In a recent previous blog post, I explained that I started a new job last week in Dickinson, North Dakota.  The company that I work for, asked me to drive two hours to the north, to work in the oil field in New Town.  Monday night, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night, I stay at the Native American casino in New Town, called Four Bears.

New Town is a Native American town on Lake Sakakawea.  There are no fast food restaurants in New Town, like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Taco Bell.  There aren’t hardly any restaurants or stores.  Everything closes at night, including the gas stations.

On my second day in New Town, when I got off work, I went to every gas station, truck stop, and store that I could see, to try to find a clip board.  At about 5:30 p.m., I was at the largest store in New Town, called Shop Ko, looking for a clip board, and looking at other things.  When I got to the check out line with some bottles of Powerade, there stood a strange tall fellow from Wyoming who is a friend of mine, named Seth.

I had felt like I was at the end of the earth, in the middle of no where, and here is my friend Seth, about 700 miles from his home in Wyoming.  I was surprised to see him, but not really.  He appeared to be thinking the same thing.

I first met Seth in Dickinson, North Dakota in May of 2011, at the Tiger Truck Stop. I had a truck bed camper on the back of my truck, and I slept in the truck stop parking lot or the WalMart parking lot for a couple of days until I went to work for a company that let me stay on their property.  Seth had a 1986 Mercury Grand Marquis that he paid $100 for, and he slept in the back seat, in various locations around Dickinson.

For those of you who don’t know, or don’t remember, during the oil boom in Dickinson, Watford City, and Williston, an old small one bedroom apartment rented for $1,500 per month, if you could even find one available.  It was not unusual at that time, for people to sleep in their vehicles, campers, or tractor trucks.

I was not too worried at that time back in 2011, sleeping in a truck bed camper, because I owned a home back in Idaho, and I had enough money to not have to work for nine months.  I looked at being in Dickinson, as an adventure.  The oil boom, was kind of like being in the middle of a gold rush in the old west.  People were arriving every day in Dickinson, with no money, and expecting to get rich.

On some days, five dollars was all the money in the world that Seth had.  He didn’t let this get him down, or worry him.  This didn’t worry him, partly because he had lived his whole life with frequent periods of having very little money.

Seth grew up in a rural area in Wyoming.  In his whole life, he attended school for maybe a total of three years.  His parents were supposed to be home schooling him, but mostly they were trying to diminish him, to prevent him from becoming a normal adult, so that he would never be able to leave them and go out on his own.

Due to his parents trying to keep him down and sabotage everything Seth did, he became almost completely independent from them, by the time he was eight or ten years old.  He lived in tents, old trailers, and old shacks, with no water, and no electricity, away from his parents.  He did odd jobs, outside of town for ranchers, and in town for people and for businesses.

Sympathetic ranchers, towns people, and business owners would help him and give him things.  His whole life, his clothes were either given to him, or he got them at a thrift store like Goodwill.  Seth is color blind, so it was common that Seth would be given, or would find, red pants, green pants, or purple pants, and he would wear them and think nothing of it, because he didn’t know.

I am describing all these things about Seth, to explain that he is different.  He did not go to school as a child.  He was not raised by parents, he was at war with his parents, who tried to prevent him from being normal, so that he would never be able to go out on his own.  Living on his own as a child, without running water and electricity, having to scavenge for food and clothes, only ever having donated clothes, makes him appear and act differently than other people, now that he is an adult.

In the summer of 2011, on the weekends Seth and I would go camping, cooking out, and shooting in various places in North Dakota.  On some weekends we would drive to a gun show in Wyoming or Montana.  During the week after work, without planning it, we would end up eating at Bonanza at the same time, or end up at the same location that had internet access.

I was good friends with Seth for several years, but I almost got into trouble many times or I almost had an accident many times while doing things with Seth.  For instance, at a gun show in Montana, the police were called because “He was buying too many guns.”, and there was almost a police officer punched.  Another time, Seth was shooting an M1A rifle next to me, and it blew up.  Because Seth is color blind, he grabbed the wrong re-load powder, and accidentally re-loaded a bunch of cartridges with it, which after about twenty shots, blew the bolt back out of the receiver, broke the receiver, and blew apart the magazine, sending shrapnel in different directions.

I have many more “for instances” about almost getting into trouble while going places or doing things with Seth.  It came to the point, that I didn’t want to have any more involvement with him, because I just did not want problems and trouble.

Seeing Seth in New Town and talking to him, I believed that he probably did not have a place to stay.  I was going to offer to let him stay in my hotel room at the Four Bears Casino that my new employer was paying for, even though it could jeopardize my employment.  The room charge was for just one occupant, and it might go up quite a bit if the casino saw that there were two occupants.

Seth said he had to turn off his vehicle, he left it running to keep the air conditioning on for the cat.  The driver’s side window was broken out, it was taped with plastic sheeting, and the vehicle was damaged all over.  There is no way that the casino security, which drives through the parking lot every five to ten minutes, would not notice Seth’s vehicle and try to find out who it belonged to.  I could see getting into trouble and conflict with the casino hotel over Seth’s vehicle, Seth’s cat, and an unusual strange person staying in the hotel who is not a registered guest.

I was glad to see Seth, but I just can’t have much involvement with him sometimes because I don’t want to have problems and trouble.