A little Ukrainian history as my first post here

To begin with, a little family history. My father was born in Ukraine many years ago. I recently discovered that his family had fallen on hard times around the time of his birth due to wars and civil discord. His grandfather and the generations previous to that, had been quite wealthy and of great nobility in the neighborhood. I started doing my research on some exotic, but quite reliable websites. I cannot divulge the names of those websites, due to blood oaths of confidentiality. But, you can trust me that what I am about to relate is all basically true, with some names changed to protect the innocent.

My first discovery was that I was able to finally see the family motto, which was inscribed upon an ancient escutcheon. It said in Latin: “Semper, Ubi sub Ubi”. Such wisdom of the ages was something to take to heart immediately. One of the original ancestors name was Kevin Khmelnitsky. (You might ask why Kevin? His father Andrei, was a well educated man who spoke Ukrainian, Latin and English, because he employed an English tutor for his children. The tutor was named Kevin Bitterstuff-Jones. Kevin was well loved by Andrei and the whole family. Unfortunately, he was dropped in the moat when he was caught stealing the old Baron’s favorite cupcakes. Suffering a case of punishment remorse, he decided to name his next born in honor of Kevin.) He was a land baron of great wealth and similar girth. He ruled over vast lands, some of which might be included in modern day Poland. He had many peasants or serfs that farmed the land and happily bestowed the produce of that land on Baron Kevin. At times, some of these Polish serfs might decide that they didn’t appreciate the benevolence of Baron Kevin. They would gather together and go hide out in the forest and stop farming the land and just hang out living off the land. This would not be acceptable behavior to any happy go lucky despot of those days. Baron Kevin would dispatch some of his best troops to round up these missing serfs, but they were not always successful and would sometime grumble that it wasn’t even fun chasing after these peasants. So Baron Kevin would spend long hours on the throne trying to come up with a proper solution to this problem. He finally repaired to his rumpus room and began to plunk on his spinet piano.

After a few weeks, he finally hit on what would become a phenomenon for the ages. Being a man of many gifts and talents, he began to write music that might accompany the task of finding the missing serfs. Once he had composed enough music, he summoned his musicians to play the music on their balalaikas and accordions. Baron Kevin sang the words and the catchy tunes soon had everyone tapping their boots and eager to move. He was now able to make a once onerous effort on the part of his loyal followers, into a new summertime sport. The Baron assembled the whole multitude outside of the castle. He was seated in the back of his favorite droshky and had some of the palace musicians similarly ensconced and he uttered the historic words: “ …Let’s go serfing!!!!” The music began, and quicker than you could say: serfing safari. the riders and droshkys were thundering through the woods and the missing serfs became lost no more. Production on the estates of the Baron increased, his troops were happy and he had invented a new musical genre. Unfortunately for my family and the generations to follow, Kevin did not copyright the music or his songs. Also, most of the music was lost in a mysterious fire after his death, and the only traces of this delightful music and custom were saved in unwritten tradition by some of the Polish serfs. They eventually bastardized the music into some catchy Polka tuneage and this musical soufflé was not to surface again till centuries later in the United States in southern California.

You will not find this information on Wikipedia or any of those superficial websites, but you can take my word for it. More to come