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 very 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 and the white curtain would cover 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 would worry that I might crave ice cream so much that I would end up wasting my money.

Why do I have such a funny wish? Because, when I was selling watermelon seeds and cigarettes at the cinema, I saw that the ice cream sellers were very expensive. What child can resist 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 sister 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 currency exchange, the lives of most city officials and workers were quite difficult. My parents were both government officials, 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 10 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, and when guests come to the house, they only need to go to the chicken coop to collect a few eggs, which 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 “slump” disease it is, but hardship has more reasons to enter my house. Feeling sorry for my mother, my older sister goes to school one day and sells vegetables the other day. At first, it was bundles of mustard greens and turnips cut from the garden, then she goes to Vinh market to buy vegetables to sell at small markets and flea markets. My mother can’t stop her, well, a grown-up girl will definitely need more fabric and some fancy sandals, my mother turns away and wipes away her tears so my sister can sell vegetables. We are younger, we don’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 the trade".

The hardest thing was how to “unblock” my mother’s thoughts. My mother has always been very gentle, kind but also very profound and serious. We discussed 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 on her youngest son’s curly hair. Suddenly, my mother was moved to tears and asked me: “Do you want some ice cream?” I answered very naively: “An ice cream is worth half a kilo of rice, Mom.” When 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. As for peanuts, we had to roast them with basil, put them 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 me 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 the bags of melon seeds over my shoulder and a few packs of cigarettes in my hand.

We went to the cinema, where there were operas and reformed operas, and we greeted every couple we met. At first, we were shy, but then we got used to it. Usually, the two things that sold the most were cigarettes and melon seeds. I thought, there was nothing more interesting for couples than sitting in the cinema watching a movie and munching away. 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 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 like: Those Days by the Lam River, 17th Parallel, Night and Day, When Will October Come, Hanoi Baby, Sister Su, Flip Card Game, Saigon Special Forces… we all knew the ticket sales date, schedule, and screening time.

Street vendor girl. Photo: Le Thang

My sisters and I also got to see all of those movies, but mainly watched… the last half. Because when all the guests were in the theater, the movie was only 2/3 of the way 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 Sister Su) or delighted when we saw the American helicopter dive into the middle of the flooded field (in the movie Wild Fields)… There were also days when I managed to get past the ticket inspector and sneaked in right at the beginning of the screening. And in there, I sold all the watermelon seeds and cigarettes, regretting why I didn’t bring more.

There was another day when 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 gangs of 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 Cuong “dirty”. 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 feces in the middle of the crowd. People were terrified and moved away while Cuong “dirty” 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 also 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 difficult summers have also passed. The old cinemas and theaters no longer have the bustling atmosphere like before. 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 theater on September 12. That day, the movie “Lord of the Rings” was showing. I sat next to my mother in the theater, turned around and saw 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 also so guilty. That was also the last time I watched a movie with my mother.

Van Nhi