Category Archives: Uncategorized

Note To Watford City, North Dakota

March 4, 2016UncategorizedChamber of Commerce in Watford City North Dakota, Living in Watford City North Dakota, moving to Watford City North Dakota, people in Watford City North Dakota, relocating to Watford City North Dakota, women in Watford City North Dakota, working in Watford City North Dakotaname withheld

Anyone, anywhere in the World, who does a Google search for “moving to Watford City, North Dakota”, “relocating to Watford City, North Dakota”, or “women in Watford City, North Dakota”, this website appears on the first page of search results. Soon, the search for “living in Watford City, North Dakota”, this website will appear on the first page of search results.

Everyone will be able to get information about Watford City, from this website. I am going to provide useful, truthful information about Watford City, so that people will know what it is like.

Women who might come to Watford City, women who work in the oil industry, work in banking, work in accounting, who are company owner wives, or oil field worker wives, would not like the living conditions here, as they are now. If they were to arrive in Watford City now, they would find completely dark and unlighted streets at night, with no pavement markings, no street signs, no road shoulders, just an immediate drop off to 30 feet below. Women already feel unsafe at night because the ratio of men to women is about 6:1 in Watford City. The fear of being out at night is only made worse by roads that are dark, unlighted, with no shoulder. Getting a car tire even one foot over the edge of pavement could cause their car to be wrecked or stuck, making them vulnerable to being victimized.

You people in Watford City have got this North Dakota attitude, “We like things the way they are. If you don’t like it, you can leave.” Fine, everybody is going to leave. In fact, they just won’t come in the first place.

I will give some more examples of things that are not O.K. the way they are. I will never forget the day I came back to Watford City, stopping at the UPS Store and getting charged $5.00 to make three black & white photocopies, the young woman in front of me getting charged $105 to mail an envelope. Going over to a nearby restaurant to eat and walking out because the food looked like slop and cartoons were on the TV at about 130 Decibels. I should have walked out of the second nearby restaurant that I went to. There is a saying, “If nobody is at a restaurant, and no cars are in the parking lot, don’t eat there!”

Three times this past week, I saw the Watford City police ticketing people on the Disenchanted Highway, besides being a dangerous road, it is now a speed trap.

I have some advice for the Chamber of Commerce in Watford City, for Watford City business owners, and Watford City government. Now that the Oil Boom is over, the only possible thing that Watford City has to offer that anybody might possibly want, is a relaxed, peaceful, not-in-a-hurry, small town lifestyle with thousands of acres of undeveloped prairie land nearby. People want to get out of cities and congested areas, and live in an area with an unspoiled rural landscape.

The stress that you cause people, with your unmarked and unlighted roads with no road shoulders, your speed traps, your terrible restaurants with 130 decibel TV playing cartoons, your “no other choice” high priced merchants, chases everybody away, people can’t wait to get out of your town.

Update!: Beginning in April of 2016, Watford City began making road improvements, which included adding dump truck loads of dirt to the road shoulders on the Disenchanted Highway to make it safer. Other road improvements continue.

There are so many Watford City police, that the White Trash are kept under control all the time, it’s almost like they are in jail they are so controlled, they can’t do anything because the police are watching them so close. So it is safe for women to go out in Watford City from dawn until dark.

Eventually, I might have to re-write this post.

German Catholics In North Dakota Part III

March 4, 2016UncategorizedCatholic Church in Dickinson North Dakota, Catholics in Dickinson, Catholics in Dickinson North Dakota, corruption in the Catholic Church, Housing in Dickinson, Living in Dickinson, Moving to Dickinson, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, out-of-state worker, People in Dickinson, relocating to Dickinson, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, Working in Dickinsonname withheld

In the South, during the 1700s and 1800s, there was slavery. Wealthy people on farms and plantations owned black people, and forced them to work for free.

In order to be wealthy enough to own slaves, you were not a stupid person, you were likely educated. I have wondered what kind of thought process occurred in an educated person’s mind, in order to reconcile, the fact that you owned other people. Three general possibilities: You believed that blacks were so inferior, that they did not have the same rights as whites; You believed that according to the Bible, slavery had existed, and it was allowable; You didn’t let the thought of moral right and wrong guide what you did.

I can see atheists deciding that they would not worry about moral right and wrong, and participate in slavery because it would not be in conflict with their religious beliefs, they have none. But slavery was not engaged in by atheists alone. The South was predominantly Christian Protestant. I see that the root of the slavery problem was not that people in the South did not worry about moral right and wrong, it was that their sense and understanding of moral right and wrong was warped.

The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, De-Segregation, Integration of Public Schools, the Civil Rights Movement, all happened in order to bring equal and fair treatment to people in the South. Me, I have to admit, that one of the underlying causes of the resistance to change was that the Christian Protestant beliefs in the South did not squash the prejudice and hate in people’s minds, like it should have. In other words, people in the South were predominantly Christian Protestant, but they were filled with hate, and they should not have been if they were in fact followers and believers in Christianity.

Now, I want to point out a similar problem that the German Catholics have had. Over in Germany in the 1930s, the people were predominantly Catholic. In Germany, there became an out of control hatred of the Jews. The Jews were forced by law, to wear the Star of David on their clothes. They were mistreated, ridiculed, and abused in public. The Jews were forced to relocate to crowded ghettos, their homes, property, and land were taken. The Jews were later relocated to work camps and concentration camps, and forced to work as slaves. Many Jews were worked to death, starved to death, or were killed in the gas chambers. The Catholics in Germany, if they were truly following and believing in Christianity, they would not have allowed this to happen.

At the end of World War II, there were two entities that were authorized to create identification papers and travel documents for refugees in Europe: the Red Cross, and the Catholic Church. It is now known historical record and fact, that the Catholic Church officials created many false identification papers for Nazis that were known to be war criminals being sought by allied forces for prosecution for atrocities against the Jews. The Catholic Church provided false identification, false documents, aid, and assistance to known war criminals, to allow them to escape to other parts of Europe and South America.

It was not that Germany was full of atheists, it was full of Catholics. How could you be a Catholic, and think that rounding up millions of Jews, taking their property, and killing them, was the Christian thing to do? The Catholic Church itself even helped the war criminals escape prosecution, and escape from Germany.

What the Christian Protestants did in the South with slavery was wrong. What the Christian Catholics did in Germany was wrong.

The De-Segregation, forced Integration of Schools, and Civil Rights Movements that occurred in the South in the 1960s and 1970s were recent actions that occurred to battle continued prejudice, discrimination, and hatred in the South, that had not been successfully eliminated by Protestant religions. The Protestant religions in the South are partly to blame for allowing and enabling many Christians to live with hateful ideas and hateful practices.

Right here in Dickinson, the Catholic Church is greatly to blame for allowing and enabling these Catholics here in Dickinson to mistreat and take advantage of out-of-state workers. The Catholic Church, which is one of the wealthiest institutions in the World, had the resources, to help the many thousands of people who came to North Dakota and lived in filth and squalor.

Again, go and look at the Real Estate Multiple Listing Guide in Dickinson, and look at all the happy smiling faces of the realtors. They have no remorse for taking advantage of the out-of-state workers. People traveling here to Dickinson, with hopes of finding a good job, and providing for their families back home, only to find that one-bedroom apartments were $1,500 per month, homes that had once been $700 per month, were now $4,000 per month. Many workers slept in their cars at Wal-Mart, many workers slept in their cars at Tiger Truck Stop, many workers slept in tents at Patterson Lake, or in people’s back yards. Real estate agents and property developers did not want any man-camps, they wanted to keep prices high!, they wanted to get rich! They, and the Catholic Church did not want any homeless shelter, these homeless people don’t matter. The Catholics in Dickinson greatly mistreated the out-of-state workers. It was not that the Catholic Church or the Catholics did not have the resources, means, and ability to help, it was that the Catholics in Dickinson have hatred towards others.

German Catholics In North Dakota Part II

March 2, 2016UncategorizedCatholic Church in Dickinson, Catholic Church in Dickinson North Dakota, Catholics in Dickinson, Catholics in Dickinson North Dakota, corruption in the Catholic Church, Living in Dickinson, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, People in Dickinson, people in dickinson north dakota, relocating to Dickinson, Women in Dickinson, Working in Dickinsonname withheld

When I lived in Arizona, I worked in health care. Wherever I went, to a critical care unit in a public hospital, to a private skilled nursing facility, to a Hospice House, to an assisted living facility, I always ran into the Catholic Nuns, Sister Elizabeth and Sister Augustine. Both of them were Irish, both of them were in their 70s.

