Ralph
S. Ondersma
How I always wanted to go to America,
and lots of poor people
did go, but my folks never spoke about that big country over the water
and we had no relatives in America, which could have made it easier to
get away. At this time a neighbour took his family to Paterson, New
Jersey,
and came over to talk about us going too, but nothing came of it as far
as our family was concerned. A little later on an uncle of a young man I worked with came to Hallum and offered to take the young man along to Chicago, and he even offered to pay for the trip, but he did not want to go. I begged him to take me instead, but it did not work out and I had to do the next best thing. We had no relatives in the U.S.A. to lend us the money, so we had to earn it ourselves. We (the boys) did not want to go so far away and leave our parents the way so many did, so we saw a chance in Germany. There was always call for Hollanders that were good at taking care of animals, milking cows and so forth. The wages there were much better than in Friesland. This was in the Ruhr district such as Essen, Bochum, Dortmund, and others. We saved as much of our wages as possible. That meant save it all, and the first 10 months I was there I earned 50 marks per months, and in ten months I went home with 500 marks. That was 100% saving! Along in May or June we would go home, work a couple of months near our village, and back we would go to the Kaiser and his friends. After the third time I had done that I had a falling out with a Frisian farmer, who wanted me to work the entire year, instead of just for haying time, but I didn’t want to do that. The next year he told his neighbor not to hire me for haying time. This man was an important elder in the church and had influence. Mother didn’t even care to go to church. She and father walked out during communion. I told mother that’s enough of this poor paying outfit, and I am leaving for good. I say poor. Poor pay to start with. From school when I was 12 the farmer paid me one guilder and 50 cents for a 60-hour week, and four years later that had gone up to 3½ guilders, only a little more than I ate every week. So I made up my mind I would leave come what may. Now in the meantime a cousin by the name of Ysbrand Brouwer had left with his family for Whitensville, Massachusetts. So I wrote him. You see I felt I had a foothold in America. But then I met a young fellow I had gone to school with, Dave Sytsma, and I asked him where he was going in the U.S.A., and he said Grand Rapids. He wanted to know why I could not go there too. I said I could, it did not make any difference to me and to this day I have never been in Massachusetts. To show how little I knew of America, the people where I boarded in Grand Rapids had a son who had a bike, and I asked him if I could use that some night because I wanted to find my cousin in Whitensville, Massachusetts. He said that took a week with a bike and they had a lot of fun over that. I left Hallum alone, with
the understanding that my brother Frank
(Feike) would leave one year later if I thought it was all right in
America.
But he came in just two months. When I left alone mother was very much
upset, but I told her I would maybe come back in a year. I said this
just
to satisfy her, but I told other people I would never come back. Now for the first couple of
years we were in this country we worked
on anything we could find, such as roadwork, and in the winter we
worked
in the furniture shops. But I did not like these jobs too well, and in
1911 I bought out a man who had a little milk business for $350, and
Frank
bought another milk business for about the same amount of money. Later
two more brothers got in the milk business also. As I write this in 1967 it
has been over fifty years since I left
Friesland in 1909. Father died in 1926 at the age of 79, and mother
died
in 1944 at the age of 89 years. Our only sister**
died when she was 46 years old. Brother Richard died in 1966 when he
was
73, so the old ones are becoming fewer all the time. Since the time that I had left Friesland I have been back there for a visit four times. I have always enjoyed visiting the old country, but never had any desire to stay there. The Netherlands is today to me a foreign country, and I was always glad to see the American flag on the boat again on the return trip. While I have the time I will write a few things that I have seen and lived through in the old country and in America.
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