Back to 1978

Chapter 162: Leading the Machine
The county agriculture and machinery bureau is no longer deeply involved in the movement of agricultural machinery to the countryside, and is mainly responsible for the whereabouts of a machine once it leaves the countryside.

When they saw Xie Hushan coming with the brigade's letter to pick up the harvester, the officials from the Agriculture Bureau asked three drivers to pack their luggage and tools, start the Dongfeng self-propelled combine harvester and follow Xie Hushan's bicycle.

Don’t ask Xie Hushan anything, don’t say anything to Xie Hushan.

Anyway, I just told Xie Hushan that three days later, the cadres of the Xiajiatun Brigade would go to the Zhongping Agricultural Machinery Station to get the machine to go to their brigade to support the wheat harvest. No matter how much wheat was harvested in Zhongping, the harvester must go with the people of the Xiajiatun Brigade at the end of three days.

Looking at his expression, he seemed afraid that saying a few more words to Xie Hushan would cause unnecessary trouble.

Xie Hushan could understand the reaction of the county cadres because he had heard the reasons from Han Laogou.

In the mid-1960s, the state took care of Bingyang County and gave it a quota, allowing Bingyang County to drive back a domestically-made combine harvester from the Siping Harvester Factory.

At that time, this thing was a treasure in the eyes of farmers all over the county. Not to mention going to the fields to harvest wheat, just looking at it would make people feel happy.

At that time, the county did not discriminate against people. Instead, each brigade drew lots. It was very fair and based on luck. The harvester would go to the brigade that was drawn to support the wheat harvest.

But problems soon arose: once a production brigade located in an area with poor terrain received a harvester, it was unable to fully utilize the machines' efficiency.

The arable land within the brigade is scattered here and there, ten acres here and twenty acres there. After a day of harvesting, four or five hours are wasted on moving fields and changing land.

Moreover, it was agreed upon that the support would be limited in time, but some teams were often impatient and saw that the harvesters were wasting time. They did not consider that it was a problem with the terrain of their own team and simply blamed the county for providing too short a support time.

Often after three days of support, the drivers will be forced to continue mowing the fields for their own team and will not be allowed to leave until all the mowing is complete.

What's even more ridiculous is that when they saw the drivers insisted on leaving in order to complete the support mission on time, some teams simply threw stones or iron objects into the harvester's dials to deliberately damage the harvester.

Want to leave? No way. If it breaks down, it has to break down on our brigade's land. We can't use it, and no one else can use it.

If one brigade takes the lead in doing this, the other brigades will naturally not suffer any loss. It will develop to the point where whichever brigade draws the first lot basically means that the harvesters must help to finish harvesting before going to the second brigade.

The county had no choice. In that situation, even when the county chief went to mediate the situation by seizing the machines and not letting them leave, he had to stay in the fields and help harvest two acres of wheat.

So later the regulations were changed. Before the wheat harvest every year, technical personnel from the county agricultural bureau would go to the grassroots level to check on the growth of the wheat, and then come back to study and decide which fields to support first and which to support later.

We no longer considered the emotional issues of individual brigades, but only considered the issue from the two aspects of grain output and machine efficiency.

Moreover, the machine is no longer driven by the driver himself, but the brigade needs to send someone to pick it up.

If the machine is intercepted by other teams halfway, the driver will not participate in the fight.

In order to prevent the machines from being damaged and the drivers from being injured innocently, the county agricultural bureau also told the drivers to do whatever the team below told them to do and not to resist, since it didn't matter which team they were harvesting for.

It is equivalent to that there is a senior person in the county who thinks that the county cannot be a good person and is always pointed at with guns, so it is better to simply delegate the conflicts to the various brigades and let these bad guys point at each other.

At this point, the activity of distributing machines, a naked show of force, began to occur among the rural areas of Bingyang County.

In the 1960s, this incident caused more casualties. At that time, basically, as soon as the harvesters left the Agricultural Machinery Bureau, the various teams started fighting. The militias of each team took turns to fight, using guerrilla warfare, sparrow warfare, besieging Wei to save Zhao, and sneaking into Chencang...

In addition, the two teams may have had some old grudges over water issues, so they took the opportunity to take revenge.

It can be said that at that time, wherever the harvester went, blood was flowing all the way.

Later, the county couldn't stand it anymore and said that if the fighting continued, the combine harvesters might as well be dismantled and sold as scrap metal. The county found a way to get a harvester to help the teams speed up the wheat harvest, not to let everyone take the opportunity to turn the annual wheat harvest into a lawless meeting, taking revenge when there is a grudge, and adding more grudges when there is none.