Sister Elizabeth and Sister Augustine were tireless in visiting the poor, the sick, and the elderly. I had a great deal of admiration for them, once I realized that they weren’t going to try to hit me. They were a source of inspiration in elderly patients, both because of their boundless energy, and because they were there to give Holy Communion. Once, one of the Nuns left behind the bag of communion wafers, and I was going to eat them all, and the Catholic patient was gasping at me, ” Oh God no!”

These two Irish Nuns cheered me up too. I still remember the joke they told me about the two parrots that had been taught to say, “We’ re two hookers, and we’re here to have a good time!” The punch line was, they went to live with two male parrots who said, “See, I told you there was a God!”

When Sister Augustine slipped on some wet tile, and broke her hip, she was only in bed for about one month, before she was walking and back on duty. Most women in their 70s would have been wheel chair bound for many months, if not forever. Sister Augustine was determined to get back on her feet, to help people. She and Sister Elizabeth helped many, many people.

Why can’t the Catholics in Dickinson be like this, reaching out to people, trying to help people? In Dickinson, I have seen the Catholics turn their back on people in need, and try to withdraw from helping people.

There was a young Catholic priest in Dickinson, who began talking to me when I was on the internet in a public place, looking at profiles of women on the internet dating site Plenty Of Fish. I believe that he thought that I was looking at pornography, because I was looking at pictures of women, but it was just a dating site. He talked to me about the Assumption Abbey in Richardton, which was a Catholic Monastery built in the early 1900s. He was inviting me to visit the monastery grounds which occupied about 100 acres, they made soap and other products, and meet the monks.

A couple of years later, I spoke to the Abbot of the Assumption Abbey, and he was anti-everybody, the last thing they wanted was to have to deal with people for any reason. I thought, “Huh, that’s odd, the Catholics used to send monks off to far away places like Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, to reach out to, and engage the savages, yet here in North Dakota, the Catholics don’t even want people on their property!” So much for Christian outreach. The Catholics in Dickinson have the attitude, “Go fuck yourself!” (Actually, if you read a recent comment to one of my blog posts, it says, “Go fuck yourself!”)

In Dickinson, they have a charity benefit and auction at Trinity High School, the Catholic School. It is a spaghetti dinner, and you can buy raffle tickets for a Camero. I wanted to go to eat and buy a raffle ticket. In the parking lot, the local people were glaring daggers at me. Inside Trinity High School, the people were very hostile and unfriendly to me. I decided to not eat, and just buy a raffle ticket. It was $10 a ticket. I handed the young priest a $20, he gave me a ticket, and not any change. I had to be stern with him about handing him a $20, and him not giving me change, to get my $10 change.

After the date of the raffle, I looked and looked and looked to try to find out if I had won the Camero, or who had won the Camero. I never could find out who won the car, which made me believe that these Catholics here in Dickinson are crooked, nasty people.

I had to do a construction project down the street from a Catholic School in Dickinson. The wind picked up one Saturday morning, and balls started rolling off the roof of the school, and rolling down to my truck, I collected about four of them. I thought to myself, those poor kids probably all got beat for these balls going missing. I put them back inside the fence. When some Catholic woman arrived later that morning, she got out of her car and just glared at me menacingly. I thought, “What is wrong with these Catholics in Dickinson, they are the exact opposite of what Christians are supposed to be, what are they teaching in Church here, why are they like this?” This was not nearly the last time I found Catholic women in Dickinson to be glaring and scowling at me with hatred for reasons unknown to me, other than me merely existing.

The Catholics in Dickinson outwardly show hostility and hatred towards others for merely existing. This leads me to believe that the Catholic Church in Dickinson is actively teaching their members to treat others with scorn, hatred, and hostility. Besides the glaring, scowling, and nasty treatment by the Catholics in Dickinson, they have a revulsion to helping anyone. Why does the Catholic Church hold services in Dickinson? It has nothing to do with Christianity. Why does the Catholic Church in Dickinson collect tithes, offerings, donations, and bequests? I think that the Catholic Church in Dickinson, its leadership and its followers, is not a Christian organization, but a hate group.

A tree will be known by its fruit. Does a bad tree produce good fruit? You only have to read your Bible to know that the Catholic Church in Dickinson, and the Catholics in Dickinson are not Christians.

German Catholics In North Dakota, Part I

February 29, 2016UncategorizedCatholic Church in Dickinson North Dakota, Catholics in Dickinson North Dakota, corruption in Catholic Church, Housing in Dickinson, housing in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, out-of-state worker, People in Dickinson, people in dickinson north dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, what is wrong with the Catholics in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I went to Catholic School, first through fourth grade, Sacred Heart School. My first grade teacher was Sister Louise. Sister Louise used to beat us severely. Mostly she would use her bare hands to slap our faces, but she also beat our palms with a paddle-ball paddle, and she also had a long wooden rod for other types of beatings.

I believe that most of the kids’ parents did not believe how bad she beat us. Justin, Jonathan, and George all talked to me about it later in High School, “Can you believe that shit, that shit was fucked up.” All I could say was, “Yea, I know.”

There were other stories of physical harm done to kids at Sacred Heart. I do remember some students who did not return to Sacred Heart after the first day or the first week of school, these were the kids whose parents believed them.

Now days, the police would have been to that school, the first day, and taken teachers away in handcuffs for assault and child abuse. We, all of us, could easily win a class action lawsuit today against the Catholic Church for the physical abuse that was done to us. I could write pages and pages of instances of physical abuse at Sacred Heart School, both of me, and of my classmates.

Putting the above aside for a moment, I want to talk about something else in the Catholic Church that I became aware of as a young teenager. A friend of my father had been a comptroller for a very large Catholic organization for many years, so many years, that he was trusted. Many Catholic priests had come to this comptroller with the same “problem”. These priests had accumulated over a million dollars in personal assets, and they did not want anyone to know or for anyone to find out. One of the ways in which this was happening, was through relatives and parish members bequeathing things to them in their Wills.

My mother was disgusted, that throughout our state, our country, the World, the Catholic Church solicits offerings, alms, donations, from the poorest of the poor, the people that are barely surviving, and yet the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth. The Catholic priests are millionaires, yet there are many poor people in their parish, who have a hard time paying for food, rent, and utilities.

I started off this blog post the way I did, so that I could state that I know there are some things wrong with the Catholic Church, and Catholic culture and values. Here in Dickinson, North Dakota, the Catholic Church is, and has been the primary cultural and societal influence. When there was no oil field, when the German and Ukrainian settlers first came to this area, the Catholic Church was very, very important, and it always has been.

The reason why I am writing about all of this now, is that I want to say that going to Mass, going to Confession, saying Hail Marys and Our Fathers, is not really getting it done as far as instilling human decency in these Catholic people here in Dickinson. I want to point out again, that the people here in Dickinson really treated out of state workers very badly during this last oil boom. The people who mistreated the out of state workers the most, were the real estate agents, the property managers, and the property investors here in Dickinson. Not only did the real estate agents, property managers, and property investors make the rent and housing prices quadruple, they helped to make sure that there was a scarcity of housing and no inexpensive housing alternatives, by making sure there were no new trailer parks or man-camps constructed outside of Dickinson.

If you read the Bible, what you are supposed to do if you are a Christian, you will read sayings and teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. Jesus once said, so as you do to the least of my people, so do you to me. Therefore, if you are a Christian, you should watch what you do, to everybody! Jesus didn’t say, so as you do to the people who are from this area ….

There is a big flaw in Catholicism, if you go to Mass every Sunday, and you do not know some simple teachings from the Bible. “What profiteth a man that he gain the whole World, yet lose his soul? Or, what shall he give in exchange for his soul?”

You can go and look at the Real Estate Multiple Listing Guide in Dickinson, and you can look at the smiling photographs of the realtors in Dickinson, good good Catholics all! People who have connections, and can really get things done! Yet there is no homeless shelter in Dickinson. Did I mention, that the Catholic Church is one of the wealthiest institutions in the World?

