Will I ever be done criticizing Dickinson, North Dakota? Yes, I see an end to this. I think that I see how everything is going to unfold, play out, and finish up in Dickinson. I never could have planned and orchestrated life making such a complete, perfect, and just full circle.
I had a home and everything that I ever wanted in Idaho. But the economy in Idaho kept getting worse and worse. If I didn’t do something, I would go broke, and lose everything that I had. I heard about the oil boom in North Dakota, so that is where I went in May of 2011.
I had never been to North Dakota, and I didn’t know anyone in North Dakota. When I got to North Dakota, I slept in my vehicle. There was no affordable place to stay. Even though I had a degree in engineering and had worked in many types of construction as an engineer, estimator, inspector, superintendent, and project manager, the North Dakota employers treated me as if I didn’t know anything, though they relied on me to do work at a much higher level than they treated me.
It has been difficult and unpleasant living in Dickinson. I have written about it. The lack of affordable housing, there being nothing to do, the shortage of women, the scarcity of attractive women, the hostility, hatred, unfriendliness, and lack of cooperation from the local people. But I will be able to quit writing about all of this soon.
There is an economic collapse that is going to happen in Dickinson, that is just now beginning. Every unkind thing that the people in Dickinson did, is going to come back on them. What they derided the out of state workers for, they will now experience fully for themselves.
In Dickinson, local people will begin to lose their jobs. Local people “who didn’t do anything wrong and don’t deserve this” will not be able to pay for their vehicles, their homes, and their necessities. The local people in Dickinson made fun of and mistreated the out of state workers who came here after losing everything, now the local people will have a chance to experience losing everything themselves.
I won’t have to write about it. The local people in Dickinson will live every day in uncertainty, with anxiety, fear, and worry. It will be difficult to pay bills, and then they won’t be able to pay bills at all. For the able-bodied, it will come to the point where they pack what they can into a vehicle and head for some place like Denver, Oklahoma City, or Salt Lake City, without enough money or barely enough money to make it there. Not knowing anyone where they are going, with no money, and no place to stay. When they are sleeping in their cars in the below freezing weather, maybe they will remember how the local people in Dickinson treated the out of state workers who came to Dickinson.
The majority of the absolutely broke local people won’t leave Dickinson because that’s just the way they are, unable and unwilling to change, adapt, or adjust. They won’t understand and refuse to understand no matter how many times the Sheriff deputy explains that they are being evicted and have to leave their home. The local people who have been evicted from their homes will be packed shoulder to shoulder in the basements of the Catholic Churches.
One of the final, final pieces of justice for the local Dickinson people who are packed shoulder to shoulder in the basements of the Catholic Churches, with one toilet, will be that the local people in Dickinson refused to build a homeless shelter. Millions and millions of dollars have been paid to Catholic Church in Dickinson through tithes, offerings, and bequests but no one wanted to build a homeless shelter. In the end, the homeless people who will suffer the most in wretched filth, stench, and squalor will be the local people.
Dickinson58601 
There’s a really nice, very modern and upscale looking apartment complex which opened earlier this year over on the north side of town. I believe there may have been an article about it, or one which referenced it, in the local paper. Seems you can’t get in unless you’re low income (and it’s one of the better looking apartment complexes in town, if outward appearance is any indication).
I must disagree with you re: homeless shelter. Dickinson (so far) does not have a homeless problem, nor do we have panhandlers in any great number. I am glad about that, and it’s not owing to hating people or not caring. There is still work to be found in this town. I know because our neighbor’s college age kids are here and they walked into Walmart and got a job. Perhaps not a job if one is older and looking for permanence, I understand that. Able-bodied people should work (and we should be merciful to those who righteously have disabilities). People shouldn’t find ways to cheat the system to be declared disabled, it’s an affront to those who truly are disabled. Back to the homeless shelter topic, and hopefully we can talk about this candidly and not be misunderstood. Too many nowadays go nuts if you say word one about certain things, pure foolishness. We lived in a town which created such a problem, yes, CREATED such a problem by incentivizing transients to come there. They’ve got big problems on their hands now, murders, assaults….one woman walking home from work last week late at night, grabbed from the sidewalk and murdered. I believe Dickinson is WISE not to encourage situations like I just described.
I hope you’ll still allow this comment to go through, though it is quite contrary.
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In 2011, there were about 300 to 400 homeless working people in Dickinson every night: About thirty to forty people slept in their vehicles every night at Tiger Truck Stop, about thirty to forty people slept in their vehicles every night in the Wal-Mart parking lot, about fifty people slept in their vehicles or in the bushes at Patterson Lake, some people slept under the bridges that went over the Heart River, some people slept in a mechanical building beside the Heart River. Some people hid in the basement and the ceiling of the T-Rex Mall before closing, to have a place to stay. Go look at the deep wooded ditch that runs behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, about twenty people hid along that ditch at night and slept there. At the very south end of Dickinson, there was an industrial area where about thirty to forty people parked in the bushes and slept in their cars. All across Dickinson, about fifty to sixty construction workers waited until after dark to go back to their construction sites to sleep. The DSU Agricultural Research Center across the street from the St. Alexius Hospital had about ten people sleeping in the bushes every night.
