If you are a wealthy person living in a different state, and you are considering moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, I have some advice for you and some warnings.  You can buy a new custom home just outside of Dickinson on 10 to 40 acres for approximately $450,000 to $700,000.  These homes will have large modern kitchens, custom cabinetry, wood floors, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a three car garage, and probably a large shop building big enough for a tractor, or motor home.  These houses were built by local people who owned land and began receiving oil well revenue money in about 2008, these houses were built by people who had successful oil field service companies, and these houses were built by high paid oil company managers.  If you pick up one of the free local real estate guides, you will see several of these houses for sale.

At any of these new custom homes outside of Dickinson, you will have a good view of undeveloped grasslands.  Most of these new homes will probably not have “wind break trees”, which are rows of trees planted close together not far from the house in order to block the wind.  Once you move in, it won’t really matter what time of year it is, within about a month, you will discover that the wind often blows across the grasslands at about fifty miles per hour.  A new homeowner might think, “Wow, that’s a strong wind”, and it will not fully dawn on them that that’s what it’s going to be like, most of the time.  If you had pictured yourself sitting out on your deck in the mornings, leisurely reading the newspaper, you may now see that your deck chairs and table have tumbled into a barbed wire fence at the end of your property.  At least you have a modern home, with tight fitting double pained glass windows.  You won’t have as much dirt blowing in through cracks around windows and doors, and you won’t hear the wind constantly gusting and buffeting your house, hopefully.  Thank God you have a garage that you can drive into and shut the door behind you, otherwise you would have a hard time getting into your house if you had anything to carry like groceries.

You will be able to sit inside of your modern home with your family, and watch television via Dish Network, and use the internet, if you don’t want to be out in the wind.  There are some days in the summer when the weather is moderate, when you can get out and mow the lawn or have a cook out.  You really need to get outside and fully appreciate the nice summer days when they are here, because there are not many of them.

If you come to Dickinson with a Jaguar, Mercedes, or BMW and try to take it somewhere to be serviced, Dan Porter Toyota may or may not be willing to change the oil.  You may have to take your vehicle to Bismarck, Fargo, or Minneapolis to get any work done.  You will start to notice more and more, that even the housewives drive big four-door pick-up trucks and Suburbans.  After your first winter in Dickinson, you might start to realize that the people who can afford it, get for their wife and themselves, the biggest four-wheel-drive vehicle they can.  Driving into Dickinson, you can hit a deer in the road.  It is sometimes fatal for the driver of a car when the deer goes through the windshield.  You are safer in a big truck because the hood is higher than the deer.  Also, in the winter when the roads have not been plowed, or the roads are icy, you can get into town better in a big heavy four-wheel-drive truck, and you can survive an accident better if you are in a big heavy truck or Suburban.

For entertainment or sport, some people like to go deer hunting and pheasant hunting.  Hunting, hunting…deer and pheasant stand beside the road when I drive by, or run back and forth across the road in front of me when I am driving into town, like retarded children.  They are right there, just like the neighborhood dogs, cats, and rabbits.  So I don’t see any entertainment or sport in hunting deer and pheasant in Dickinson.

Entertainment for women, they can shop at Menards, Wal-Mart, a few shops downtown, and the Prairie Hills Mall.  The Prairie Hills Mall has a JC Penny and Herbergers.  If the women want more than this, they will have to drive to Bismarck.  The West River Community Center has two indoor pools, one outdoor pool, two indoor tennis courts, indoor track, weight room, and exercise equipment, so there are things for women, moms, and kids to do.  There is a golf course in Dickinson, which I believe is supposed to be O.K.

I have written many blog posts about restaurants in Dickinson.  My frequent complaint is that most of the servers are disgruntled troubled women from out of state, and being a waitress or bartender and serving people is the last thing in the world that they want to be doing, and they let you know.  Don Pedros Mexican restaurant has good food, and pleasant courteous staff.  The Brickhouse Grille is supposed to be the upscale restaurant in Dickinson, and it is in a way, however it is not upscale enough.  At any restaurant in Dickinson, at any time, you can have a group of male out-of-state workers, that work in construction or the oil field, and they want to go out to eat and have some fun.  The restaurant owner and managers can spot these workers a block away, and they can tell that they are White Trash or very nearly White Trash, but they don’t know if they are going to behave or not.  The following is what typically happens.

An educated, professional, well-mannered person or persons will go to a restaurant in Dickinson, be seated at a table, and place an order.  Even at what is supposed to be a nice restaurant in Dickinson, a group of White Trash or nearly White Trash workers will arrive at the restaurant.  To the waitress, who lives in a trailer park or an apartment, likes to smoke pot, crack, and meth, these White Trash workers are her kind of people.  The waitress couldn’t be happier to seat these White Trash workers at the table adjacent to a professional husband and wife.  If the educated, professional husband and wife, chose to stay, they would be treated to construction worker tales of sex with ugly women, drunkenness, fighting, arrests, DUI’s, and other conversations that they might hear if they were in jail or prison.  This is exactly how it is.  So most of the wealthy people in Dickinson do not go out to eat at restaurants in Dickinson, to neither be in the company of low class disgruntled waitresses, or White Trash workers.