There are probably some Catholics reading this right now, and they are probably screaming, “We don’t have to help people! We don’t have to help anybody!” If you don’t like this post, you are sure to not like the next post, “German Catholics In North Dakota Part II”.

People From The South, and White Trash

February 26, 2016Uncategorizedmoving to Watford City North Dakota, relocating to Watford City North Dakota, Watford City North Dakota, White Trash in Watford City North Dakota, women in Watford City North Dakotaname withheld

In several recent posts, I wrote that there are a lot of poor people from the South that are working in Watford City, North Dakota. I also wrote that some of the workers that I have met from the South, are very nearly White Trash. I want to explain this.

There are no normal people from the South in North Dakota. If a normal person from the South arrived in North Dakota, they would quickly leave. In Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee, most normal people can find something to do for a living. Many jobs in the South are not high pay, but there are other things that are important and make a difference, like being around family, friends, their church, and their community. Husbands don’t want to be away from their wives and children, and wives don’t want their husbands to be far away from home. Husbands don’t want to cause their wives to have to move away from their mom and dad, brothers and sisters, and many wives wouldn’t move away from their families.

Normal people from the South find something to do for a living not too far from home. Family, friends, and their hometown are important to people from the South. In their hometown, they feel comfortable, at ease, that they belong, that everything is going to be O.K. Anything that comes up, they know where to go, or who to call. Every town in the South has a consensus of opinion on acceptable behavior. Everybody is expected to operate within the bounds of acceptable behavior.

What has always guided acceptable behavior in the South are the Protestant religions, primarily Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterians. To make it short, you are supposed to stop and think, what would Jesus do?, what would the Apostles do?, what did Jesus teach? The following people enforced and reinforced appropriate Christian behavior: the mayor, the city judge, the city attorney, the chief of police, the police, the preachers, the teachers, the business owners, the widow women, the housewives, and the farmers. If you thought that you wanted to behave differently, you were highly outnumbered, and you would suffer the consequences of misbehavior, everywhere.

As towns in the South grew, and people from elsewhere moved in, it became harder for towns to pressure people into appropriate Christian behavior. Small towns still had the ability to apply a lot of pressure to people to act right. Even cities like Atlanta still have cultural values that are still predominantly derived from the Protestant religions.

Now, here comes the part about White Trash. Every town in the South has always struggled with the problem of White Trash, people that will just not get with the program. They went to the same elementary school as everybody else, they went to the same Sunday school as everybody else, they have had a talking to by the Chief of Police, and the City Judge more than several times, but they are just always getting into trouble. The White Trash in the South typically do the following things: shoplift, break into people’s homes, take things out of the back of people’s trucks, beat their wives, drive drunk and crash into other people, deal crack and meth, use crack and meth, litter, shop at WalMart, get into fights at bars, appear on the Jerry Springer show. They are not wanted in the towns that they come from. The police and the judges find that there comes a point at which they have to be more and more severe with repeat offender White Trash, everybody is just sick of dealing with them. One of the intentions and hopes of law enforcement and everybody else, is that the White Trash will just go someplace else and be problem.

When the TV news started talking about, “Anybody can go to North Dakota and make over $100,000 a year in the oil field”, all the White Trash people in the South thought, “$100,000 per year! just think of all the Meth that will buy!” They couldn’t load their Kia fast enough.

Watford City, I just wanted to let you know, you didn’t get the the normal people from the South, you got the White Trash, or the nearly White Trash people, and me.

Cannibalism In Watford City, North Dakota

February 26, 2016UncategorizedCannibalism in Watford City, Living in Watford City North Dakota, moving to Watford City North Dakota, relocating to Watford City North Dakotaname withheld

When I was a kid, I visited lighthouses and lighthouse museums on the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the lighthouses that I visited were built in the 1800s and early 1900s. Each lighthouse had its own unique spotlight rotation sequence, so that ships at sea could tell which lighthouse they were passing, look at their water depth charts, and know how far from shore they needed to stay in order to not run aground.

On the small, remote island of Hope Town, many of the inhabitants did not want their lighthouse when construction began in the 1800s. There were frequently ship wrecks off Hope Town because the water was mostly shallow and full of coral reefs for up to one mile from shore. Besides fishing, and sponging, shipwreck salvaging was the largest industry in that village. The furniture, cookware, dinner ware, and many other household items in many of the homes in Hope Town had come from ships that had foundered on the reefs off Hope Town.

In several recent posts about Watford City, North Dakota, I have written that there is no center of road striping, no edge of pavement marking, no road shoulders, no street lights, and no street signs. One road through Watford City is very dark, with many curves, its name is not posted, I will refer to it as the “Disenchanted Highway”. The Disenchanted Highway is very dark, there are no street lights, there is no edge of pavement marking, and at the curves, there is no shoulder. If your vehicle tire goes off the road one foot, you are headed to the bottom of a ravine 30 feet below.

Do the citizens in Watford City want people to drive off the edge of the Disenchanted Highway, to their death below? I have noticed that there is no livestock in or around Watford City. I have noticed that there are no good restaurants in Watford City. People are scared to go out at night in Watford City. People from North Dakota will not move to Watford City or work in Watford City. What does all this mean, Cannibalism! The people in Watford City are trying to cause people to drive off the road at night so that they can eat them! The victims are unable to call for help on their phones because they can’t say where they are because there are no street signs! Stay away! Stay away!

Watford City and the Mexicanification of Work

February 22, 2016Uncategorizedliving in Watford City, Mexicans in Watford City, Moving to Watford City, Relocating to Watford City, Watford City North Dakota, women in Watford City, working in Watford Cityname withheld

When I went to work for an oil field service company in Dickinson, North Dakota in 2011, I asked the foreman why there weren’t a lot of Mexicans working in the oil field in North Dakota. He said, “Because that is the way we want it.” He did not feel the need to say anything else. I had asked the question for several different reasons, he knew that, his answer just about covered everything.

When I was living in Arizona in 2005, I met a man named Todd who was 55 years old. When Todd was in his twenties, he dropped out of Northern Arizona University, to work hanging drywall. He got paid a little over a dollar per sheet, and he found that he could make $12-$14 per hour. Todd liked hanging drywall, he was good at it, he was making good money. By the time Todd was 30 years old, he was married, he had a young son, he owned a tri-plex home, he owned the the lot next to it, and he owned his own drywall business. Things were going well for Todd.

Sometime in the 1990s, Todd started to have difficulty in his drywall business. He was often under-bid on drywall contracts by competitors who were using mostly Mexican labor. The Mexicans worked for less money. By year 2000, Todd’s drywall company was out of business. Todd could not even get a job as a drywall worker. Companies said to Todd, “For the pay you want, I could hire two Mexicans.”

When I met Todd, he had lost everything, the only thing he had left was a 1990 Ford F350 that he had bought new, that was all he had left. In the United States, roofers, framers, drywallers, painters, and concrete workers used to make enough money to own a home and support a wife and kids. The Mexican workers accept less pay because the cost of living in Mexico is less, they send their earnings back to Mexico, and they themselves just rough it out here, with many people in the same apartment or trailer.

In Dickinson, back in 2011, it was recognized that these oil field related jobs were high enough paying, for men to support a wife and kids, and to have enough money left over to buy a truck, maybe a house, the way it used to be, the way it should be. Nobody wanted to see this high wage rate messed up by cheap Mexican labor getting a foot in the door.

Somehow, the temptation was too great for building contractors in Dickinson. Maybe not enough help was available. A lot of concrete contractors in Dickinson began to use Mexican labor. However, every oil field company in Dickinson persisted in using English speaking workers, even to this day.

Things are different in Watford City. I wrote a previous post titled “Watford City Revisited”, where I stated that Watford City is so difficult to live in, not even North Dakotans will live in Watford City. I wrote that many of the workers in Watford City are poor people from the South. It gives me a little comfort to talk to people in Watford City that are from the South, but only a little, because a lot of these people from the South that are in Watford City, are very nearly White Trash. They are White Trash that have decided that they want to work regularly, for the time being, unless you’ve got some Meth.

I am not really surprised that there are a lot of Mexican workers here in Watford City. Conditions here in Watford City are very harsh, I believe that it is hard to get workers here. But what I was surprised to see, and it alarmed me, that here in Watford City, they are having gangs of Mexicans working for oil field service companies.

