Hryts Speaks

Volodymyr Kish

For those of you expecting to be reading Volodymyr Kish’s regular weekly column, let me state up front that you may be disappointed. This is Hryts, his cousin from Pidkamin writing. I have been reading what he has been spouting about me for years now and my little corner of the world known as Pidkamin, and I thought it was about time that I chimed in and set the record straight about a few things.

Although my smarkach cousin Vlodko is a decent enough writer, he sometimes takes a few liberties, so I demanded “equal time” so to speak, for at least one column to clarify a few things and make a few points of my own. He promised me that he would faithfully translate it into your Ukelish (Ukrainian+English) dialect or I threatened to throw him to the pigs next time he shows his zadok in Pidkamin.

So here goes.

First, although I am flattered with the modest fame my cousin’s writing about me has inspired, I am somewhat disconcerted by the tourists that are beginning to beat a path to my door in Pidkamin, trampling on my prize garlic and horseradish beds in the process. The Mayor of Pidkamin is even threatening to make my humble hut a designated tourist area, putting up direction signs to it and charging admission. This is disturbing my peace and tranquility, so if you are planning on visiting, can I recommend that you visit Donetsk or Luhansk instead – they seem for some reason to be tourist deprived areas of Ukraine.

If you must come, bring a hoe and be prepared to do some weeding in my garden. I could always use some help picking off the Colorado beetles that every spring take a particular liking to my potato plants. It also wouldn’t hurt if you brought a bottle of Moldovan wine or Armenian cognac to share during our rest breaks.

Secondly, my turnip-head cousin Volodymyr has cast me as a mentor or guru able to solve all problems and I am now constantly being pestered to be a psychiatrist, marriage counselor, mediator, life coach, business consultant, political analyst, father confessor, agronomist, philosopher and much more. As my wife, Yevdokia constantly reminds me – “If you are such a smart one, how come we are living here in this shack with a leaky roof in a one outhouse town like Pidkamin, and eating cabbage for dinner? And instead of a Mercedes in the driveway, we have a rusty bicycle and an old lame horse that gets two kilometres per pail of oats in mileage!”

She is right of course. One thing I have learned in life is not to argue with one’s wife. Wives are a higher form of human life who are not governed by the laws of masculine logic or rationality. They are above such primitive male understanding and should never be contradicted. Even when you believe that you are right, you are really wrong and they will subtract years from your life in punishment if you dare to disagree.

So I make no claim towards solving anybody else’s problems and making them happy. What I am an expert on of course, is in what makes me, Hryts Panteleimonovich, happy, and that I can tell you in a few sentences. Keep your life simple. Stay close to nature. Collect memories and not things. Love everybody, or at minimum live in harmony with them. Never stop learning. Devote as much effort to your spiritual well-being as to your physical needs. Those are the important and essential things in life. Of course, the occasional indulgence in a little good salo and some Crimean or Georgian wine, or an Armenian or Transcarpathian cognac doesn’t hurt either.

So there you have it. Now I don’t want to discourage people from coming to Pidkamin if you must, but you know there’s another interesting town just up the road a bit called Terebovlia and my cousin Onufriy there is a real interesting character…