In 1971, after entering the Huaide County (Gongzhuling) valve core factory to live in a single dormitory, I began to pursue the kerosene stove. It was only three or four years later that my family finally settled for me and got the tickets in Shanghai, and I looked forward to the “dream man” that I had been secretly in love with for a long, long time. At that time, the kerosene stove is like a bachelor found a date, the farmer got the land, the poor man has a private money, that steal and today’s small white collar has a private car a model.
With the kerosene stove, the image in the dormitory brothers also higher, the tone of voice also a little bigger. In the dormitory, around each kerosene stove can always gather a group of buddies, square, round, large, small, tall, short, around all kinds of kerosene stoves, the bond of appetite has formed different groups and gangs. No more exploitation by the canteen, no more anger from the “rice turtles”! (Why do the Shanghainese call the canteen cooks “rice turtles”?
At that time, although there was a lack of materials for frying, eggs could still be obtained by going to the street and exchanging them for food stamps, two per pound; sausages were always available in those few months after each return from visiting relatives in Shanghai; oil could only be purchased quietly by going to the canteen and finding a rice chef who knew each other well, and the canteen’s “cooking oil” was the black, sticky offal boiled from pig skins bought from a leather factory in some small place in Heilongjiang through some relationship in logistics – the ancestor of modern gutter oil.
When it came time to feed and fill the belly, the kerosene stove in the dormitory scrambled out of the cage, dragged out from the corners, under the bed, end in the doorway of the house in a row, the kerosene stove ran blue flames, is very beautiful. Cabbage, potatoes, eggplant, beans and other watery encounter hot oil, crackling and popping sound in all directions, water vapor and oil smoke steaming, the dormitory corridor is filled with the smell of kerosene and vegetable mixture. The guests, the two eggs, set aside a sausage slices, and into the pot, the fragrance, buried lard can not cover.
And burn with the fuel diesel also more from the workshop, the oil depot to ask, steal, not spend their own money. As long as the oil depot custodian has negligence, will open the vat of diesel fuel forgotten outside the house, smell the smell of oil thieves brothers in the dark at night to carry the barrel queue to play oil. The next day the custodian went to work to see the barrel across the floor after the robbery, cursing and bending down to force a grasp, a stumble – the barrel is empty. That comical weightlessness became the laughing stock of the brothers in the dormitory.
In the Spring Festival of 1977, I stayed in the dormitory “ten daddy room” and Zhu Jianpei in the opposite bunk, next door to the car refitting plant, together with Liang Liang Zhishang, in the temptation of appetite, we are closely united around the kerosene stove with cotton yarn as the core, each share of 2 yuan 50 cents, single-mindedly seeking development, in the sound of oil and smoke frying to send the old, in the “Golden Avenue” to welcome the new – that year 30 night, the television station is playing the film based on the novel of Comrade Haoran “Golden Avenue” (of course, the socialist Avenue) – also considered a happy New Year.
The kerosene stove emits black smoke after using it for a long time, especially when the wick is unscrewed and the flame is turned off. Then you have to use a discarded toothbrush along the round fire slot reciprocal movement, brush out the old hard cotton yarn black head, hard retirement, and then the trend of pulling new cotton thread, the successor to the top of the promotion, reorganization of the mountain after some new, good as before.
The kerosene stove is mostly dark green, occasionally gray and black. In the “class struggle every day, month after month,” the era, manufacturers still understand the “harmony” of the way, if it is big red, purple sauce, I’m afraid no one dares to use; if it is bright yellow, pure white, is estimated to be spurned. This harmony is the natural instinctive behavior.
Kerosene stove is mostly barrel-shaped, the appearance of the occasional four-sided, the four corners are also large arc, the inside is covered with small eyes of the tin stove core or round. Manufacturers where to think about “people-oriented”, never hang on the verbal, is a person knows that the sharp corners hurt common sense.
New kerosene stove are with ignition stick, a wire, prefixed with a strand of asbestos, dipped in oil ignition, stretched into the tin inside and outside the circle between the seam to turn the circle to ignite. Ignition stick is just an accessory do not know how to care for, often lost at the end, so simply take off the outer ring of the stove, matches directly ignite the yarn, the same good.
To be transferred from my Jilin Gongzhuling to Xuzhou, Jiangsu, with oil more convenient, because the transport brigade working in the oil pipeline company, the driver opened the tank on the energy.
One of my hometown Huang Shuangling drive “Isuzu” diesel truck, he told me, once out to Xiao County, Anhui, via the highway side of a rural elementary school rest, heard that there are old folks in school as teachers, Huang curious, close to the classroom window, the blackboard in front of a young woman in the local vernacular in class, completely unable to see the city people The appearance. Huang also does not care about the twenty-one, in his native language, asked “you are also Shanghai people?” The other party was shocked, reacted and left the students out of the classroom. When the old folks saw the old folks with tears in their eyes, Xiao Huang said all I can do is open the gas tank of the car. The female teacher thanked a thousand times.
Thanks to the blessing of reform and opening up to upgrade to an electric stove. Electric furnace simple cleaning, do it yourself can, in the refractory brick cut grooves, plate on the electric heating wire on the end. Electric heating wire burned off is also simple, overlap is pressed on. It is slow to heat up some of the heart can not be rushed, and also easy to electrocution, because the electric heating wire protrusion touched the bottom of the pot. I was numbed, a jolt to fling back, scared for a long time. This is the price of “reform”, if you really can not get up under the cross, it is “pay tuition”.
Also used the “heat fast”, hot water convenient.
With the kerosene stove for the companionship of the real life is forced. The bachelor is most annoyed with the trivial matters of food and clothing, but the small blackboard in the cafeteria all day long crookedly written “cabbage and potato soup” through the day, the most greedy mouth is not drooling, and the best stomach does not secrete gastric juice.
China’s people are the most kind and best to deal with, but also cunning and cunning, I do not know how many bullshit officials have been dealing with that more than ten years reprimanded, I gnash my teeth behind me after cursing mother or smiling and happy – the thought of kerosene stove is satisfied; this more than ten years I do not know how much public kerosene diesel and power I have burned, but not repent not ashamed not blush also justified feel justified, it is really a crime.
With kerosene stove I am not the first and not the last factory, above once to purge, because the users of the crowd, so it did not end.
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