I want to caution Watford City, that you are making a big, big mistake. Once cheap Mexican labor gets its foot in the door, many more Mexicans will follow, and the English speaking workers will be displaced. If there is a shortage of women in Watford City now, just wait until you have five Mexican males living in every apartment and trailer. When the English speaking men are displaced from their jobs by less costly Mexicans, you will have a workforce that that makes no attempt to bring their wife and kids to Watford City, and makes no attempt to buy a home in Watford City.

Watford City, you had better watch what you are doing. I don’t know what you did with all that oil field money, that you should have used to make road centerline markings, edge of pavement markings, street signs, street lights, road shoulders, but everybody notices that it isn’t there. Nobody wants to drive in Watford City at night, edge of pavement not marked, no shoulder, just a deep chasm to make certain your vehicle is totaled. You are also just about to ruin the high wage rate in the oil field for all of North Dakota.

Something Good About Watford City, KMHA 91.3 FM

February 21, 2016UncategorizedKMHA 91.3 FM, Living in Watford City North Dakota, moving to Watford City North Dakota, relocating to Watford City North Dakota, Watford City, women in Watford City North Dakotaname withheld

My regular readers know that I am working in Watford City, North Dakota. I was just getting ready to write another post about bad things in Watford City, a follow up to my previous post. Last night a very upset woman in her thirties was asking me if I knew where her aunt was, (her aunt is a co-worker of mine), her truck is here, she’s not here, she’s not answering her phone, “I think something has happened to her.” See, see, I told you! All the women in Watford City don’t expect to last long, it’s not a matter of “if”, but “when”, they will get abducted by the oil field workers. I’m just mad that they don’t have pavement markings, street signs, street lights, road shoulders, very primitive conditions here. Anyway, her aunt had gone to the movies in Dickinson, and had turned her phone off, she wasn’t kidnapped, yet.

I drove my truck as close as I could get, to a building with a wireless router in order to connect to the internet. I can’t get out of my truck because of a bunch of fanged monkeys, another problem with Watford City, and I am listening to KMHA 91.3 FM, broadcast from Four Bears, a.k.a. Newtown, North Dakota. This is absolutely the best radio station that I have heard in my life. I have been listening to it for more than a week now.

This radio station is so good, because they play anything they want, Anything. It’s like the radio station is run by a bunch of wild Indians, because, it is. It is “The Voice for the Mandan, Hidasta, and Arikara Nation”. I am thinking about becoming a member of their tribe.

On KMHA 91.3 FM, this morning they played the First Baptist Church of Watford City service with the Reverend John Lane, a 60 year old Tennessean. Then some spiritual music by Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Patsy Kline, and Elvis. Later today, KMHA will broadcast some Catholic crap, that some tribal members got roped into a long time ago. Later, after the Catholic service, they play two hours of Pow Wow. The Pow Wow is good, some of it is in English. I like to sing and chant with the Pow Wow. Hey, ey, ey, ey, Hey, ey, ey, ey, Hey, ey, ey, ey, Heyyyy Wup!

Nobody is mandating that KMHA be diverse, or provide equal time, though they are, and they do. It seems like these Native Americans understand that spirituality might mean something different, and be expressed differently, by different people. They are not trying to be diverse, they just are, like,”Why wouldn’t we want to have a wide range, why wouldn’t we want to be able to play anything we want, as long as it doesn’t suck?”

KMHA does not go looking for obscure music to impress people, somehow, maybe through oral tribal history that is passed on, they know all music from radio, cassette tapes, eight-track tapes, and records, from the past one hundred years. “Hey, have you ever heard that song… Play that funky music white boy, play that funky music right…?”. “Oh yeah, that’s got to be forty years ago now… I had a Dodge Charger, I hit this van that was parked on the side of the road so hard, it sent the van into a tree, that van is still sitting there in that same yard to this day, I see it when I drive by there.”

I was so excited about this radio station, it’s amazing, it’s incredible, I never ever heard anything like it before. I looked it up on the internet, Oh man!, this can’t be, the people around here don’t even know there is anything unusual about it! Oh my God, I think that the people around here must think that this local station can’t afford to play what all the other stations in Bismarck play. There is not one review on Yelp, no one has reviewed KMHA yet. Even on websites associated with KMHA, no one is making any positive comments whatsoever.

To me, KMHA is like a barn find, like when you find a 1967 911s, in an old barn in Watford City, and they just want it hauled away, nobody knows what it is. In bad, bad, condition there are at least one hundred Porsche restorers that would overnight you a cashiers check for $40,000, for that piece of shit car no one in Watford City would give you $100 for.

Watford City Revisited

February 15, 2016Uncategorizedbad roads in Watford City, Living in Watford City North Dakota, moving to Watford City North Dakota, Relocating to Watford City, Watford City North Dakota, women in Watford Cityname withheld

Now that I have three jobs, I have to spend part of my time living and working in Watford City, North Dakota. I have had to stay in Watford City before, and I have written about it before in this blog.

Though I have written a lot of bad things about Dickinson, Dickinson is nicer than Watford City. I wish that I was back in Dickinson right now. I could be walking the track at the West River Community Center. I could be choosing between a variety of mediocre restaurants. I could be driving on roads with pavement markings, street signs, and shoulders.

If I am “lucky”, my job in Watford City will last four or five months. I want to be careful what I say, I don’t want to make a hasty decision, so for now, I will just say that Watford City is a shit hole. Every bad thing that they have in the oil field towns in Utah, Texas, and Williston, they have here in Watford City.

Number one, here in Watford City, there is a shortage of women, and a lack of attractive women. The ratio of men to women here is probably 6:1. This is such a horrible place, that many of the workers here are from the South, from very poor areas, the North Dakotans won’t even live in Watford City.

I had to do some errands around town during the day, I had to wait in a couple of businesses with a few young women from the South. They weren’t glamorous women, they were short and stout, they weren’t ugly, they weren’t pretty either. They were brave, to attempt to live in Watford City, and to go out and do errands. If I were them, I would just break down and cry. I’m about ready to cry.

In Dickinson, women from North Dakota act hostile, angry, and unfriendly because they think some out-of-state worker is going to rape them. In Watford City, the girlfriends and wives of the oil field workers have a look on their faces, like they know they are going to die, and they have come to accept it. They get out of their car, and walk into the BBQ restaurant to pick up their to-go order, like it might be the last thing they will ever do.

I talked to some of the women from the South. They are so fucking scared, that they will talk to you, they are so relieved that you are not going to rape them and kill them. When I tell them that I live in Dickinson, and Dickinson is more normal than Watford City, like having street lights and places to go, their eyes light up, they are “all ears”, like you are talking about some wonderful place, and they wished that they lived there.

At the UPS store in Watford City, the young woman ahead of me in line, wanted to send a 9″x12″ envelope for next day delivery. The clerk said,”That will be $105.” The young lady said are you serious, for that little thing? Isn’t there something cheaper? The young lady went ahead and paid the $105 on her debit card. (That is a day’s pay back where she comes from.). I handed the clerk three sheets of paper to copy, she put them on the document feeder, three copies came out. The clerk said that will be $5.00. I said that’s ridiculous, are you kidding?

Through my Facebook Page, “Dickinson NorthDakota”, I am going to try to contact the Chamber of Commerce in Watford City, to remind them what a shit hole town they have. I want to let the Chamber of Commerce know, that just like Dickinson, I can get every internet search for “living in Watford City”, “moving to Watford City”, “working in Watford City”, “women in Watford City”, “corruption in Watford City”, to show my site at the top of the first page of search results. Every oil field company, construction company, business, worker, girlfriend, and housewife will read about Watford City, and not want to come here.

You really need to fix your town, it is horrible. One of the worst places I have ever been.

Paranormal Oil Fields

February 10, 2016Uncategorizeddinosaurs in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, paranormal in Dickinson North Dakota, UFOs in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In Dickinson, North Dakota, there is a dinosaur museum. There is also a Tyrannosaurus Rex on display at the T-Rex Shopping Mall in Dickinson. In Vernal, Utah, where there is an oil field, there is also a dinosaur museum.

It is believed that thousands of years ago, dinosaurs roamed rain forests with lush vegetation, the dinosaurs died, and over time the rain forests became covered by layers of earth. With time and pressure, the decaying dinosaurs and plants, turned into oil. Does this mean that wherever dinosaurs are uncovered, oil lies below? Yes, I think that it does.

