Street vendors of childhood

(Baonghean) - I had a childhood attached to many cinemas and entertainment centers in Vinh city. It's not that I was too passionate about art or entertainment, because at that time my family did not have the conditions to satisfy that luxury. I went to cinemas and places where theatrical activities and performances took place to sell goods on the street!

It's funny, when I was eight years old, in third grade, I had a wish to have a styrofoam box. I would surround that big but light styrofoam box with a floral fabric, and inside the floral fabric would be a pure white curtain - the cotton fabric that my mother used to sew mosquito nets. The floral fabric, the white curtain would wrap the ice cream sticks.

I would go out and sell coconut milk ice cream and mung bean ice cream, calling them out with the same whistle that adults use. Even though it was just my imagination, sometimes I worried that I might crave ice cream so much that I would end up wasting my money.

Why did I have that funny wish? Because, when I was selling watermelon seeds and cigarettes at the cinema, I saw that the ice cream vendors were very expensive. What child could stop craving for a cool, steaming ice cream, especially on a summer evening at the cinema. However, I hid my desire to have a styrofoam box to sell ice cream on the street. Because I knew, my parents would never agree. Even my sisters and I selling ice cream on the street every evening was beyond their thinking.

This area used to be a cinema serving the city's audience. PV

In the early days of the currency exchange, the lives of most of the city's cadres and workers were quite difficult. My parents were both civil servants, but their salaries were still very difficult to feed the family of 6. To improve their income, my mother raised pigs, chickens and ducks. A litter of pigs usually only raised 2, because the space in the apartment building was not enough to raise more, and the important thing was what to feed them. There were only about a dozen chickens, and a few dozen ducks, raised in 2 ponds dug by bombs during the war. I don't know what life is like in the remaining apartment buildings today, but back then, many households raised livestock like my family.

Thanks to raising pigs and chickens, at the end of the year, when Tet comes, the children have new clothes, when there are guests, just going to the chicken coop to collect a few eggs is less miserable. However, I don't know why that year my family was extremely poor. Every pig we raised died. My mother rode her bicycle all the way to Tro market, Sao market and even Dien Chau to buy piglets, but all of them failed. The bad thing is that after raising about 3-4 pigs, they got sick and died. "Lép-tô disease" - my mother said.

I don’t know what kind of “lép-tô” disease it is, but hardship has more reasons to enter my house. Feeling sorry for my mother, my older sister went to school one day and sold vegetables the other day. At first, it was bundles of mustard greens and turnips cut from the home garden, then my sister went to Vinh market to buy vegetables to sell at small markets and flea markets. My mother couldn’t stop her, well, a grown-up girl would definitely need more fabric and some fancy sandals, so my mother turned away and wiped her tears to let my sister sell vegetables. We were younger, so we didn’t know what to do to help our family through the difficult times.

In the neighborhood, there were some older brothers and sisters who knew how to earn money to help adults. At night, especially on Saturday and Sunday nights, at cinemas such as 12-9, Cua Dong, City Theater (later Intimex Supermarket), City Cultural and Sports Center... when there were movies or opera performances, they would come together. They sold goods on the street. Each person carried a wooden box with a sliding glass panel in front of their chest. Inside were watermelon seeds, sunflower seeds, cigarettes, roasted peanuts, peanut candy... "Following the example" of the oldest sister, the three of us asked the children to follow us to "learn a trade".

The hardest part was how to “clear up” my mother’s thoughts. My mother has always been very gentle and kind, but also very profound and serious. We discussed it with my eldest sister, and then we asked my mother. She didn’t say anything. She quietly came to me and rubbed her gentle face against her youngest son’s curly hair. Suddenly, my mother asked me with tears in her eyes: “Do you want some ice cream?” I answered very innocently: “An ice cream is worth half a kilo of rice, Mom.” As I sat down to write these lines, I missed my mother very much.

