Chapter 493: River Repair
“Didn’t you go to dig the river with me? Why are you back?”
Wang Fang looked at Zhang An who had just returned home not long after leaving. Fang asked curiously.
"I came back and led the horse to pull the stones. The stones for building the river ridge are piled up in the sun drying yard. They definitely cannot be carried by people."
Passing by Wang Fang, Zhang An also He leaned down and took a sip of fragrance on his son's face.
"Then just take our black horse. The mare has only given birth for a few days and needs to be recuperated for a while. You can't take it out to pull a cart."
Wang Fang was worried. Zhang An took the two horses at home to pull out the stones and warned him worriedly.
Even for ordinary people who are eager to use their animals for work, after their animals have given birth, they will feed them with corn for a period of time before being taken out to work. Not to mention that the Zhang An family does not have much demand in this regard. .
In addition to this reason, there is actually another reason. The mare at home is very handsome and much prettier than the pack horses, so Wang Fang is reluctant to use it to pull carts or pack horses.
"I know, I will definitely not take it out. Besides, there is only the carriage left by the old uncle's house, so it is useless to take it out."
Even if Wang Fang hadn't said anything, Zhang An wouldn't have led Texue out to work, especially pulling a cart. It was extremely inconvenient for a mare to pull a cart with a pony.
Besides, Dahei is usually locked up in a pen, and he has no place to use his energy. Zhang An must take advantage of these few days to let him vent.
When he arrived at the circle, Dahei's family of three immediately came up and surrounded him.
“Don’t you want to go out for some fun? Let’s take you out today for some fun.”
Looking at Dahei’s stretched-out horse’s head, Zhang An felt a little disgusted and patted him. Said the satin-smooth neck.
Then he cut some grass from the space and fed it to Tuxue and the pony.
Although the little guy was born not long ago, his teeth have almost grown and he has learned how to eat grass.
When Zhang An took Da Hei's handle to Zhang Ping's house to drive the carriage out, others had already arrived before him and were already queuing up to load the carriage.
In addition to the people driving the carriage, Zhang Jianwen also left several young people here.
Because the rocks pulled this time are relatively large, it is not easy to move them and load them into a truck.
"Zhang An is here, hurry up and help load the carriage. Today's work cannot be done without you and your dark horse."
As soon as Zhang An arrived at the grain drying field, another old man driving the carriage in the village came to I stuffed him with a pair of gloves and asked him to help load the car.
One person can carry the small stones on the carriage, but the larger stones require two people to carry them together. It’s not that they can’t be moved, but the carriage is a bit high and it’s not easy to carry them up.
But they all knew Zhang An’s abilities, so they were not polite to Zhang An.
“Okay, I’ll load it for you first.”
Zhang An didn’t waste any time, put on his gloves and started moving the rocks to load the truck with everyone else.
Sure enough, these stones did not put any pressure on Zhang An. He held them with both hands and carried them to the carriage easily.
After all, these stones have been opened by sledgehammers in the market, so they cannot be too big.
"It seems that the village chief asked Uncle An to drive the carriage, which was a bit wasteful. Otherwise, he could have loaded several carriages here."
This is one of Zhang An's My nephew is just older than Zhang An.
"Otherwise, if you guys come to chase my Dahei, I can load the car here."
Zhang An actually wants to stay here to load the car, so that he doesn't have to run back and forth on the road, and he doesn't have to load the car. When traveling, you can rest here, which is much easier than catching a bus.
"That's not possible. This dark horse of yours is very evil. It knows how to recognize people and no one can drive it away."
When the others heard this, they immediately shook their heads. I wonder if I don’t have that ability, so I’ll just load the car here honestly.
Because the big dark horse of the Zhang An family is famous for his bad temper in the village, several bully people in the village have suffered losses.
Soon, after loading the cars, everyone sent them to the river bank one by one, Zhang An was the last one.
Zhang An did not install too many stones in the first car, because Dahei had not pulled heavy objects for a long time. He wanted to let it get used to it first, so as not to miss this guy's waist.
After all, in previous years, he had let him go to the fields to pull grain, but this year, on the one hand, there was no grain for him to pull, and on the other hand, their fields were all in front of their house, so there was no need for Dahei at all.
