The Red Era: Starting from a Truck Driver

Chapter 36 Tofu Shop

After washing the clothes, they were hung on the guardrail outside the car. Jiang Cheng did not go into the cab. It was still hot, and the cab was hot too. Jiang Cheng climbed directly onto the empty compartment, took out some loquats from the space, and took out half a bottle of white wine.

Watching the stars and the moon, listening to the chirping of insects. Drinking some wine, eating some fruit, and having a cigarette. The only thing missing was that I didn't buy a mosquito net at the supply and marketing cooperative. If I had a mosquito net, I could have slept in the back compartment at night. But you need a mosquito net ticket to buy a mosquito net, and you can't buy one without a ticket.

Jiang Cheng, who was not very good at drinking, drank a little and felt like lying down, so he returned to the cab. As for the mosquitoes that had slipped into the cab, Jiang Cheng moved his mind and sent them all into space, and then released them outside the car, so he didn't have to worry about mosquitoes at night.

At night, Jiang Cheng had a dream. He dreamed that he went back to 2024 and drove Didi to pick up a big order at night. Then he passed by an alley and saw a woman standing alone at the door in the middle of the night. She looked so pitiful, and Jiang Cheng wanted to help her.

Originally in the dream, Jiang Cheng was going to have a deep conversation with the woman, but suddenly the woman turned into a man and called him "comrade". Jiang Cheng was not a homosexual, he had no interest in men at all.

"Comrade, driver~~."

I don’t know whether I was awakened by a dream or by someone calling me outside the car, but when I heard the greeting outside the car, Jiang Cheng sat up.

It was already daybreak. Jiang Cheng checked his watch and saw that it was really early, just after five o'clock. He put on his pants and asked the person outside the car loudly, "What are you doing?"

When driving long distances and parking in the suburbs, you can be woken up early in the morning. The key is that Jiang Cheng believes that if no one calls him, he thinks the woman in his dream will not turn into a man and call him comrade at the critical moment.

"Driver, excuse me for bothering you. I work at a nearby tofu shop. I saw your car parked here early in the morning and I would like to ask you for a favor." The man outside the car saw that the driver had woken up. He knew it would be bad to wake him up, so he could only smile apologetically.

"Are you from the tofu shop? What's the matter?" Jiang Cheng sat in the passenger seat, opened the car door and asked.

"Master, your car is going into the city. If it succeeds, can you help our tofu shop bring some tofu into the city?" The man from the tofu shop said to Jiang Cheng while holding a pack of cigarettes.

Jiang Cheng was no longer interested in a pack of cigarettes. But it was a good deal. If Jiang Cheng didn't plan to go to the city to buy some food, he could stay away from the city. But he planned to go to the city to have breakfast, and then buy some steamed buns and put them in the space, so that if he couldn't drive into the city later, he could still have a meal.

"Can you give me some tofu? I'll deliver it to the unloading place for you." Jiang Cheng said. When he was at the Changcheng Transport Station, his colleague the driver told him that as a driver, one must dare to speak up and just say directly if he wants something.

Tofu was also something that needed to be purchased with coupons in those days, and it cost eight cents per pound. After hearing what Jiang Cheng said, the man at the tofu shop thought for a moment and said, "Master, then can I give you another ten pounds of tofu?"

"Okay, we're serving the people. I'll start the car." Jiang Cheng said with a smile. He took the pack of cigarettes given by the other party and put it in his pocket.

The car started quickly, and Jiang Cheng asked the people from the tofu shop to get in. After chatting for a while, he learned that their tofu shop supplied tofu to a vegetable market in Xicheng District, JJ City.

It is not supplied every day. Weather, materials, seasons and many other factors can cause the supply quantity to vary.

Late June and early July are the time when soybeans mature, at least most of the soybeans in Jiangxi Province are ripe at this time. Therefore, the tofu shop still has sufficient raw materials. As long as it doesn't rain heavily recently, more than ten loads of tofu are basically delivered to the city every day.

The tofu shop delivers the tofu by carrying it on a shoulder pole, with one person carrying two loads of tofu. In order to deliver the tofu as soon as possible, they get up early, and even start working before dawn to ensure the freshness of the tofu.

There is a relatively wide road that leads to the main road, so Jiang Cheng can drive directly to the tofu shop. When he arrived, Jiang Cheng was amazed. Tofu is just one of the products of the tofu shop. They also produce bean curd skin, dried bean curd, and bean curd sticks.

But Jiang Cheng asked and found out that these were not sold at ordinary times, and were only sent to the supply and marketing cooperatives for sale during the New Year and other festivals. Jiang Cheng liked to eat fried bean curd with meat the most, so he didn't want them to be sent this time, he bought it with his own money.

In this era, yuba is a kind of food with relatively complicated production process and low output, so yuba is considered a precious product. In terms of price, it is a little more expensive than meat.

Seeing that Jiang Cheng was a driver, the tofu shop reluctantly sold him two and a half kilograms of bean curd sheets and charged him two yuan.

Jiang Cheng was very happy after buying the yuba, because he loved it.

In the back of the car, more than ten loads of tofu were quickly loaded. There wasn't much tofu in one load, and the tofu was separated into layers to avoid being squeezed. Ten loads of tofu weighed several hundred kilograms in total. But in the past, it took several people to carry it to the city, but now with Jiang Cheng's car, only two people can go.

One person sat in the front passenger seat and pointed out the direction when we entered the city, and the other person sat in the back car to look after the tofu. Don't drive the car on uneven ground, which would shake the tofu and turn it over.

The car arrived in the city very quickly, and it was not yet six o'clock. Jiang Cheng sent the tofu shop staff to a farmer's market nearby. There happened to be a breakfast place selling steamed buns nearby.

The steamed buns in those days were not as white as those in later generations, or the flour was not that white. The steamed buns may not taste as delicate, but they have the fragrance of flour.

The price of steamed buns was not expensive, but you had to pay for them with food stamps. Jiang Cheng bought dozens of steamed buns and drove off.

If the next stop is calculated according to the urban area, then the next urban area is Anqing. On such a road, a distance of about 300 kilometers, you have to pass through many county towns and even township commune roads.

A journey that takes less than half a day on the highway in later generations may take a whole day to reach Jiangcheng in this era.

Jiang Cheng was looking at the map while thinking in his mind that even if the truck was empty, the road was bad, the shock absorption of the car was very average, and the weather was so hot, it was impossible for it to not rest in the middle of the journey.

Anyway, he was a company driver who could make a living regardless of the weather, and he was not hauling goods for himself, like the truck drivers of later generations. Wasting time meant wasting money.

So I gave up the idea of ​​reaching AQ City in one day and proceeded on the road as normal.

No one had taken a ride this morning, so Jiang Cheng could make some money. But he also knew that this was not the era of liberalization. Now, if people wanted to go far away, they had to get a certificate. If they wanted to take a ride, it was only for a short distance, so they couldn't make any money.

To make a profit, he still has to rely on his identity as a driver, go to some places to buy some popular goods that are not available in his own city, and then make a little money by resell them.

After that, I often drove in the same direction. The driver knew more units and was able to bring back a lot of things.

Like the tofu shop that Jiang Cheng encountered today, next time he passes by, as long as they go to the city to deliver goods early in the morning, Jiang Cheng can help them and buy some soy products without a ticket.

(End of this chapter)