rang and a slim country girl's eyes were looking at him. ...
How many years have passed, whenever I see a postman passing by on a motorcycle in the streets of the city, I can't help but think of the young postman Xiao Du, who rides that green bike and shuttles back and forth in the country with love and hope for his career. ...