I only know very little about the olden days.

We used to make fish traps on the river.

Comment:
OgO is a round wicker trap for fish.

We made fish traps and dams on the river. So we lived on the riverbanks and fished for graylings.

Comment:
Tatti: is a dam made of vertical poles that crosses a river and has a round fish trap OgO in the middle.

Graylings are over there, they are being jerked.

Comment:
The speaker was pointing at the fish being jerked nearby.

We jerked them and ate them in winter.

This was two kilometers from here. At that time there were no boots, nothing.

That's why when the snow fell down and the first ice started on the river Kolyma, our feet were frozen.

Sometimes the river is covered with a little first ice.

We always used to bring the fish here carrying it on a boat through the middle of that ice.

Comment:
On eks'il' see (19-6).

The rivermouth is far away. How could I carry the fish two kilometers? With what could we carry it?

When there was little snow, we carried it on a boat.

Then our feet became frozen. The blood stopped circulating in them and they became like a hard piece of wood.

They were not afraid either of heat or cold.

Our feet were like down, like pillows.

The ice always made our feet bleed.

We carried it like that and arrived in the evening. We had a small house.

My mother and the others lived there.

When we entered the house, we leant our feet against the warmth.

But no! Our feet ached when we started warming them.

Comment:
In the word al'a:l'a:nunnul the first Inchoative suffix -a:- is lexicalized and has a perfective meaning, while the second is a "real" Inchoative.

Our feet got swollen here and there. We warmed them by rubbing them until they got warm.

This was very torturing. They were so cold, that it was bad to put them under the blanket or by the fire.

Then when the river got frozen, we carried the fish and made traps for the willow ptarmigan and the hare.

Comment:
On SaSil see (14-4).

If the hare or willow ptarmigan were caught, we ate them, and that's how we lived in the winter.

There were no gun cartridges then.

There was only one gun, it's over there.

Comment:
The speaker pointed at the gun.

You need a steel to kindle this gun.

You charge it with a stick. We only had this kind of gun.

We used it when the elk walked around and - I forgot how to say "wild reindeer" - and when there were a lot of wild reindeer.

But there was nothing to shoot with, neither bullets nor gunpowder.

We used to kindle the fire with the kindling steel.

We kindled fire with it in summer and in winter.

We ground down the rotten yellow tree and used it.

We kindled it as a tinder, a birch tree tinder with sap.

We boiled a bucket of it.

My mother boiled it while stirring.

She stirred it until it became as good as gunpowder.

We used this gunpowder.

Do you see cotton wool over there? You stir it and it becomes like cotton wool.

It was like leather. They make purses from such leather, such chamois. It won't let air or anything come through.

It becomes like that.

We used to kindle fire with it.

So we lived in the olden days.

In half a year it will have been seventy years ago.

I had a baby, the Soviet power came.

I don't know anymore.

Although they say that we roamed and suffered, we had food.

So we lived when we were small.

My elder brothers said that my father was never hungry and never left us hungry.

Then my father got blind, but we did not starve until my brothers with their families left us.

They always used to catch something with a trap and bring it to us, hare, willow ptarmigam, or wood-grouse. We ate them and didn't starve.

Comment:
SaSi: is a pronunciational variant of SaSil, see (14-4).

Although we didn't have a gun, we didn't starve because we made traps.

Comment:
Pl'aSka is the Russian dialectal word for SaSil.

We always roamed like that.

Seventy years ago came the Soviet power.

I don't know about the more recent times, that's enough.