In western North Dakota, there is a very well known legend, that the United States Calvary was pursuing a tribe of Native Americans, and that they had them trapped at Killdeer Mountain. The next morning, the tribe of Native Americans was nowhere to be found. About several months later, this same tribe of Native Americans was located in South Dakota. The Native Americans in this area claimed that there is a cave on Killdeer Mountain, called “Medicine Hole Cave”, that allowed them to travel underground to South Dakota, although some claim that they traveled underground to Grassy Butte, which is only about fifty miles away. The Medicine Hole Cave on Killdeer Mountain is marked to this day, but the entrance is blocked with debris. Explorers report that this cave is only 300 feet long.

In Vernal, Utah, the Native American legends are much more numerous, that is where “Skin Walker Ranch” is located. In about 1996, I was listening to a late night radio program “Coast to Coast AM”, where a journalist was describing the strange things that were happening to a family in Vernal, Utah who had bought a cattle ranch. The family members frequently viewed strange, unknown animals on their property. Some of the animals resembled large wolves that behaved very suspiciously. Some of the animals resembled prehistoric creatures. Glowing orbs of light floated above their property at night. The ranch was purchased by the National Institute for Discovery Science, and its location was kept a secret, it was off limits to visitors.

Over the years, from time to time, I would try to do some research on the location of Skin Walker Ranch. I had some information that it was in Utah. In 2012, I went to Vernal, Utah, to try to get a job in the oil field there. I don’t know exactly how, I can’t explain exactly how, I started to think that Skin Walker Ranch was in this area. I think that the word “Uintah”, the Native American Tribe in the area, was something that I had read in connection with the Skin Walker Ranch. I looked on the internet a few more times, and there was a photograph of the barricades placed in front of the main entrance gate at Skin Walker Ranch.

I had an old beat up Jeep, that I had towed behind my truck with me to Vernal. I set off for the Uintah Native American Indian reservation. I did a lot of driving, pulling over, looking around, turning around, going around and around, but eventually I found it. There was no mistake about it. I had read that you could see most of the property, if you parked 1/2 mile away on a hill overlooking the Skin Walker Ranch. That is what I did, and I watched the Skin Walker Ranch for about four hours with binoculars, until I had had enough. I did see security vehicles patrolling the property. I was kind of alarmed when I had been observing the property for several hours with binoculars, and I hadn’t spotted the truck parked in the trees, watching me the whole time.

As I was leaving the Uintah reservation, I stopped at a gas station. The was a tribal police officer there, and I asked him about the Skin Walker Ranch. I told him that I had been reading about it for years, had he ever seen anything strange at the Skin Walker Ranch? The tribal police officer explained to me, that all of the Native Americans on the reservation have seen floating orbs, strange animals, even large space craft recently that caused the power to go out, these things have been occurring for many years. He said that the Native Americans have no desire to report any of these things to outsiders, they have no interest trying to explain what they saw to people.

I did get a job with an employer in Vernal, Utah, but I had to go to Carrizo Springs, Texas to work for him. After several months, I asked my employer about the Skin Walker Ranch. My employer, who was very no-nonsense, said that a friend of his lived not far from the Skin Walker Ranch, his friend had a large, lanky, wolf-like creature, come and lay on its back on top of a shed in his back yard. When he went towards it, it got up and ran away upright on two legs. My employer told me more instances of creatures seen twice by his brother. I later met a woman who grew up in Vernal, who told me stories about UFOs in Vernal, told to her by her grandmother.

If you go back further in my blog, I wrote a post titled “UFOs in Dickinson”. I wrote about UFO sightings and landings in the New England area south Dickinson in the 1970s. There were so many farmers discussing what had happened, that the Air Force sent personnel to New England to convince them to stop talking about it.

Temptation In Dickinson, North Dakota

February 9, 2016Uncategorizedhot housewives in Dickinson North Dakota, housewives in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakota, tempted by women in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

Last summer, I got a telephone call from a homeowner lady, requesting an estimate for work on her house. From the address she gave me on the telephone, I knew the neighborhood, it was a nice residential neighborhood.

The following day, when I was driving to the specified address, as I got closer and closer, I was saying to myself,”Please don’t let it be that house, please don’t let it be that house. Fuck, it’s that house.” I had been to this house before when I was working for another contractor. I had had to take the fence down, in order to get equipment to the back of the house. Trees, bushes, a shed, and the fence had all been in the way.

I didn’t remember meeting the homeowners, but I remembered the back yard very well, and I didn’t want to work at this house. When a yard is taken care of meticulously, as a contractor, you know that you are going to have to be so careful not to damage anything, and that the homeowners will not be forgiving about damage to anything.

I met the homeowner woman, and she was very beautiful. She was about one inch shorter than me, she was my age, she had beautiful long dark hair, brown eyes, was very thin, and was in very good physical shape. She kind of looked like Kate Middleton, the Duchess of York, but she was prettier and in better shape than Kate Middleton.

About the only time I can keep my wits when I am around a beautiful woman, is when I am completing a work estimate. I am more focused on assessing how difficult the job is, how many hours it will take, what equipment I will need, how much I will have to pay my helper. I do notice attractive women homeowners when I am trying to figure out my estimate, but I just don’t pay that much attention.

By the time I was done writing my estimate, the homeowner lady and I were in the dining room. Her house was just as clean inside, as her yard was meticulously taken care of outside. I was standing about ten feet from her, when her husband came in the front door. The homeowner lady began immediately explaining to her husband what I was doing there. I could tell that she felt some urgency in explaining this to her husband right away. I could tell that her husband was surprised, and concerned. Her husband was polite and cordial to me, which was what you would expect from a professional person who was the manager of a business.

Her husband was a nice looking man. He was a little bit taller than me, a little bit skinnier than me, and he was not as weather-worn as me. I felt that the two of them looked like they belonged together, they made a good couple. As I talked to both of them for a while, I found out what they did, and that they had three children that were just getting out of high school.

I started working at this house. I talked to the homeowner lady some more. I found out more about her. I liked her more. I liked everything about her. I wanted her. It is one thing when I am attracted to a young lady because of her physical appearance, but I just don’t know what they are like, or what they will become. A woman like this, you can see what they are like, and you can see what they are, and you can like everything about them more strongly. In their home, you have a chance to talk to them privately, without interruptions, and sometimes they express feelings that they do not share with others, for various reasons.

Working as a contractor, I had been in this situation once or twice before. I meet a beautiful housewife, and I like her a lot. We talk while I am working, and we begin to like each other more. I have had to decide what to do before. I think of the problems that I would cause, for the wife, the husband, and the children. If I really like this woman, why would I ruin her life? I wouldn’t.

I could not take the place of her husband. They have been together for at least twenty years. They have three kids together, that are just getting ready to begin college. They are going to have a hard time paying for three kids in college at the same time. They both need to be working together in order to support their kids. I couldn’t afford to put these kids through college. I couldn’t afford this house. I can’t take the place of her husband. I’m not going to ruin her life.

This is one time, that I want to be careful what I write in this blog. I don’t want to be a jerk about this subject. The truth is, that at some point in their lives, women are ready for somebody to come along and “ruin everything”, because they just can’t stand it anymore. They have the right husband, the right house, in the right neighborhood, and kids that are getting ready to graduate and go off to college. Everything is so right, they are just sick of it, and they want something else. Maybe they feel like it is killing them, they are getting old, they are always doing everything right. They wish someone would just wreck it so bad for them, that they wouldn’t have to keep going like this.

As I was leaving the house that day, the teen aged son was just coming home from school. As he got out of his friend’s car, he was glaring at me with a querrying look. I said, “Hey”, as I went to my truck. I made sure that I did not have any kind of grin or smugness, no sign of happiness. I knew what he was thinking. No, I didn’t have sex with your mother.

Crystal City, Texas, Similar, But Worse, Than Dickinson, North Dakota

February 9, 2016UncategorizedAnadarko, Crystal City Texas, government in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakotaname withheld

Tonight, I just finished reading a nation-wide newspaper article about Crystal City, Texas. The city attorney, mayor, assistant mayor, and the entire city council, except for one councilman, were all arrested by the FBI for bribery and corruption.

