The Past

I don't like to think of the past, but sometimes the memories come back. Scenes of the past comes to the mind. I lived in a town house for most part of my growing years. There were 3 tenants, each with a family. We occupied a room downstairs. The 9 of us packed into a small room. There was no bed......we slept on the wood plank above the floor. There was a small cupboard where we put our clothing. There was no such thing as fan or air-con. Once in a while, ticks invaded the wall of the bedroom. And of course all of us contributed our blood to the ticks until mother sprayed insecticide and got rid of them temporarily.
The front of the house was where father conduct his business. He made tombstones and tombs for a living. He also was adept in feng shui.........more of the yin type. Means he could predict whether the feng shui of a certain tomb was good or bad for the deceased's children and grandchildren. Business was not good. How much business could you expect from dead man's business?
At the back was the dining hall. We share the kitchen and the dining hall with another tenant. The kitchen was big enough to accommodate a few tables for the stoves, an open rack to keep pots and pans, a furnace, a toilet and a bathroom. There was also a water-tub connected to the bathroom. The toilet was the bucket type where every morning the night soil men would come and cart it away. When they didn't turn up for a few day, the bucket would overflow. Sometimes, there would be shit on the platform when the users didn't aim properly.
Well, just now I mentioned about the furnace. The metal tools used to engraved the wordings on the tombstone needed to be sharpen. So once in a few days, we had to help to turn the blower continuously to make sure the fire in the furnace was hot enough to heat up the tools so that they were malleable enough to be banged until sharp. The water in the tub was used to cool down the tools.
In the evening,  Mrs Lee, the mee-seller would come over and cook her pots of soup, curry and laksa.There were prawns to peel and fish to clean. About 2 kilos of each. I was paid to help to peel the prawns. Sometimes the prawns would come late and also most of the time of the very small variety. So it was a tedious job to do and not very lucrative to do. Many a time I helped to clean the fish unpaid. I collected the eggs and salted them. Mother used them to make perut ikan, one of my favourite dishes. Sometimes, the bottles of salted eggs were sold to the land lady's relatives who came from outstation.
Life was even harder after father passed on. There were so many ifs.............if only he didn't pass on so early, things I think would have been a lot different for us.