In order to prevent the county from selling the harvesters as scrap metal, the brigades stopped the barbaric and violent request for help, in which everyone would fire guns and leave it to fate as soon as the harvesters left the Agricultural Bureau's gate. Whoever could stand till the end would get the machine.

It has turned into the relatively mild form of asking for help by blocking the road and robbing people in their own land.

"Comrades, please follow me. Just follow my instructions. Zhongping has already arranged good food and wine for you." Xie Hushan said to the three drivers on the harvester before he set off, riding the bicycle he had given to Lao Yang and then borrowed back. This was true. Drivers who drove such large machines were honored guests wherever they went. Even if a large group of robbers took back the people and harvesters by force, they would still treat the three of them with good food and drink. After all, they still had to rely on them to fiddle with the harvesters to help harvest the wheat.

"Comrade, Ge Baosheng from your team is not here?" A driver asked curiously when he saw that Xie Hushan was a stranger.

Zhongping's Ge Baosheng has been responsible for taking them to Zhongping in recent years and has become familiar with them. Seeing that the Zhongping Brigade has a new face to pick them up this year, the driver was a little curious.

"There's a funeral in the family of the captain of the production team where our company commander is located, and the captain and his wife have gone to attend the funeral. Our company commander is now temporarily arranging for the team members to do the preparations before the wheat harvest on his behalf." Xie Hushan explained to the other party with a smile.

"It's your first time to lead the team, and you're the only one here? Didn't your company commander give you any instructions?" The driver kindly reminded, "People on this road are not easy to talk to."

Getting a machine is no joke, especially when it’s your first time getting one and you’re an inexperienced newcomer. The people setting up checkpoints on the road are not easy to talk to.

"Hey, it's not like we're going to marry or steal a bride, why are there so many people here? If it's not convenient to talk, just keep quiet. It happens that I'm not talkative either." Xie Hushan said to the other party.

The driver wanted to tell Xie Hushan that robbing a harvester is much more difficult than robbing a new bride.

But seeing that Xie Hushan was unwilling to talk more, he suppressed the idea of ​​reminding him to call a few more people.

Anyway, if the harvester was really stolen on the way, it wasn't the driver who was crying.

It is 47 miles from the county seat to Zhongping, passing through four villages on the way, which means it passes through the areas of four production brigades.

Just out of the gate of the Agricultural Bureau, the drivers saw several people on bicycles turning around and leaving. No need to ask, these must be the people who reported to their own team, telling everyone that the harvester had already left the house and that the young man who led the machine was a stranger, so everyone should get ready.

The harvester moves slowly and is large in size, so it takes up the entire road. Apart from bicycles, there is basically no possibility of passing other vehicles.

The sound is loud enough that vehicles on the opposite side can hear the noise from a distance and actively give way.

When passing the first production brigade, the driver thought there must be a roadblock blocking the road, but there was no one. The road was smooth and there was not even a single person on the roadside, as if the news that the harvester was dispatched had not been received at all.

The three drivers looked at each other and thought that the new guy was very lucky.

When we passed the second production brigade, there was still no one on the roadside.

It was luck that no one was there in the first place, but how could it be luck again in the second place?

This situation made the three drivers wonder if they had taken the wrong road.

When did these troublemakers in the rural areas of Bingyang County become so well-behaved?

Even if it was Ge Baosheng who came to pick up the machine, they had to stop and wait for Ge Baosheng to negotiate for a while before they could let him go.

Generally speaking, it is considered highly efficient if the harvester sets out from the county in the morning and arrives at Zhongping Village in the evening to cover a distance of 47 miles.

For several years, we had to arrive at Zhongping in the early morning and go to the commune agricultural machinery station. We didn't even have time to close our eyes and rest, we had to drive directly into the fields and start harvesting.

When they finally arrived at the third production brigade, the harvesters finally stopped and the drivers breathed a sigh of relief. The feeling of someone blocking the road made them feel at ease.

But when they jumped off the harvester, smoked a cigarette and took a breath, and went forward to take a look at the excitement, they suddenly understood why no one from the two groups that passed by before blocked their way.

It’s not that those teams are polite, it’s that the young man who is in charge of the machine is too cruel.

At this moment, about ten meters in front of them, there were four tractor cargo boxes with the front ends removed. The cargo boxes were filled with several pieces of red steel that looked like they had just been taken out of a furnace. Even from a distance of more than ten meters, the heat could be felt!

The four tractor buckets just formed a Chinese character "口" (mouth), and the people and rocks blocking the road were trapped in the middle, forming a Chinese character "囚" (prisoner).
The person who was supposed to block the road was being baked by the heat wave and was crying and shouting to escape!
But the road was blocked on all sides and there was no way to escape!

(End of this chapter)