Cooking smoke in the country/hometown

Living in the city for a long time, sometimes I miss the time when I was a child living in my hometown in the countryside, the scene of cooking with firewood and boiling water in a big pot, and the scene of smoke curling up in the chimney of every household at that time. The quiet village seems to be a quiet pastoral picture, full of tenderness and fireworks.

At that time, my grandmother was the earliest one who got up every day in my family. When I was still intoxicated in my sleep, she got up early and lit the stove, ready to boil water for cooking. It never stops all year round. Perhaps because of my grandmother's influence, I get up early in primary school and always come to school in the top of my class. In the morning in walking to school, walking on the country road, I saw the smoke hovering on the roof of every family, free and unrestrained, and filled the countryside. It does have a special taste.

The village, which had been sleeping all night, seemed to come back to life with the smoke rising. The sound of chopping vegetables, carrying water, washing clothes, crowing of chickens, barking of dogs, hogging of pigs and warm greetings from neighbors resounded through the whole village, and the atmosphere suddenly became lively again. Gradually, as the morning sun rises higher and higher, the smoke from the countryside gradually disappears into the morning sun, as if it were nothing.

When I was a child, I had a special hobby, which many young friends may not have experienced. I just liked to make a fire behind the stove. At that time, my family used a long iron bar to light the fire, and there were hooks on both sides of the top fork, which could slowly push the straw into the furnace cavity, which was not convenient to use. And I like to use that kind of fire scissors, which can directly pick up a lot of straw. My neighbor's house also has this kind of fire scissors, so I often go to my neighbor's house to help them make a fire. It's interesting to watch the flames beating in the stove chamber and listen to the sound of chopping wood when the fire is burning. It was really a simple and naive time, and I still have no heart in retrospect.

Every year, in order to save enough firewood for the family to burn, the soybean stalks, cotton stalks, rice stalks, broad bean stalks and some firewood collected from other places are all brought back by the family through hard work, and they are tightly packed together to form a big haystack. In order to prevent the haystack from getting wet by the rain, grandpa will cover it with a big tarpaulin, tie bricks at the four corners, and press some heavy objects on it, as if to build an unbreakable home for the haystack. With this safe home, trees and grass will never have to worry about wind and rain again. In the countryside, you will see a big haystack in front of or behind every house. They are indispensable. Sometimes I think that the smoke rising from Ran Ran on the roof should be the last appearance of the wonderful life of these trees and grasses. They have completed the fate of the rest of their lives.

At that time, on weekends, I liked to play with a group of children of similar age in the village, playing with mud, playing hide-and-seek, catching cicadas, playing house and taking photos ... Those simple and interesting games greatly enriched our childhood life. Playing and playing, I occasionally forget the time, but when I see smoke rising around me, I know that dinner is coming. With the smell of food coming from the window, hunger and inner gluttony are instantly lured out. Don't bother the family to call us, they will run home and guess what grandma is cooking while running, and all they think is delicious.

Now more than 20 years have passed, and the changes in my hometown are changing with each passing day. It is no longer difficult to see the scene of smoke curling over the village. With the development of the times, high-tech household appliances have replaced large pots and stoves, but it always feels that the rice cooked by rice cookers is not as fragrant as that cooked by old iron pots. Perhaps it stems from the inner nostalgia for hometown, the yearning for simple rural life, and the smoke that has always bound our wandering souls. I think that one day, if we are old, we will go back to our hometown, a place full of smoke, indulge in the warm embrace of our hometown and protect this home I love so much.