The night is hazy. After dinner, I went for a walk with Brother You and Fen, a neighboring village path not far from the company.
The twilight of early winter is like a masked man lifting his mask. I let go of the mystery, but I can't help but feel moved and admire it. The lights are sparse, and the willows are swaying. We are comfortable and soothing in leisure.
"That's a ball of fire!" said in surprise. From a distance, there were six or seven standing men and women standing around the street, surrounding the fire and pointing fingers.
Thinking that it was not cold yet, who was actually burning on the roadside. A little curiosity arose.
is approaching, close. It is a stove with a cylinder rotating on the stove, which is a pot of popcorn.
A man in his forties was sitting on a low bench, shaking his sealed popcorn pot with one hand and fiddling with the carbon fire with the other.
popcorn, popcorn, I took a surprise step, and the rare charge may be the choice of position by inertia.
is still the kind of fire that I was a child, the kind of black pot I was a child, the dusty face of my childhood, and the metal mesh that I was a child. But, there is an extra long grid sieve. It’s still the shaking and shaking in memory, or the stolen fire and added coal in memory.
is different. There are several elder brothers and sisters standing in line waiting for processing. Some are watching videos with their mobile phones, while others are talking homework behind their backs.
I still habitually look at the metal mesh barrel, or even deliberately or unintentionally look at his pressure gauge needle. After a while, the master stepped on the pot, facing the iron net, and used the mysterious crowbar to make a loud "bang". After a white breath, the smell of corn on his face was intoxicating.
When I was young, every winter, the corn-burning people coming from the streets were the most popular among rural children. There are many desires in the world, far away, and beyond reach. What can be achieved is the most considerate. Corn is the most popular food ration in every family and can be used. One pot costs one dollar, one pot can probably hold a tea jar.
When I was a child in my memory, my neighbor's father always bought apples and biscuits for his children. The Mei family's children next door always show off their food. Cookies in the shape of bear puppy, red greedy apples. The second brother is as old as them, and they play with him. He looked at him one by one. He squinted his eyes and enjoyed the food exaggeratedly, and he closed his mouth and swallowed it. The second brother has backbone and never asks for charity. Every time I forced him to go home, the two brothers squatted under the edge of the kang, and I reported to my mother one by one to scold him for his greed appearance. My mother always has red eyes and is full of helplessness. She teaches us to have ambition and teaches us to study hard. As long as we strive for success, everything will be there.
Only when popcorn arrived, my mother became excited. She pulled us brothers and dug half a liter of corn, and burst with two pots at one time. The anxiety of waiting in line, the joy after a bang, the sweetness of picking up popcorn that fell to the ground and stuffing it into my mouth, the half liter of which was mostly a full load, and the beautiful sweetness of my mother's smile, has been filled with my memories for many years.
Today, I was surrounded by the boiler that exploded corn again, and I heard a bang of my heart again, my heartbeat, and the fragrance of rice flowers. The most beautiful popcorn in the world should be the one that popped out of the damaged screen and fell to the ground. When I was a kid, I scrambled with the kids.
After a bang, we picked up two popcorns that fell on the ground and chewed them. The kind village woman kept signaling her to eat casually from the net bucket and hurriedly put two small plastic bags for us: "It just exploded, it's not crispy. It's good if it's cold." Whether we refuse repeatedly or insist on letting us take food.
The night is dim. Eating popcorn while walking is like chewing on the memories of a boy. I always think of my mother who works hard all my life and has a hard time, my every bit of it, my parents, my sisters and sisters’ hard years when they were young, and I think of putting donkeys, mowing grass, planting spring, and harvesting in autumn. Thinking of eating, sleeping, having vacation, reading...
Mom is no longer here. The decades of concentration of energy and energy released all my energy and hard work. Whether it is the energy given to me by steamed buns or the nutrition given to me by popcorn, I have made me grow strong and strong.I have developed simple strength in the farmland and longed for the wings of traveling far on the grass. Many years later, the handful of soil still buried my mother, and I still remember and miss it.
The night is vast. Sniffing the mellow fragrance of popcorn, I walked on the road with tears in my eyes. (Author Zhang Zhiyuan)