Coming out of the grain drying field, Zhang An could clearly feel that the village was much more lively than before.
Whether it is the sound of horses shouting on the road or the chants of people digging the river on the river bank, this gloomy winter becomes lively.
Sure enough, there are advantages to having more people. Before we arrived all morning, a section of the river bank in the upper reaches of the river had already been dug by everyone.
At this moment, someone had already started mixing sand and cement. They were just waiting for Zhang An and the others to bring the stones. The arranged masons held the stones and started digging with chisels.
Not to mention, the rocks that were originally irregular at all were cut flat and smooth by everyone with chisels, which is enough to show how hard they are.
Most of the remaining people who can't build walls continue to dig the river downstream. There is still a long way to dig waiting for them.
Even some areas that have not been washed away by the flood will have to be dug out and built with stones to build a ridge this time. Zhang Jianwen worked so hard because he wanted to solve it once and for all. After all, there are few ridges in the ridge. There is no problem at all if we persist for decades. This is the main reason why so many people are needed to build the river this time.
"Xiao An, after you have lowered the stones, pull the mud behind our village."
Zhang An and the others just lowered the stones to the river bank and were arranged by Zhang Jianwen new tasks.
After all, the river bank was dug a little deep this time, and the excavated soil has piled up into a mountain.
There are paddy fields here. We can't let the mud with little fertility pile up here, as it will affect the harvest in other people's fields.
Fortunately, the village is large enough. Although there is no room in front of the village, there should not be too much space behind the village.
So Zhang Jianwen asked Zhang An and others who drove the carriage to pull the stones from the village when they came. After unloading the stones, they would drag the excavated mud to the back of the village.
In this way, the role of these carriages was squeezed to the extreme. Zhang An had to say that the village chief in his village had the potential to be a capitalist. It was all the village officials in the past decades who had delayed him. of play.
When Zhang An pulled a load of stones over again, he found that several feet of stone embankment had been built at the source of the river bank.
I have to say that these chiseled stones are perfect for building walls.
A neat stone wall is covered with lines that have been chiselled by chisels. It looks like a pattern and is much prettier than any red brick.
This is just like many houses built of stone in the village. The exterior walls do not need to be coated with cement powder at all.
And when everyone was building the wall, they also set aside a space at intervals to build a stone ladder with stones, so that everyone could go down to the river.
"The scene with so many people is really lively."
At this time, everyone was in full swing. Zhang An couldn't help but sigh when he looked at the densely packed heads on both sides of the strait. Nowadays, not many people in the village can see so many people working together.
Even Zhang An, although he was born before the land was divided, had no chance to see such a scene after he became sensible.
In comparison, the previous few times when the village organized everyone to work was simply a trivial matter.
“Haha, this is not very lively. The years when you were still breastfeeding, Anwazi, were the most lively. In 1979, our village also built a river embankment. At that time, people There are many more than now, but the conditions were not good before, so we could only build an earth embankment. However, since the repairs, our two banks have not collapsed in 20 years. If it were not for this year's big flood, we can still control it. More than ten years.”
When he mentioned this, Mr. Zhang’s face was filled with memories of the past.
When we used to eat in a big pot, everyone spent more than three seasons out of the year digging in the soil to eat.
And in the coldest winter, everyone didn’t have much leisure time.
Either repairing the ditches in the fields or the ditches behind the village, digging ditches almost every year.
These are things that Zhang An knows. However, in 1979, the river bank was repaired once. Zhang An really didn’t know about it.
But it’s not surprising, Zhang Anke was just over a year old at that time.
At that time, the number of people in Changqing Village was even greater than now, because the other two villages had not yet separated from Changqing.
At that time, everyone didn’t get paid for working, but they had work points, which could be converted into money at the end of the year.
In this way, it took more than a month and more than a hundred young and strong laborers from the whole village to complete the construction of both sides of the river.
For more than a month, no one had a day off. Except for a few villagers who had special matters, almost no one missed work.
On the day of completion, Zhang An stood on the bridge and looked into the distance. Whether it was upstream or downstream, the thousands of meters of gray-white stone embankments on both sides of the river looked so beautiful and unique.
