When Li Long started working on the harvester, he had already taken precautions against situations like the one with Tie Laobang.
They were all neighbors. If someone really decided to play dirty and refuse to pay, honestly, a softhearted person would have a hard time dealing with it.
But Li Long wasn't softhearted. He knew that if he didn't collect the money from Tie Laobang, or resolve the matter, he would run into plenty of similar situations afterward. He might as well forget about making money harvesting wheat.
"No money? That's all right." Li Long smiled. "You can pay me after you sell the wheat."
"But we've already made plans for that money. We have to pay off our debt to the team." Tie Laobang looked miserable. "How about you give us a little more time? We'll pay you when we have the money. Don't worry, I'll write you an IOU. I'll definitely pay you back!"
Li Long listened and smiled.
He remembered something that happened in later years.
Overall, the villagers of the Fourth Team were actually quite law-abiding. Of course, the team's cadres generally followed the rules in their work too. From Xu Chengjun now to his replacement twenty years later, whether it was applications for subsistence allowances or various subsidies, they generally didn't take anything meant for the farming households.
And among the farmers, birds of a feather flocked together. People who weren't alike generally didn't have much to do with one another.
Tie Laobang's family belonged to the sort who usually seemed decent enough, but possessed a farmer's cunning without a farmer's honesty.
Otherwise, they couldn't have become in-laws with someone like Ma Jinbao.
There was one incident Li Long had always remembered.
Thirty years later, the village took on an Autonomous Region project to convert