Chapter 170 Paul's New Job
Earning an extra copper coin is a benefit, and the father and son, who had several extra silver coins in their pockets, would never refuse such a good thing. After a few discussions, the old father went to do the threshing work which did not require much physical strength , while the strong son went to the new factory area where the salary was better.
The corn threshing site was in the yard behind the purchasing point. The old farmer entered the backyard under the instructions of the clerk and was stunned when he saw the scene inside.
He also thought he would see a group of people, each holding a square piece of wood, sitting in front of a wooden basin, and threshing corn cobs by hand - this is how people in the countryside thresh corn.
The scene he saw was indeed not much different from what he knew. There were indeed many people sitting in the backyard in several rows, with wooden basins, sacks of corn kernels and piles of corn cobs in front of them.
But what was different from what he had imagined was... these people did not have square pieces of wood in their hands, but instead had a strange, palm-sized cylindrical tool; the person who was shelling the corn kernels stuffed the corn cobs into the cylinder with his left hand, and shook the joystick on the bottom of the cylinder with his right hand, and the corn kernels popped out of the cylinder with a click.
With the life experience of the old farmer, he only observed the operation process of others and recognized that this strange little cylinder with a rocker was used to shred corn kernels . His mouth gradually opened wide... What a delicate little thing - no, the people in the town can even make such a convenient tool for shredding corn kernels, a manual work that even children can do? !
"Are you here to do odd jobs?" A young man who was sitting at the table, holding a winnowing basket and sifting out debris from the threshed corn kernels, saw the old farmer and raised his chin to greet him.
"Yes, yes, sir." The old farmer saw that the man was much stronger than ordinary people, and nodded quickly.
"Don't talk nonsense. I'm not a master." The young man put down the dustpan, wiped the sweat off his face with the towel around his neck, and waved to the old farmer, "Come here and get the tools."
The production tools the old farmer received were a lightweight and flexible household hand-crank thresher weighing less than three pounds (the unit price is 8 yuan), a wooden basin and a roll of sack.
The strong young man took the old farmer to a corner of the yard, pointed to the corn cobs piled under the wall, and said, "Start threshing from this pile. I will count your time once you start working. One copper coin for every half hour. Any more questions?"
"No more, no more." said the old farmer repeatedly.
The young man nodded, glanced at the old farmer's wrinkled face, and went to the next room to get a cushion made of cattails: "You are old, so don't sit on the ground."
His attitude was quite casual, as if it was normal to take care of older people, but the old farmer was a little flattered...
The young man didn't think too much about it. He went back to the table and wrote down the old farmer's name and the time he started working in the registration book on the table. There was a clock hanging on the wall of the threshing ground, so he would not make a mistake in the time.
Next, the young man picked up the winnowing basket and shook the corn kernels in it again to shake out the sand and dust...
This strong young man who looks not very old is named Paul Hank, and he is the younger brother of Sam, an operator who is on a field mission at the town hall.
The reconstruction project of the town's main road was coming to an end and there was no more work to be done, so Paul had a few days of idle time like the townspeople.
But soon, Paul found a job - after all, his brother was an official in the town hall, and his mother, Mrs. Hank, had a good reputation in the Logistics Department. Even if his family didn't think of using "connections" to find him a job, someone would naturally remember him - he was assigned to the purchasing point of the Logistics Department, in charge of this threshing ground.
This job made Paul secretly feel complicated for several days.
He was nineteen years old and was no longer an ignorant child... Just as his brother Sam had scolded him before he left, if he were in Innadelli, people like him would either have to ask for favors to get into the factory, or work as a laborer in a leather workshop or as an apprentice - those respectable shops in the South City would not want him to be a waiter, as he had big hands and feet and an unpresentable appearance, which would ruin the customers' mood of relaxation.
The people at Westham Town Hall made him go to night school to learn simple reading and arithmetic, and also put him in charge of the management work at a site, calculating the working hours and paying wages for odd jobs. Paul himself knew very well that if he were in Innadri, he would not have the chance to get to this point. The people of Innadri would only treat people like him with a poor background and a vulgar appearance as thieves and be wary of them.
