Summer of memory

Summer is here, it is also the time when memories of a time when the sun is shining wakes everyone up, leaving the desire to relive the good old days.

I told you yesterday, I have started my summer vacation. He was so happy, he jumped up and down. Thinking about it, seeing it as I was when I was a kid, but hearing that the teacher was busy, sick, and on vacation, the students were more busy playing than studying. Particularly for Summer is a very long excitement, because it brings so many plans, plans and games ahead. “Dragonfly bites navel and knows how to swim” – so many children have been tricked into this. Photo: Thanh Nguyen. I still remember, when I was a kid, Summer was an opportunity for a lot of “starts” at first. From the first time going to see crabs (crab hooks), fishing for frogs, catching fish, slapping fish… to children’s activities: exercising and kicking football early. As for the games, there are many, from shotguns, passing, marble shooting, fighting, fighting, umbrellas… Part of a memory. Photo: Thanh Nguyen. In those days, the field after the harvest was a big stage for the country kids. In my house, there are no buffaloes or cows, but because I crave the country atmosphere with many games and strange dishes, I often follow my brothers and friends in the neighborhood. After the harvest, the countryside is temporarily empty. After the harvest, all the grasshoppers, frogs, and especially mice were gathered in the fields of elephant grass. These are the fields converted by dairy households, from rice to grass for food. At that time, during the day, they fished frogs, at night they looked at locusts and caught birds. But the most fun is still the sessions to dig mice. Usually groups of several or three children will bring a bucket, basket or bag, a spade and a dog. Dogs have the ability to sniff out and catch mice very well, buckets can make water with simple burrows. Field after harvest. Photo: Thanh Nguyen. Rats this season are fat because they are full after a rice season. After catching, bring back, peel off the skin, cut off the head and legs, just take the meat of the body and thighs and then marinate it and bake it. In the summer, every child does not have a small cage. In the countryside, usually every house has a few areca trees. In the summer, those who are good at climbing will be responsible for finding the nests of young birds and sharing them with each other. The young sparrows are hungry, full of shit, their mouths are always wide open to eat when they see people. The food is cold rice, but the most common is grasshoppers, so if you don’t go to the field every day, you have to run to green vegetables (5% field area for households to grow vegetables) to catch some locusts to bring back. make bird food. Draw sketch. Photo: Thanh Nguyen. I remember, when I was a child raising birds, my parents taught me to give the birds light salt water to drink, so I got used to it, even if the birds fly away when they grow up, they still have to come back to drink water. That pure joy keeps growing, from the time the bird is young until the bird is full of feathers, flying and growing. I remember back in the 90s, raising snails was fashionable among the kids. In the new wave of that movement, I had to ask my parents for money to buy it. Where 1,000 VND/pair of small snails, or a few thousand a tool snail, bring back and drop into a crock pot or fish tank to raise. Day by day, go to pick duckweed, water hyacinth, or gather all kinds of leaves for snails to eat. When the snail lays, each pink ovary as big as a strawberry will gradually turn white, it’s time to take out toothpicks to get the baby snails. Raising snails and birds is also meticulous and takes time, but fun. Then, only later, did I know that the “toy” once was a terrible thing to destroy the rice fields. The imprint of the game in childhood has not ended many times when returning home many times, on ditches or bamboo poles in ponds and lakes, still full of eggs of this agricultural “rebellious” group. The nest of golden snail eggs is associated with the childhood of many rural children. Photo: Thanh Nguyen. Summer brings showers. After such meals, the pond is filled with the sound of frogs, hawks, and owls. Me and my friends carried fishing rods. Frogs with nuggets (a baby frog about the size of a big toe) are brought back to be raised somewhere in the garden or pond. Big frogs have to buy long bamboo sticks and melon flowers to lure. If there is a frog, there will be a pot of melon soup. In those days, finding a frog with 3 fingers was already very big, unlike now, frogs raised as big as fists, why eat frivolously. Summer is coming, for the children of the countryside, it is also the season of petty theft, because this is the most fruitful season. From sugarcane, guava, alligator, toad, citrus, mango, queo, papaya, etc. The day before yesterday, when I returned to my hometown, my friend also read aloud the “directory” of sweet and fragrant flowers, who had what tree, what delicious fruit. , it’s by heart. See, the taste of stolen fruit is so delicious and attractive that, after more than 20 years, people still remember it. In those days, the children often looked at Gac fruit, any house that had a ripe gac fruit, even if it was new, but did not cut it quickly, it was stolen by the children, just to get the seeds to play. As for the other fruits, they are extremely different, each day they change a dish. In those days, the booty was often carried by the children to the bunker on the embankment to raid. I don’t know how many moonlit mornings, the village dike was filled with laughter, eating and talking like that. And the most interesting thing, that day, the matter of stealing fruit was rarely concerned by parents, it was an accepted thing. Maybe it’s just a few reprimands from time to time, because everyone seems to implicitly admit that it’s a part of everyone’s childhood.