In 2011, I had had such a bad experience working in Dickinson, that I went back home, and vowed never to come back. The people in Dickinson were unfriendly and inhospitable, there was a shortage of women and very few attractive women, there was no place to live and rents were ridiculously high, it was very cold. I never wanted to come back.

I went to the oil field in Vernal, Utah looking for work. I was asked if I would go to an oil field in southwest Texas, owned by Anadarko. I agreed to go. I drove about 2,000 miles to get there. A new manufactured home was rented for me to live in just outside of Crystal City, Texas.

On my first day of work, I was leaving Crystal City headed south on the highway, driving to the Anadarko offices in Carrizo Springs. I was going about 60 mph, a vehicle going about 85 mph almost ran into me head-on, because a Texas police officer was chasing him, forcing him to pass the north bound cars in front of him, and run head-on into me. The Texas cop was fucking crazy and stupid, he was forcing this guy into the oncoming traffic in the south bound lane.

When I got done with work that day, I drove back to Crystal City and stopped at a gas station. A police officer was pulling over someone in a Ford Ranger truck while I was pumping gas. The police officer talked to the driver for a while, asked the driver to get out of the truck, and then began searching the truck, removing items from the truck. Finding nothing, the driver was given a speeding ticket, and let go.

The next day at work, I heard other out-of-state contractors talking about getting pulled over in Crystal City, and having their truck searched. The contractors were saying that was the last time they would ever give consent for a search, it took them about an hour to get all of their tools and equipment back into all of the correct compartments on their truck. The police in Texas are mean, they are just shy of being psychopaths, they are just as bad or worse than criminals.

Every business, grocery store, gas station, and restaurant in Crystal City and Carrizo Springs was dirty and grungy. The population in Crystal City and Carrizo Springs was about 85% Hispanic. There were some big cultural differences. At all but one of the restaurants in Crystal City and Carrizo Springs, the waitresses were very slow to take my order because I was white, they were very lazy and shitty about taking my order. For everybody, at every restaurant but one, it would take about one hour to get your food. The cooks were very lazy and had a very bad attitude.

The oil field south of Carrizo Springs was right on the border with Mexico. Mexicans walked across the border through the oil fields every day. The oil field workers told me to not ever leave keys in your truck, not ever leave your truck running, a Mexican will run out of the bushes and take your truck, and you will have a long, long walk to get back to the highway. Though it was prohibited by Anadarko and Chesapeake Energy, most of the oil field workers carried guns with them every day.

In the summer, working out in the dry scrub brush, the temperature was 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Some of the ranches around the oil field were 1,000 acres, about half of them had their own airplane runways. Because of the heat, the barrenness, the remoteness, and the comparitive wealth of the white ranchers, who were in the extreme minority, the white ranchers were just out of their minds.

In businesses around Crystal City and Carrizo Springs, there were official signs that said it was a crime to hold illegal immigrants against their will and force them to work. Apparently, the wealthy white ranchers used to “catch” illegal immigrants crossing their property, and then not let them leave, and force them to work. It was discovered that one rancher had dug a hole that was about twenty-five feet in diameter and ten feet deep, when he saw a Mexican crossing his ranch, he would just shoot them and throw them in the hole. He had about twenty dead Mexicans in his hole when it was discovered.

The Texans at Anadarko were crazy. The wealthy white ranchers were crazy. The 85% Hispanic population did not like whites, and their culture was very different. For me, it was like Vietnam in the movie “Apocalypse Now”. The local people did not want the whites there. The police were psychopath crazy, and were going after the out-of-state workers every day. Out in the oil field, I had to look up and look around about every 60 seconds to make sure no Mexicans were sneaking up on me to try to take my vehicle. It’s 120 degrees, and the Anadarko people are acting like this is just great and let’s have a barbeque.

It doesn’t surprise me that the FBI arrested the city attorney, the mayor, the assistant mayor, and the entire city council, except for one councilman. This area was so remote, and isolated, that they had their own way of doing things, which was what ever they wanted. Dickinson is not that bad, but there are a lot of similarities.

Note to Readers About My Anonymity

February 7, 2016Uncategorizedname withheld

The things that I write about in this blog, couldn’t very well be put in a local newspaper. Businesses would withdraw their advertising, readers would cancel their subscriptions. I also need to be able to write anonymously.

This is my 70th post, and I believe that I have written enough to offend many people. I have also written enough, to where people think that they know who I am. I was prepared for this.

Someone contacted me today and asked me about my blog. My answer had to be,”What blog?” The person is a friend of mine, and he said that he enjoyed reading my blog, and that he would not tell anyone that it was me. I didn’t have to say to my friend again,”What blog?”, because he went ahead and said that he understood that I have to deny ownership.

In order to stop me from writing, and in order to try to force me to delete my blog, I believe that people will try to figure out who I am. If anyone asks me about my blog, I have to say,”What blog? I don’t have any blog.” If they persist, and it seems to be getting them nowhere, they may try to contact my employer to try to persuade him to get me to stop.

There are about three possibilities: One, my employer may say that what I do in my free time is my own business, as long as it is not illegal. He may stick to that, even if he reads my blog. Two, he may read my blog, talk to me about it, ask me to tone it down some, ask me to get rid of some posts. Three, he may fire me immediately after reading my blog, saying that he can’t have me working for him.

As you can see, in scenario number one, there is nothing I need to do, everything is O.K. In scenario number three, there is nothing I can do, because it is already too late.

In scenario number two, I just need to keep saying,”I don’t have any blog.”, because my employer is not that mad about it, and he can just say,”He says he doesn’t have any blog.”

I already have three jobs, the most public one is not that busy, it is not going to be the end of the world if I lose one of my three jobs that is not that busy, especially if there is nothing I can do about it.

I have already spoken to a friend of mine, who feels the same way I do, he reads my blog pretty regularly. In a worst case scenario, I can just turn this blog over to him. I will then have no control over the blog content, I couldn’t “force” him to delete anything, it will be completely out of my hands.

Children Do Not Play In Dickinson, North Dakota

February 7, 2016Uncategorizedchildren in Dickinson North Dakota, culture in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, out of state worker in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I have lived in Dickinson for nearly 3-1/2 years now, and I have never seen children playing in the street. When I was a kid, I spent about 25% of my time playing in the street. I would try to do tricks on my bicycle, I could ride my bike backwards very well. I could only ever do wheelies for about ten feet. I could hardly ever do front wheel stands. We would build bigger and better ramps in the street, and measure how far everybody jumped. If there was somebody dumb enough to do it, we would stand garbage cans upright for someone to jump over, which meant they were going to land on them.

If there happened to be a grocery store shopping cart in the neighborhood, we would take a hacksaw and cut the basket off the top of it, and make a chariot out of the lower part. We would get a rope, tie one end to the seat of a bicycle, the other end to the front bar of the grocery cart chariot. The bicycle would ride down the middle of the street, the chariot rider would swing out to the curb.

About 25% of the time we would spend on “forts”. Some of the time was spent inhabiting and maintaining existing “forts”, part of the time was spent prospecting and building new forts. This seemed only natural to do. I had a good tree fort in my yard, which I sometimes spent the night in. I ran an extension cord out to my tree fort and had a TV in it. However, there was a need for additional “forts” elsewhere. We constructed a pretty good tree fort about half a block away in somebody else’s yard, without them knowing about it, which is the best way to do it. We salvaged lumber from people’s trash piles, or obtained lumber from other people’s yards. We had another tree fort about one block away over a storm drainage canal, it was very picturesque.

I never see kids in Dickinson playing in the street, I never see them building tree forts. I have not seen one tree fort in Dickinson. I have written several blog posts about how the culture in Dickinson is different than from where I am from. For instance, I have mentioned in past blog posts that there is just about nothing an out-of-state person can say that they have, without someone in Dickinson not liking it and having resentment. If you said that you had an aquarium, a trampoline, a pool table, or a swimming pool, people in Dickinson would not like it, they would think or say,”We don’t need any of that shit around here!” I explained in previous blog posts, that after visiting the museum in Medora, and having talked to long-time residents in Dickinson, conditions in North Dakota had been very difficult and poor up until the late 1970s when there was an oil boom.