Paul remembered it very clearly... When he was thirteen years old, he made his first delivery for his mother's sewing shop and delivered a coat to a gentleman in the Glanser district for repair. The housekeeper of that family stopped him, opened the package in front of him, and carefully checked the buttons on the coat to make sure they were all there before letting him go.
The butler, worried that he would steal the brass buttons on the coat during the delivery.
This kind of...humiliation has always been deeply engraved in Paul's memory.
There are many similar things -
Respectable gentlemen could choose any fruit they wanted, but people like him who were not well dressed would be stared at by the owner if they approached the fruit stall.
If you stop to rest when you are tired during delivery, if you happen to stop near the side door or back door of a store, you will be considered as helping the thief to scout the area or to be a lookout, and will be driven away by the clerk.
This is not just Paul's memory. Young people on Mary Street who have no education, cannot find formal jobs and can only do odd jobs here and there are all treated the same way.
It is simply a fantasy to let this kind of street kid who "looks like he has dirty hands" be in charge of the property of a venue.
And this is exactly the trust that Westram, who Paul previously believed "has no future as Newing Town", gave him.
Paul has always maintained the habit that Mrs. Hank taught them, which is to do every job wholeheartedly and take seriously the work that can earn food and a stable life for his family. He is not the kind of person who is good at speaking or expressing emotions. He is even less articulate than his brother Sam. The sadness, sentimentality and colorfulness in his heart that only he knows are only known to him.
“Paul, we’re here to get the corn!”
Two young men pushed open the gate of the threshing yard and rode in on a tricycle.
"Okay." Paul put down the winnowing basket and deftly dragged out several sacks of corn that he had sifted himself. "These are all I have for now. I haven't checked the rest."
"Load them all into the car. You don't have to sort them slowly. There are machines in the factory area that can automatically sort and clean them." The young man who looked a few years older than Paul said with a laugh.
Paul was a little surprised, but he didn't say anything. He just worked with the two brothers' comrades to move the sacks into the car.
After emptying the sacks in the threshing yard and sending the two men away, Paul also took a hand-cranked thresher, sat down, and cranked the lever to thresh the corn cobs...
No one asked him, the person in charge of the threshing floor, to do the same work, but Paul had seen with his own eyes those thin and frail clerks doing what they could on the construction site, and he certainly didn't think he was any more special than those clerks.
The sky gradually darkened.
When it was almost time for the second working meal as usual, people from the Logistics Department came over earlier than usual with the meal delivery cart.
The Logistics Department has trained its own team of chefs, so the Town Hall no longer has to trouble the Undead Canteen for its working meals, as all of them are handled by the Logistics Department itself.
And these new chefs... were naturally the family members of the original city defense soldiers. Even Paul's fifteen-year-old sister Joan got a job in the logistics department.
The person who came to deliver the food was Paul's sister Joan. She and Locke's sister pushed the food cart in. As soon as they entered the door, Joan took out a small thing on a plastic plate from the food cart and shouted excitedly: "Look, Paul, look at what this is!"
Joan is the most active person in Hank's family of four. Paul and his brothers talk less in a year than Joan does in two weeks. Paul looked at his little sister as if he was not surprised. When he saw what she was holding, he opened his mouth in surprise: "Cake? How can there be cake?"
"We made it ourselves!" The little girl raised her chin proudly. "Paul, the flour mill can make cake flour! I heard from the clerk over there that they put wheat flour and corn flour into those weird machines and they can actually make cake flour!"
Paul's mouth opened even wider...
There is also a cake shop on Mary Street Market. It is a place that all the boys on the whole street yearn to go to, but they are tactful enough not to go near it - the price of cake is several times that of bread, and except for someone's birthday or some important festival, most people are reluctant to buy such flashy food.
"It only takes wheat flour and corn flour to make a cake ? Then why can cakes be sold at several times the price of bread?" Paul was extremely puzzled, because corn flour was obviously much cheaper than wheat flour.
The cakes sold in this world...it’s not that they are unscrupulous, it’s really a cost issue: they have to be made with special low-gluten flour.
The wheat commonly grown in Westham is medium-gluten wheat (which has more gluten and stronger gluten, suitable for making bread), which is not suitable for making cakes.