Then, we became street vendors. In the summer, we didn’t have to go to school, so every day my sisters would go out and get candy, melon seeds, sunflower seeds, rolled cigarettes… to sell at night. Everything was fine, but with melon seeds, sunflower seeds and roasted peanuts, it was more complicated. Because after roasting, we had to put them in small plastic bags. The peanuts had to be roasted with basil, put in small plastic bags the size of a child’s toe, about 15cm long.

There was a kid in the neighborhood who told my sisters and I to mix chemical sugar into peanuts, but my mother didn’t let us do that. Plastic bags were heated over an oil lamp to seal them. Bags of melon seeds and sunflower seeds were tied together to form a chain like shampoo bags today. Along with my sisters who sold on the street, every night I was only assigned to carry bags of melon seeds over my shoulder and carry a few packs of cigarettes.

We went to the cinema, where there were operas and reformed operas, and we greeted every couple. At first, we were shy, but then we got used to it. Usually, the two things that sold the most were cigarettes and watermelon seeds. I thought, there was nothing more interesting for couples than sitting in the cinema watching a movie and snacking on them. During the summer, my sisters and I went to many places, but the most was still the city cinema, which later became the Cultural and Sports Center on Le Mao Street. Because this place was the closest to our house.

As far as I can remember, the cinema was also a volleyball court. In the afternoon people played volleyball and in the evening they sold movie tickets. Because we were street vendors, we knew almost all the movies that were released. Those were: Those Days by the Lam River, 17th Parallel, Day and Night, When Will the Tenth Month Come, Hanoi Baby, Sister Su, Flip Card, Sai Gon Special Forces… we knew all the ticket sales dates, schedules, and screening times.

Street vendor girl. Photo: Le Thang

My sisters and I also got to see all those movies, but mainly… the last half. Because when all the guests had entered the theater, the movie was only 2/3 through before the gatekeeper let us in. At those times, there were no chairs, we just sat flat in the middle of the soccer field, looking up in horror, angry at Sam (in the movie Chi Su) or delighted when we saw the American helicopter dive into the middle of the flooded field (in the movie Canh Dong Hoang)… There were also days when I managed to get past the ticket inspector and sneaked in right at the beginning of the screening. And there I sold all the watermelon seeds and cigarettes, regretting why I didn’t bring more.

Another time I was dragged out by a grumpy ticket inspector. This “business” was not always smooth sailing. Many times my sisters and I were robbed of candy, cakes, and cigarettes by hooligans. There were also many conflicts due to competing sales with other groups of children. We agreed not to tell our parents, especially our mother, about all these complications and resentments.

During my days of selling on the street, I was particularly impressed by a guy the kids called “dirty” Cuong. My “colleagues” explained to me that this guy was a genuine ticket scalper. Every time the theater started selling tickets for a new movie, Cuong was always the first one there. And to buy more tickets, he often made himself dirty and smelly by carrying a bag of pig shit and pushing his way through the crowd. People were terrified and moved away while “dirty” Cuong leisurely carried the tickets for the best seats.

One day, Cuong “dirty” gave me two movie tickets and said: “I’ll give them to my eldest sister”. Of course, I refused because my sisters and I were taught not to accept anything from anyone without our parents’ permission. Moreover, Cuong was poor and had to be a ticket broker, had to get dirty and embarrassed to earn money. This made him a bit disappointed, but he was still good to my sisters and me, especially when he was around, no one dared to bully us.

The hard summers have passed. The old cinemas and theaters no longer have the bustling atmosphere they once had. The first time I took my mother to the movies was when I was 25 years old. It was just me and my mother, because my sisters were all married. It was 2002, we went to the 12-9 theater. That day, the movie “Lord of the Rings” was showing. I sat next to my mother in the theater, and turned to see her dozing off on the chair. My mother always loved watching movies, but she had been sick for more than a year. I sat there feeling so sorry for my mother and so guilty. That was also the last time I watched a movie with my mother.

Van Nhi