The next morning, when Zhang An got up, he found that the village had become a little deserted.
Although it is already bright, not many people in the village come out for activities.
After all, I have been busy for so long and now that it is finished, everyone must have a good rest.
After more than a month of excitement, Zhang An was still not used to it suddenly becoming like this.
"Xiao An, are you okay this morning?"
While Zhang An was cleaning the yard, Zhang Jianwen suddenly came to the door.
"What's wrong, uncle, I don't have anything to do today."
Seeing that Zhang Jianwen had something to do with him, Zhang An put down the bamboo broom.
"That's good, let's go, go to my place to have something to eat, and then follow me into the city."
Hearing Zhang An say that he was fine, Zhang Jianwen pulled Zhang An out. .
"Okay, let me say hello to my mother and the others first."
Then Zhang An said something to Wang Fang before following Zhang Jianwen.
On the way, Zhang An found out what Zhang Jianwen wanted from him.
Because the embankment construction on the river has been completed, it is now the twelfth lunar month, and the Chinese New Year will be coming soon, so Zhang Jianwen wants to give everyone the wages for the river construction.
And that’s not all. In addition to everyone’s wages for building the river, the village also plans to share the money that is going to be allocated this year to everyone, so that they won’t have to worry about it a second time.
So Zhang Jianwen was going to withdraw money today, but because the amount he wanted to withdraw was relatively large, he couldn't withdraw that much in the town, so he had to go to the city.
It was precisely because of this that Zhang Jianwen came over and called Zhang An together.
You must know that the security situation is not very good now, especially at the end of the year. Many people have no money in their pockets to celebrate the New Year, so they just want to squat on a sparsely populated road to see if they can make some money. During the Chinese New Year, such things are not uncommon in this era.
If the money withdrawn was less, Zhang Jianwen asked Zhang Ping to follow him on a motorcycle.
But the amount was so large, and it was the first time he had withdrawn so much money, so he simply called Zhang An. It would be much safer to drive.
Arrived at Zhang Jianwen's house, Zhang An found that besides himself, there were also Huang Weimin and Zhao Youcai.
One of these two people is the village accountant and the other is the cashier. With such a large amount of money involved today, they must go with them. This is also to avoid trouble.
It is precisely because of the strict behavior of their three old partners that the village has been quiet and quiet for so many years.
"Xiao An is here. It just happened to be out of the pot. Come and bring it."
Seeing Zhang An, the old aunt brought a bowl of freshly cooked leaf cake from the kitchen to the table. He brought it.
"It's okay, Auntie, I can come by myself. When you come here, it's like being at my home. I won't be as polite as Uncle Cai and the others."
Zhang An smiled and took the full bowl of leaf cake from the old aunt's hand, and then, as he said, he went into the kitchen to look for spicy food.
"You little thing, you can just eat it by yourself, why are you messing with me?"
When Zhao Youcai heard Zhang An salivating at him, he quickly laughed and cursed a few times.
"Uncle Youcai, you have wronged me. You are an elder, how can I dare to turn you upside down."
Zhang An chuckled. He and Zhao Youcai got along very well with each other, and they always talked in a polite manner. So true.
"I heard that my sister Yan'er came back with her child two days ago. She hasn't visited you and my aunt in a few years. She should stay to celebrate the New Year with you this year."
Zhang An is talking about Zhao Youcai’s daughter, named Zhao Feiyan. Zhang An was married when she was still in junior high school, and she was married to a far away place.
Transportation is very inconvenient nowadays, and the round trip fare is not cheap at all, so Zhao Feiyan rarely comes back to her parents' home.
"Hmm, I definitely won't leave this year. I heard she said there was a flood there this year, which was much more serious than here. Many people died. Now many people have no food to eat. Come here Just come here."
Zhao Youcai sighed a little. His daughter had not thought of coming back after being married for so many years, and she rarely called her.
There was a flood this year, so I came here with a few children. It was obvious that they came here to seek refuge.
But even so, what can they say, after all, they are their children and grandchildren.
And life is better now. I no longer think about what I used to do. One bite is enough to ponder for a while.
(End of this chapter)