I met and worked with people who slept in every one of these locations, which is why I know about them, I have seen them, and dropped people off there. Some more locations where the homeless people slept were the woods around the Dickinson Skeet &Trap Club, a vacant lot behind the Grand Dakota Lodge, the Enchanted Highway metal sculptures, the interstate rest areas, behind restaurants that were closed for the night.
I am not exaggerating, there were 300 to 400 homeless working people in Dickinson every night through the years 2010 to 2013. If you don’t believe me ask some Dickinson Police Officers who were here then, about people sleeping in the bushes at the DSU Ag research property, the ditch behind Kentucky Fried Chicken, the bushes at Patterson Lake, under bridges over the Heart River, in the grass and dirt lot behind Tiger Truck Stop.
Then, in 2011 & 2012, Dickinson residents were charging people up to $700 per month to sleep in a tent in their backyards, until the City of Dickinson passed an ordinance to not allow this.
Susan, I don’t think that you knew about this. I met and worked with these people every day. People that lived under bridges. People that slept in the bushes at the DSU Ag. People that had to wait until late at night to go back to the not even half way completed apartments with no walls, and get out by 5:00 a.m.
You will not ever know the extent of this until you go and try to find out for yourself. These 300 to 400 homeless workers in Dickinson, most of them had wives and children elsewhere and had to send money back to their families to pay bills.
Tiger Truck Stop had four or five showers that cost $8.00 for a shower. In the evening and at night, you would have to pay and have your name put on the waiting list for your chance to take a shower. Some people I knew would try to sneak to use the shower at Patterson Lake Campground, but they would get caught, and be threatened with arrest. Some homeless people would go to the West River Community Center, and pay to “work out”, but they were only there to use the shower.
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Are you really gloating at the idea of people facing a hardship like that? You’re probably having issues in Dickinson because you have an awful attitude.
Hate to burst your bubble, but rig counts are actually going up. At least one company I do work for just doubled their rig count.
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Dear North Dakotan:
You forgot to say, “We didn’t ask you to come here.”
I can tell you are from North Dakota because you didn’t acknowledge that North Dakota has a shortage of women, and a scarcity of attractive women. That it does have the meanest, nastiest, ugliest women of anywhere on earth. Nor did you acknowledge that North Dakota is the most ignorant, uneducated, backward state.
You didn’t read several recent blog posts where I explained that a local oil field service company is not paying wages that it owes its workers, that I found other current and former workers that have not been paid, that there are four complaints against this company with the Department of Labor, and nothing is done about it because this is North Dakota, the most ignorant, uneducated, backward state there is. Where they used to say at the DMV, “No, you have to have a North Dakota Birth Certificate, we don’t accept out of state Birth Certificates.”
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I didn’t take it as blog writer gloating about the suffering those people endured. I think he was trying to explain to me (and anybody else) what it was like. I believe he’s telling the truth about how it was. There was some guy on YouTube, a guy from the Northwest named Gregg Zart who made numerous videos of his sojourn to the Bakken. He was primarily in Williston just as the boom took off. I started watching his videos about the time we came here. Much of what he documented goes along with what blogwriter said regarding housing.
We could argue all night (and then some) about how the housing should’ve been handled. I wasn’t here then, but I have heard from people native to Dickinson say that it was terrible, hurtful, and that gouging was off the charts.
I hope the rig count is going up. We make our living in the industry, and even if we didn’t, I like to see people prosper, like to see this country do well in general.
Thank you for allowing opposing opinions on things. It is appreciated.
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I see that I misunderstood the comment about gloating. You were gloating. BUT, one could argue that it is a mercy to anybody who is presently considering heading to the Bakken, somebody fresh. Many of those who came here, many of those who might still be considering a move her are YOUNG. It’s true we all have to make our own mistakes and learn from them, but decent people would care enough to want to help them by making them aware of pitfalls they may face. Somebody selling you something for way too much…that’s a pitfall. I don’t think I mentioned to blogwriter, but the moment talk about ‘rig count is up’ started, landlord promptly raised our rent. We were paying a lot (a sum which most would consider a house note), but they decided a couple months ago we weren’t paying enough now that ‘things are picking up!’.
I mentioned the guy Gregg Zart. I believe he’s gone back home now and I’ve noticed he’s done subsequent videos on the wonders of pot, videos deriding ‘right wingers’. That leads me to mention that not all newcomers are going to assimilate and make your town a better place. My bias, I LIKE the (general) politics of ND. I hope they remain as they are, red. My opinion, blue staters flee the pile of s*** they’ve created in their blue states, but then commence to do the same wherever they land. I don’t blame anybody who doesn’t want them to do that to their hometown and their state.
Sorry that I may seem to wander a bit from this to that. I DO see the value in blogwriter making it CLEAR to anybody considering a move here what they may face. Blogwriter seems angry about the way people were treated and especially by a population which would proudly declare they’re Christian, by and large. We do tend to expect Christians to behave like Christians.
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