BAREND Wemp and Volkje Veeder from Amsterdam wouldn’t have imagined it, and least of all mama Marie Mijndertse. That their descendant Daniel would wreck 60 police cars.
Dan Aykroyd is a direct descendant of grandpa Barend and granny Volkje. And although he spends all his working hours in New York and Hollywood, as well as being officially part of Sheriff Lee Vance’s office in Mississippi, he lives across the border in Canada. He wrote the script for The Blues Brothers, the movie with the most car wrecks ever. It was a good thing that the sixty police cars had been bought cheaply at an auction, for only $400 each. But that did not include the Bluesmobile. That required another 13 cruisers.
Two men in black suits, black hats, black sunglasses, the Bluesmobile, exciting music – and then those dance moves the duo made. On NBC’s Saturday Night Live, Dan and his pal John Belushi had become famous for it. The Blues Brothers became, and still is, a corporation, a business in merchandising, and it makes a boatload.
DAN AYKROYD, still only 71, is one of the most active performers in America. Hyperactive, some would say, and that would fit his family background with Asperger’s and Tourette’s. On the other hand, when you play leading roles in two giant movie successes, Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters, within four years, your schedule fills up naturally and you have no shortage of work for the rest of your life.
Interesting choice, sheriff’s deputy in Hinds County. It is the county of Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, where 800 Dutch pilots came to practice how to teach Germany and Japan a lesson (see story elsewhere in this newspaper). Where one local beauty after another married a flying Dutchman. Dan Aykroyd isn’t doing any active duty there, it is symbolic, but he was formally sworn in, and his first good deed was the purchase of a Dodge Charger police car for the sheriff’s department.
The entire force came out to see that. A present from the man who had wrecked sixty Dodge Monaco’s. He beamed as he handed over the key, towering above everyone. Six-three, Dutch tall.
