Volume 1: Reborn in the 1980s, selling lunch boxes with my mother Chapter 145 Saving People is Important
Jiang Tian guessed correctly that the guests who rushed home in the two days before the New Year were the richest.
Apart from students from major universities, the rest are either cadres or core technical workers in factories.
These people are usually busy with work, have high salaries, and have no time to spend money. Apart from sending money home, shouldn't the remaining money be spent on buying New Year's goods for their family?
In the afternoon, it started snowing outside again. The guests trapped in the restaurant looked here and there. In less than half a day, the smoked fish and meat dumplings prepared by the store were sold out.
By evening, the snow was even heavier.
The store became completely busy.
Hu Qiongfang, along with Hu Cuizhi and Zhang Xiufen, were sweating profusely as they cooked noodles and dumplings for the guests.
Jiang Tian took He Chunling to help wash vegetables, prepare food, wash dishes and wash chopsticks.
The two elementary school students Jiang Cheng and He Chunsheng were also busy running around helping to collect the empty dishes and chopsticks from the table.
The common people at that time were relatively simple and honest. Some of them were reluctant to spend money on food. But when they smelled the aroma of hand-rolled noodles and dumplings in the house, they did not complain. Instead, they took the big teapot they brought with them and asked the proprietress for a jar of boiling water to soak the cold steamed buns they brought with them.
Hu Qiongfang couldn't bear to watch it, so she asked Jiang Cheng to go to the big jar of soy sauce in the backyard, take out two plates of pickled beans and pickled peppers, cut them into sections, and put them on the table next to the thermos.
When soaking the steamed buns in this way, add some sour beans and sour peppers. It will at least have a saltier and spicy taste than eating the steamed buns dry.
After finishing dinner, Hu Qiongfang and her team boiled a few more pots of water using the remaining , and filled up dozens of thermos bottles in the house to prevent the people from having no hot water to drink at night.
After boiling the water, Jiang Tian and He Chunling brought a few broken iron pots from the back.
Just when everyone was confused, Hu Qiongfang took a shovel, shoveled out the still burning charcoal in the stove, and put it in the iron pot.
Jiang Tian and He Chunling placed a warm brazier on the ground every few tables. The originally empty room soon became warm.
These people originally thought that being trapped on the provincial road in such heavy snow would, if not freeze to death, they would definitely starve and suffer from the cold.
However, people of this era all survived hard times. In the most difficult times, they climbed snowy mountains and crossed grasslands, chewed tree bark and ate grass roots. What kind of hardships have they not experienced? As long as there is a place to shelter from the wind and rain and a bowl of hot water to drink, and everyone brings dry food, they will definitely be able to survive for a few days.
However, what they didn’t expect was that Hu Qiongfang, the owner of the restaurant, was actually a kind-hearted person!
Not only did I light a fire pot for them, but at around eight o'clock in the evening, I also boiled three big pots of sweet potato soup and opened it up for them to drink as much as they wanted.
The sweet potatoes were grown by Grandpa Hu himself and harvested in the fall. Since the family’s pigs were sold this year, the potatoes didn’t need to be fed to the pigs, so he simply brought all the sweet potatoes here and stored them in the cellar in the backyard of the restaurant.
Sweet potatoes that have been stored for several months taste sweeter than when they were just dug out. When cooking sweet potato soup, Hu Qiongfang also put a few bowls of rice in it. Although it is called soup, it is actually sweet potato porridge.
Although half of the sweet potato porridge was water, this treatment had already made the trapped guests praise the proprietress Hu Qiongfang to the sky.
Hu Qiongfang felt quite embarrassed because the sweet potatoes were grown by her own family and the firewood was distributed from the mountain in the village before the New Year. These were free. A few bowls of rice were only worth a few dollars. It was not worth praising her like that at all.
Hu Qiongfang felt that she was not doing well enough, but soon, a bigger test came.
Veteran driver Zhao Qiangguo's prediction was accurate.
Although experienced drivers chose to park nearby to avoid danger when heavy snow fell, there were still some stubborn drivers who, not knowing whether they were really in an emergency, drove forward fearlessly.
In the middle of the night, there were several loud bangs, and a chain collision occurred not far away.
The loud noise, mixed with the pungent smell of gasoline, woke everyone up.
At this time, no one cared whether they were locals or outsiders. Except for the elderly and children, everyone else rushed out to save people.
It was snowing heavily and the snow on the ground was almost up to my thighs. I don't know who was so desperate as to dare to drive forward in such weather. It was really hurting others and ourselves!
There was no point in cursing at this point. Everyone rolled up their sleeves, pried open the car doors, smashed the windows, and dragged and scrambled to pull the people trapped inside out.
The first few cars were fine. Although they were knocked all over the place, the drivers and passengers inside were only slightly frightened and scratched.
Later, Jiang Tian and several other half-grown children were driven aside by the adults.
Hu Qiongfang was so nervous that her voice was trembling. Like a mother hen with her chicks, she tried her best to rush Jiang Tian and He Chunling home.
"Tiantian, you and Chunling, hurry to the gas station! Borrow Boss Tong's phone and ask the county hospital to come and save him!"
Jiang Tian was confused for a moment, and suddenly remembered that there were no mobile phones in this era. After an accident, it was impossible for people trapped in the car to run out and call the police...
Jiang Tian took He Chunling and ran to the gas station breathlessly, but unexpectedly they met Tong Zhiyuan halfway.
"I called the traffic brigade, and they'll ask the county hospital to send a car over."
After all, Boss Tong has been working on the provincial road for many years, and he is much more skilled in handling such matters than a novice like Hu Qiongfang.
Not to mention that one car slipped off the slope and rear-ended several cars. He had seen many bloodier scenes than this.
One autumn there was heavy fog and a truck transporting hazardous chemicals was rear-ended by a passenger truck. More than a dozen vehicles in front and behind were collided with each other. The worst hit were two small cars, which were crushed like a sandwich.
In that accident, they rushed out to save people just like they did today, but they were still a step too late. The tank truck transporting hazardous chemicals exploded, and no one on the passenger bus that rear-ended it escaped.
Tong Zhiyuan's ex-wife often complained to him, asking why he didn't take her with him when he did business. What she meant was that she felt he was holding back in his business and was guarding against her.
But in fact, Boss Tong was just afraid.
Oil tanker trucks are not any safer than hazardous chemicals transport trucks.
And once an accident occurs, the possibility of explosion is greater.
Outsiders envied Boss Tong for making a fortune running a gas station, but they didn't know that he also worked hard every day to make this money. Especially when he went to get gas with a car, he went alone and left his wife at home.
This way, if something happens to him, at least there is still an adult in the family, and the two children will not be left without support.
It's a pity that his ex-wife didn't appreciate his painstaking efforts...
Retracting his thoughts, Tong Zhiyuan asked Jiang Tian and He Chunling to go back to the hotel first and boil some more hot water.
"Is there any rice in the store? Let's cook two pots of porridge. I think we'll have a lot to do tonight."
After saying that, Tong Zhiyuan hurried to save people.
Jiang Tian was also busy going back to boil water and cook porridge.
While busy peeling and cutting sweet potatoes and preparing to make sweet potato porridge, Jiang Tian always felt like she had forgotten something.
What's the matter?
