Writing contest ‘Words in Memory’: Cooperative warehouse and unforgettable memories

My hometown now has no name, the co-operative warehouse yard no longer exists, but the beautiful memories on the large, wide yard, tiled red ship after that day can never fade.
Talking about the village, people often think of “banyan tree, water station, communal roof” with familiar and simple images that go anywhere, everyone is heading. My hometown is like many other rural areas in the North. Formerly known as Thieu Hung commune, Thieu Yen district, Thanh Hoa province; lying on the banks of the gentle Chu River, running water at night and day, carrying heavy alluvium to fill up the fields of stork flies. But now, the two place-names in the commune and district that look up on the database software of state agencies are no longer available, but replaced by Thieu Hoa town. The name is no longer because my hometown belongs to the administrative center of the new district of Thieu Hoa, which is separated from Thieu Yen and Dong Son districts (old). I have been away from the countryside for a long time, but the memory still imprints the countryside with memories that are so familiar and familiar, so overwhelming.

Place to save memories That old life recedes as quickly as possible into the past like a nap. That was the 70s and 80s of the last century, the time we could never forget with the busy days, the “big screen screen projection, earth theatrical performances” was very special. It was so innocently interesting and the “incidents” lingered in the cooperative’s storehouse full of memories. I remember vividly about the warehouse yards of the three villages of Tri Can, Kien Hung and Duong Hoa. The three cooperative warehouses are in three different villages, but the building style is very similar. When we were growing up, the warehouse was ever there. The yard is very large. All three are located in the center of three villages to facilitate collective activities when the village holds games on holidays, New Year and cultural performances between production teams when the planting season begins, The harvest is over … A movie screening session at the cooperative warehouse yard. (Artwork from the internet) Tri Can village is a warehouse of the second team as the center of three production teams: One, Two, Three. Kien Hung village is the warehouse yard belonging to Team Five, which is the center of four production teams: Bon, Nam, Sau, Bay and this is also the central warehouse yard of Thieu Hung commune. There is another yard in Duong Hoa village. This warehouse is centrally located in the production team 10 for 4 teams: Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven. At that time, the warehouses at that time, during the rice harvest season, all the production teams of the three villages gathered rice for plucking. By the way, this yard is used to dry rice. During the season, rice was spread over the yard and the young men were assigned to guard the whole area. These days, my hometown is happy like the association, I think back to remember and regret it. The warehouse yard is also a place for mobile film projection teams and art troupes of the province to visit and perform for my hometown people to enjoy with neighboring communes whenever there is an emulation movement. Each warehouse yard is a row of solid and solid warehouses. The warehouse was built very big, very big, located inside the yard and arranged very tidily for the convenience of cars, tractors and oxcarts to pull in and out. The warehouse area has many large houses, used to store staple food, the door is tightly closed so that thieves cannot get in and steal, extending a few rows of headlines. The column is made of something that is difficult to peel off. It seems that the warehouse belongs to a rich farmer from a very distant childhood. The roof is tiled with fish scales, this type of tile is difficult to find nowadays, sometimes there are still a few houses left, but the moss is old and old. This tile roof, birds and bats love because this is the quietest place for them to live because the ceiling is very high, no one can play with. Warehouse fence walls are built with bricks, high green stones. On the wall of that fence, people planted many fragments of glass bottles. We dare not play with these glassware for fear of bleeding. Fear of ghosts – an interesting childhood fear At the end of the rice harvest season or there is no event, the warehouse yard will return to a quiet, dull look and only the rice plucking machine is waiting for another harvest season to come. The tranquility of the yard and the ventilation are the ideal places for our children to play. In the afternoon, we gathered to hop on the ground to measure and measure the length of the yard. Remembering the long yard, we jogged from the north to the south end of the yard tired. The yard is tiled with the red ship, the square brick next to the size of 30 cm, straight line. On this brick background, watching the screen projection on the big screen is very interesting. Because the yard was too large, the children gathered together to count how many rows and bricks would take a long time to finish. Tiles are glaring in the eyes. We are also kind of goofy, so we count the number of bricks for sweating to have a quiz about ice cream betting. Yet many of them also gave up, sometimes even adults. My grandmother heard us arguing about winning and losing about the number of bricks in the garlic-stained yard and immediately threatened: “The yard is hiding a lot of ghosts”. Hearing that, we all panicked and did not dare to go there to play anymore, hiding behind her and whispered: “Grandma, people build a very high wall! How can ghosts hide?”. She did not explain any more. Seeing her silent, we feared and skeptically thought of all sorts of things to weave, whispering loud and small. The fear made us feel even more that if anyone in the village died, it would be early evening that we would not dare to pass the door of our room any more. We believe she is right because she is the person with the most image of that warehouse yard. From then on, whenever we walked across that warehouse yard, no one would say anything to each other, so we could not dare to turn around, afraid to turn around and fear that we could not run. We got past the front yard of the courtyard, and we breathed a sigh of relief, our faces rustling. Many of us even came up with a way to walk across the yard by asking the dog to follow to ease our fear. But sometimes when passing by, I kept hearing the birds singing in the warehouse and the wind blowing even more scared. During the day I was scared to wonder what happened at night. Hello! We scrambled to go in the middle. If the ghost clings, there are people who go first and go after. So every mother sent to the edge of the pond to pick vegetables and it was a bit dark, she would make it up like this and that to avoid going through the yard of the warehouse where she said there were “ghosts”. Later we thought “what the hell are you afraid of? Let’s be a hero!” and just invite each other out to the warehouse to play hide and seek to delight. Time passed by, the warehouse yard in my three villages was gone. Instead, they are the homes of the people in my hometown. Now that the decades have passed, we remember forever the storage yard full of memories at that time when we were delighted to play on the drying ground of the cooperative, and also went to the cinema, opera, row … Sometimes I come back and hang around here in the language of my homeland. COMPANION UNIT