I have only ever met two people from western North Dakota that know how to play. One of them was Miss North Dakota, who I wrote about meeting in a previous blog post. Miss North Dakota’s family members have all commented, that while they were all trying to get work done, she was always playing. When she was in school, instead of participating in sports, she was off playing. She plays with cats and other animals. She just wants to play, she is still playing, and she doesn’t want to get married until she is in her forties she says. The other person that I know, is the same age as Miss North Dakota, and she plays with her cats and dogs too. I am not talking about go fetch this ball, I am talking about,”Here is your house, and here is your hat, and here is your jacket, put this on.”

The other unusual thing about Miss North Dakota and the other young lady, is that they don’t have a kid yet. Many other young women in western North Dakota get pregnant right away. For them, it’s not like, let’s play doctor, or let’s play house, it’s “I’m pregnant. No, I’m serious, I’m pregnant.”

What I have noticed in Dickinson, is that there is not a wide range of thought, it is kind of narrow. I have written several blog posts titled “Advice to Women in Dickinson”, where I wrote that young women should not think of moving in with a guy right out of high school and getting pregnant, as the only thing there is to do.

At this point, this post is probably upsetting and hurtful to people from Dickinson. I am not trying to be mean in this post, other posts I might be, but not in this one. I want to point out, that people from out-of-state like myself, come to Dickinson, and experience some culture shock. In the South, where it is warm, people play. People surf, sail, swim, canoe, jet ski, water ski, ride horses, play tennis, play golf, roller blade, skateboard, mountain bike, play volleyball, have paint ball battles. Here in Dickinson, kids don’t even play.

Reasons Why I Dislike Property Investors, Property Managers, and Real Estate Agents

February 6, 2016Uncategorizedgreed in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, property investors in Dickinson North Dakota, property managers in Dickinson North Dakota, real estate agents in Dickinson North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In many of my blog posts I have expressed anger towards property investors, property managers, and real estate agents in Dickinson. I want to explain this.

People need to have food, clothing, and shelter. These are necessities that people must have. I believe very strongly that it is wrong for individuals to try to buy up necessities intended for other people, so that they can then overcharge for these necessities. In other words, I think that it is absolutely wrong for anyone to come up with any type of scheme to buy up, control, inflate the price, and over charge for basic necessities that would normally be inexpensive if it weren’t for greedy people trying to manipulate supply, availability, and prices.

Just because a person can conceive to do something, and then go do it, does not mean that it is right.

During the 1700s and 1800s, people went over to Africa and caught blacks, sold them as slaves, and then forced them to work for free. In the United States we already argued, fought, and had a Civil War over this. Now, 99% of people believe that you can’t catch other people and own them. But, if there wasn’t a law against it, people would still be trying to catch and own slaves in the United States, because some people are so greedy, they disregard right and wrong, moral and immoral, just and unjust, like the Property Investors, Property Managers, and Real Estate Agents here in Dickinson.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, children as young as 8,9,10 years old, worked in factories, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, in dangerous and unsafe conditions. To many business owners, there was nothing wrong with this, that is why they did it in the first place. Even to this day, business owners like to say, “Supply and demand, free markets, let the market place decide, capitalism.” Letting business people do what they want, resulted in slavery, child labor in factories, 12 hour work days every day of the week, unsafe and dangerous work conditions. If it weren’t for the Emancipation Proclamation, Child Labor Laws, Federal Wage Laws, and OHSA, all of the things that I just mentioned would be still going on today.

The scheme has also occurred to greedy business people, that they could buy up necessities, so that these necessities would not be available to other people, and then they could overcharge for them. What would happen if wealthy business people bought all of the food, all of it? What if the wealthy business people then decided that you should pay $2.50 for a can of beans, carrots, or peas? This may happen one day, because there is no law against it. But just because someone can do it, does that make it right?

In the beginning of the United States, single family homes were built for single families to live in. Probably early on, some single family homes were occupied by renters. Renters are easily subject to being taken advantage of. In some areas of the United States, single family homes were occupied by share-croppers, which was even more perilous than being a renter. Being at the mercy of someone else for your housing, existed from the beginning of the United States. However, after World War II, people were nearly free from other people controlling their housing, and we could have stayed on that course, had it not been for greedy people getting involved.

After World War II, due to advances in manufacturing, technology, engineering, agriculture, and energy transmission, the standard of living in the United States was the highest it had ever been. A husband could work outside the home for eight hours a day, forty hours per week, and he could afford to purchase a home for his family to live in, buy furniture, buy an automobile, and pay for all of his family’s necessities. The same kind of business minds that brought us slavery and 10 year old children working in factories, went to work on how to take advantage of people.

Business people began to think, why not buy single family homes as an investment? Everybody needs a place to live, why not buy single family homes, and charge more for rent than the mortgage payment? As long as you can rent out a single family home for more than the mortgage, property tax, and insurance, it pays for itself, and in fifteen or twenty years, it will be completely paid for. If this is the case, why not buy ten single family homes, rent them out, and in twenty years, you will have ten homes that are completely paid off? One reason not to do it, would be that you are driving up the single family home prices, and preventing ten families from owning their own home.

There is a saying, banks loan money to people who can prove that they do not need a loan. There are people that have high incomes, that are able to pay for all of their necessities and still have a great deal of money left over each month. They can prove to the bank that their own home is paid for, they have a large amount of money in savings, and that they have several thousand dollars of extra money each month after their necessities are paid for. The bank is happy to give them a mortgage on several single family homes, they can easily afford the monthly payments, plus, they are just going to rent them out anyway, for more than the monthly mortgage.

A young husband and wife, with no savings, and not very good employment, is not able to make a down payment on a home or be approved for a mortgage. This same husband and wife, as they become older, if they have had a period of unemployment or medical problems, they may still be unable to make a down payment on a home or be approved for a mortgage. This same husband and wife in old age, have spent all of their earnings raising children and helping other family members, they may still be unable to make a down payment on a home or be approved for a mortgage.

I read a real estate investment book that was published in the 1980s. In this book, there were charts of single family home prices in cities like Orlando, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Omaha in the late 1970s. The charts showed that in these cities, the average single family home price was approximately twice the average annual salary of an individual in that city. The charts also showed that the monthly rents on the average single family home were slightly higher than the monthly mortgage amounts. So if you were a real estate investor, it made sense to buy as many single family homes in those cities as you could find. This real estate investment book also pointed out, that as time passed, you would have more and more equity in your single family rental homes, and could use this equity to borrow against in order buy more single family homes. Also, as time went by, prices on everything go up, if your mortgage payment on your single family rental home stays the same, and you increase your rent every year, your “positive cash flow” on each home increases every year.

When I was reading this real estate investment book that was published in the 1980s, it was 2005. At that time, the average single family home price in places like Orlando and Phoenix was now three to four times the average annual salary of an individual in that city. Why did the price of single family homes go from twice the annual salary of an individual to three to four times the annual salary of an individual? I will tell you why, because all of the real estate agents and property investors that were fucking around in the single family home market trying to get rich, that made the price of single family homes double.

An ordinary single family home, is just a place for a working husband and wife to have kids and raise a family, in an ordinary neighborhood, where other working people are doing the same thing. There shouldn’t be any reason for local attorneys, doctors, and dentists, to be trying to get their hands on as many ordinary single family homes as they can. There shouldn’t be people in New York City and Los Angeles trying to buy as many single family homes as they can in Omaha, but that is what is happening. The real estate agents take it upon themselves, to bump the listing prices on $100,000 homes in Omaha, up to $115,000, because the real estate investors in New York City and Los Angeles will still buy them, they don’t know, they don’t care that much either. The working husband and wife who finally saved up enough to afford the down payment on a $100,000 home, ask,”What the fuck just happened?”, when the price goes up to $115,000 the next week.

Real estate agents like to help inflate the price of housing, because their commissions are based on the price of housing sold. Real estate agents also like to help inflate the price of housing, so that they can tell potential buyers that they had better buy now, prices are climbing, if you buy now, your house will be worth 10% more in two years. The prices of single family homes went up and up because there were so many real estate investors trying to buy multiple single family homes. The real estate investors did not really care that the single family home prices were quickly rising, they thought that this was good, they would have equity in their homes more quickly, they went ahead and paid the high prices. Ordinary working people that were desperate to own a home, went ahead and entered into huge mortgages that they could barely afford to pay, ridiculously high mortgages based on their modest incomes.

