Past events in northern Shaanxi: the story of water (7)-It is difficult to jump in line to take a bath

We female educated youth jumped the queue in the countryside for three years and never took a hot bath. I can bear it when I am dirty in winter. I can only wipe it at most and wash my hair. In dog days, people will sweat when they are inactive, let alone work in the hot sun. It is really called "suffering". After returning to the kiln from work in summer, I still can't bear to open it and wash it with water. Everyone's washbasin will overflow the bottom of the basin, barely wet the towel, and then wipe it casually.

We female educated youth often joked that we should become what Hou said in the cross talk, 135 no washing, 246 dry cleaning. In summer, people who are in love sweat and accumulate dirt for a few days, and their hair is like a rolled felt. When they rub it on their bodies, it is mud rolling. When they can't stand it, they cut work for half a day and go down to the ditch to take a big bath.

I have bathed in the ditch several times. It is far-fetched to say that taking a bath is because you are wearing underwear, and you have chosen a section of slate to highlight the riverbed that is easy to hide, in order to hide under the slate and wash it. When washing, I stood in the water under the slate and scrubbed quickly like a thief. Above the slate is the road. In order to prevent passers-by, my girlfriend Guifen and I always take turns to wash, and we keep ourselves on guard.

The watchman stood above the slate. Passers-by, whether they know each other or not, meet each other and talk to each other. There are two purposes: one is to inform the bather that someone is passing by and don't make any noise. The second is to distract passers-by. After receiving the signal, the bather will immediately stop scrubbing and stick to one side of the river bed to avoid danger.

Every time we take a shower, we will wash the dirty clothes that have accumulated for many days. Washing clothes in the river in summer is much more convenient than in winter. I often choose a big stone slightly above the water, sit on it, roll up my trouser legs high and step on the water with my feet. When washing clothes, you only need to rub it with soap, and you don't need to rinse it, because as soon as the washed clothes enter the water, they will be washed away by the current, and the flowing river can rinse the clothes in an instant. On the rinsing efficiency, it is faster than the washing machine twenty years later.

I don't know how the local aunt bathed and washed her hair. I have seen many of them use combs, because combs can not only trap grease, but also trap lice. Most of their clothes were sent to the waterlogged pool in the village.

Speaking of waterlogging ponds, almost every village in Yuan Shang has one. It was dug manually. In fact, it is an arc-shaped pit with a diameter of 20 to 30 meters, which is specially used to store rainwater. Villagers often go to the waterlogged pool to drink livestock, and most women are willing to go to the waterlogged pool to wash clothes, thus avoiding the trouble of going up and down the mountain. The pool full of water is a stagnant pool with a layer of moss floating on it. If it doesn't rain for several days, it will not only lower the water level, but also give off an unpleasant smell. We educated youth have never washed clothes in the waterlogged pool.

One day, my girlfriend Guifen and I went down the mountain to wash clothes. While washing hard, the two aunts came down to fetch water. One of them is about 50 years old, and people call her Lian Ma Lian. When she filled the bucket, she saw the soap bubbles on my washing clothes flowing into the river along the washboard, and said with infinite distress, "What a pity! What a pity! The sparkling flowers have already flowed away. " So she found a slate, pressed it on my washboard and washed it face to face with me. She took off her apron and wiped it on the stone bench with the soap bubbles I wiped off, then took off her white hat and wiped it. Looking at the flowing soap bubbles, she simply took off her coarse coat and washed it.

After taking off her coat, she was naked and her breasts drooped and shriveled. She was not embarrassed at all. After washing the coat, she saw that there was really nothing to wash, so she pulled the donkey to a good bucket, put the washed clothes on two buckets, drove the donkey naked and went back contentedly.

Guifen said that the river looks very clear, but in fact, we don't know how many people are washing clothes upstream, so we still drink. I said, don't people downstream drink the dirty things we wash and the soap bubbles we run? Gui Fen said that it is true. Only people who live by the spring can drink really clean water.