IT IS roughly a 5-hour drive from Friesland to Friesland. Unless you travel via East Friesland, which is way off your route. The two Frieslands are in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but for both East and West Friesland you’ll have to be in Iowa, and that would pile another 10 hours on top of your travel time. And be careful not to accidentally spell it Vriesland: before you know you’ll be losing another 18 hours. Vriesland is located in Michigan, where, along with Drenthe, it is part of the city of Zeeland.
Huh?
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan: Friesland boppe (Frisian for up) as far as the plain stretches. That’s where they went, the Frisian emigrants who in the second half of the nineteenth century left Holland behind. They made for the plains, in America’s heartland, the flatlands, and whenever they found a place to take root, they simply named it after where they came from. Friesland, Vriesland, Harlingen, Hindeloopen, Workum, Dockum, Sloten. Now, much later, Frisian street names are everywhere. Dokkum Drive in Memphis, Lemmer Street in California, Hallum Avenue in Florida, Leeuwarden Road in Connecticut.
OR THEY named themselves after Friesland. There are today roughly 20,000 De Vries, Devries, DeFries families living in the US. And in the case of the Lenape Nation tribe in New Jersey where Frisian men sired babies and left them with their surname, 850 people are registered as DeFreese. None of the above though is to be confused with signs and menus that say Fries. Those are French Fries, which, by the way, have nothing at all to do with France or French people, because fries are originally Belgian.
Hard and diligent workers. They brought an astronaut to America, Jack Lousma from Wonseradeel, and father, son, daughter and granddaughter Fonda, descendants of Douwe Fonda from Kollum. No happy ending for Douwe, incidentally; the Mohawks caught and scalped him. He had a little town named after him, Fonda in upstate New York, near Amsterdam. Stephen King descends from Leeuwarden, former CIA director Petraeus from Franeker, and one of the very largest movers in America, Bekins, with 2000 moving vans and 5000 drivers, was founded by Jan and Maarten Bekius from Hallum, who turned the u in their last name upside down and made it an n because it was easier to pronounce that way.
FOLKERT Kuipers left Akkrum, changed his name to Frank Cooper, and built the world’s largest department store in Manhattan. And farmer Henk Banta from Minnertsga founded Bantatown in Kentucky. It became such a happy town with industrious people and smiling faces that the governor eventually officially changed the name to Pleasureville.
Champion Frisian American, however, is Hotze Koch from Workum. He came to Texas, changed his name to Harry, and two generations later Kansas is the headquarters of Koch Industries, America’s number one privately owned company, bigger than Disney, bigger than Boeing, and responsible for the most asphalt on America’s roads, most toilet paper, most diapers, jeans, wall-to-wall carpets, backpacks, most yoga pants, barbecue steaks, and plastic silverware for the barbecue.
Runner up? The grandsons of Sytze Boersma from Dantumadeel. In 1992, they decided to take on Starbucks. Today Dutch Bros is the fastest-growing coffee seller west of the Rockies, with 700 drive-thru kiosks, so crowded, so popular that, like they’re now doing in Phoenix, they sometimes build two virtually side by side in order to meet demand.
Officially it’s summer, but I’m telling you, in the US it Frieses.
* This replica of Frisian town Franeker’s City Hall sits at Netherlands Road just outside Boston.