This is the place where the earth's industry shows its power - the starch machine grinds corn into corn starch, mixes it with medium-gluten wheat flour in a certain proportion, and artificially synthesizes low-gluten flour, and low-cost cake flour comes out.
Cake baking also adopts a simple and rough industrial processing method, and is uniformly produced using the one-piece baking machines of the G Province Machinery Factory. The same assembly line can produce cakes, and biscuits can be produced by changing the mold. The latter is the highlight - biscuits that are durable and easy to carry, and are very suitable for promotion as one of the flagship products of the agricultural products processing industry.
As Paul curiously ate the small piece of cake from his work lunch, Ji Tang, Zhao Zhenzhen and Rex were inspecting the first batch of biscuits that had just come off the assembly line in a puffed food processing factory in the food processing chain, which was only a few hundred meters away in the factory area.
The raw materials for this batch of biscuits are artificial low-gluten flour, eggs, soybean oil, shallots, salt and corn syrup.
Ji Tang and Zhao Zhenzhen were unable to taste the food, so Rex took on the responsibility of tasting the food… Under the nervous gaze of the clerk and workers in charge, Rex picked up a steaming square biscuit and put it in his mouth.
The crispy biscuits were salty and sweet, with the aroma of onions and a hint of eggs. After eating just one piece, Rex gave a thumbs up: "Very good, the taste is very good, and it is the most suitable breakfast with some milk."
The clerks and workers in charge burst into laughter...
"I told you it's absolutely great. Just the smell makes it fragrant." A worker recruited from the townspeople said with a smile.
"Everyone, try it too, and feel the fruits of your own labor." Rex smiled and waved his hand.
"Hehe, actually they are produced by machines, we didn't do anything..." The workers said so and came forward to pick up the biscuits.
"It's delicious, even better than the snacks I had at my wedding!"
"Yeah, that's great, this is actually produced by us..."
“I never thought corn could be made into sugar, and it tastes so sweet!”
These townspeople, who had observed the construction site of the main road in the town for a long time and passed the night school examination to obtain the first batch of workers, were deeply moved when they ate the biscuits they produced.
The old farmer's son came to the factory area to do odd jobs and was also on the scene. He was only responsible for cleaning and moving work throughout the whole process. He did not participate in the production. He smelled the aroma of the biscuits and secretly swallowed his saliva.
"Young man, have one too." A townsman worker noticed that the young man didn't move, so he kindly shared a piece of the biscuit in his hand with him.
"Thank you, thank you." The old farmer's son was flattered. He took it with both hands and couldn't wait to take a bite.
"It's so delicious." The young man with calloused hands and tanned face couldn't help laughing.
"It's delicious, isn't it?" The townspeople grinned. "You grew the wheat and corn used to make the cookies, so you have a share of the cookies."
The young man didn't quite understand what he heard, and exclaimed, "It's amazing that wheat flour and corn can make such delicious food. This is much more valuable than wheat and corn, right sir?"
"Of course, our biscuits are definitely more popular than brown bread." The townspeople said proudly.
When Rex heard their words, he smiled at Ji Tang and Zhao Zhenzhen.
"Let's go and take a look at the flour mill." Ji Tang waved his hand.
The three of them came out of the puffed food processing factory talking and laughing. At a glance, they saw a large group of undead parading on the street outside.
"Why are the undead here? Are there more enemies coming?" Rex was shocked.
"Hmm... probably not." Ji Tang looked down at the "system time" and slapped his head, "Oh, I didn't even notice that the day for the battle with the Blazing Sun Church has arrived?"
"Huh?!" Rex was even more surprised. "Then, then don't we need to make some preparations?"
"Since Yang didn't inform us, it means there's no need." Ji Tang waved his hand, "Fighting is his business, we just need to do our job well."
As he was speaking, he saw Brother Lowell, wearing a very eye-catching and gorgeous aristocratic outfit (actually a rented COS costume), riding a tall ground lizard horse, passing by the road in front of the factory area.
"Look, you don't even need to show up. Yang is already prepared." Ji Tang pointed towards the street.
Rex: “…”