The housing crash came. Many ordinary working people could not afford their ridiculously high mortgages on their single family home. Due to slumping employment, many ordinary working people could not afford high rent. Real estate investors that owned multiple single family homes, had some tenants move out, some tenants get behind on rent, some tenants negotiate lower rents. Real estate investors came to be unable to afford the mortgage payments on multiple rental houses when tenants moved out or failed to pay rent.

Real estate investors never should have been involved in single family homes that were intended for ordinary working people to live in and raise families. Real estate agents were willing accomplices in making single family homes unaffordable to ordinary working people.

If rich business people could do it, they would buy up all the food, all of it, and not let you have it unless you paid two or three times what it cost them. They don’t care how much suffering they cause.

The real estate investors, property managers, and real estate agents in Dickinson did not care how much hardship they caused people in Dickinson during this past oil boom. Rents on homes and apartments were increased to four or five times what they had been before the oil boom. Wealthy people, people who owned property, real estate agents, property investors, property managers, they all lobbied and made sure that no man-camp or trailer park was built in Stark County, in order to ensure that there continued to be a shortage of housing, and no inexpensive housing alternatives. I knew many people who slept in their vehicles, in the cold, in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015 because they could not afford to rent an apartment in Dickinson. This is also why there is not a homeless shelter in Dickinson, the people with money in Dickinson didn’t want people to have any place to stay if they couldn’t afford to pay the extremely high rents.

3rd Post About Prostitution In Dickinson, North Dakota

February 4, 2016Uncategorizedcareers for women in Dickinson, Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, property investors going bankrupt in Dickinson, prostitution in Dickinson North Dakota, women in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

This will be my third blog post about prostitution in Dickinson, North Dakota. Back during the oil boom, I used to write that the ratio of men to women in Dickinson was about 3:1. I used to write that all of the attractive housewives in Dickinson had to do their shopping during the day, before all the oil field workers got off work, so that they wouldn’t be asked out, propositioned, and harassed.

There was a shortage of women in Dickinson, and all of the construction workers, truck drivers, and oil field workers realized that they were just wasting their time trying to pick up the waitresses and convenience store clerks, who were asked out by ten different guys every day. Some truck drivers told me to go to the website “Backpage”, and look under the “escort” category. There were some nice looking women escorts. However, in the newspapers and on television news, there were regularly reports about the police in Dickinson and Bismarck arresting men who showed up for their appointment with escorts. It was infuriating to me, the women in Dickinson didn’t want to be harassed by men, so the men sought out prostitutes instead, and the police arrested the men when they showed up for their appointment with an escort.

Now the oil boom is over, and about 80% of the male out-of-state workers have left Dickinson. The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is now probably equal. There is not really a need for prostitution in Dickinson now. However, all of the wives of the property developers and property managers will now probably have to become prostitutes. Most of the real estate agent women also will have to become prostitutes.

Now that about 80% of the male out-of-state workers have left Dickinson, there is not a need for additional waitresses and bartenders. There are very few job openings in Dickinson now. The occupancy rate in the new apartments in Dickinson is probably about 30%. The property developers are probably going to go bankrupt. The property investors/property managers are probably going to go bankrupt. Properties and houses are not selling now because so many people have left town. Real estate agents are not making any money.

It is kind of unfortunate for them, that the property developer wives, property manager wives, and real estate agents are going to have to become prostitutes now, when all of the oil field workers who had money have left town.

I want to provide some useful, helpful information to all the women in Dickinson who will now have to become prostitutes. I hereby grant permission to the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson to reprint the following useful information: I recommend that you do not stand on street corners or walk the street. There is no use being out in the cold, your friends and neighbors will likely drive by and recognize you. You need to place an advertisement on the website “Backpage”, under “escorts”. I recommend that when you post your photos, you have some kind of blind fold across part of your face, so that your friends and neighbors will not recognize you. Try to write a brief, inviting, description of services, that makes you stand out from the other women. By posting an advertisement online, and waiting for phone calls, you can still show houses, do book keeping work for your husband, do laundry, and do cleaning.

You need to be cautious about being a prostitute. I recommend that you read the website written by Maggie NcNeil titled,”The Honest Courtesan”. You can e-mail her, and ask her questions. Maggie McNeil used to be a prostitute and a madam. You should talk to your customers on the phone first, to get an idea what they are like, and to try to find out some information about them. You might be safer having your customers come to your own home. If your husband is going to give your customers a dirty look, and say things like,”If you go over thirty minutes, it’s another fifty dollars”, you might have to meet your customers at a vacant house or apartment that you are trying to show as a property manager or real estate agent.

If you have a customer that looks clean, he is probably a cop. Most of your customers will be older, overweight truck drivers. Also in Dickinson, there are a lot of blacks from Africa, that have come to Dickinson to work at WalMart, or attend Dickinson State University. Remember, Africa has a very high rate of AIDs, so you will have to be especially careful when working for these customers.

I think that’s enough for now. I will try to think of more helpful, useful, advice for property developers, property investors, property managers, and real estate agents in Dickinson, during this time at which you are going bankrupt. I won’t hold it against you that you tried to gouge and take advantage of everyone for the past eight years.

Building My Home In Dickinson, North Dakota

February 4, 2016UncategorizedBaker Hughes in Dickinson, Halliburton in Dickinson, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, relocating to Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

In my previous post, I wrote that if I won the lottery, the first thing that I would do, would be to build a homeless shelter in Dickinson, partly because it is needed, but mostly because that would be what people in Dickinson would hate more than anything else. The second most hated thing that I could do, would be to build the house that I will describe below.

In Dickinson, just as you are leaving town going north on Highway 22, Baker Hughes and Halliburton have each recently built $10,000,000 facilities on the east side of the highway. Fortunately for me, on the opposite side of the highway, there is a 100 acre parcel of land that is available. On the top of the hill, overlooking Baker Hughes and Halliburton, I would build my large house. It would be a three-story Victorian house, identical to the Adams Family house, the one that was occupied by the story book characters Gomez, Morticia, Pugsley, Wednesday, Lurch, and Uncle Fester.

As it was being built, I am sure that everyone in Dickinson would be saying,”What the fuck is that supposed to be?” Everyone would slow down entering or leaving Dickinson, saying,”What the fuck is that?” Late at night, I would stand out on the balcony, and everyone driving by would slow down and look, and say,”Jeeze, what the fuck is he doing?”

I haven’t figured out if I would have a pond out in front, but I have to have some reason to have gargoyles with water shooting out of their orifices, out in the front yard. Maybe I would have a family burial plot out in the front yard, and I could have a fake funeral with mourners every week, that would slow traffic down on Highway 22. That would give the people in Dickinson something to talk about,”Why is he burying somebody every week? I think he is killing them!”

I think that I would like to hire a couple of young ladies, to act as hostesses at my home, who would wear lavish dresses like the ones worn on plantations in the South during the 1800s, who would say to every male guest entering the home, in as much as a southern drawl as possible, “Why hello, are you in the aawwwl business? Can I get you a draaank?” I think after a while, it would drive everybody up the wall. I would invite people over to my house, just to have the hostesses ask them for about the fifth time,”Are you in the aawwl business?”

Downhill from my house, I would have “Shanty Town”. “Shanty Town” would be a retirement village for impoverished, old, disabled oil field workers. Old bent-over black men, old one-armed white men. The outside of their shacks, would look rickety and broken, but this would be just for appearances sake. Inside the shacks there would be a nice modern kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom, with central heating, cable television. I really would want a nice place for poor old disabled oil field workers to live in, but I would explain to them,”Look, I want to make a statement, and get people’s attention, that the oil companies hire people to do these dangerous, hazardous jobs, and then when they aren’t needed anymore, they just throw them away. I want you to have the chance to tell people.”

There would be a turn-off the highway to Shanty Town, big enough for tractor trucks to turn-off and park. It would be a roadside attraction, there would be a sign beside the road, “Boiled Peanuts”, and there would be a cauldron of boiled peanuts, where old black men and crippled-up white men would ladle out boiled peanuts into styrofoam cups for all the red-neck truck drivers. I would call all over the country to animal shelters looking for three-legged cats, and three-legged dogs, to have enough raggedy looking animals hobbling around Shanty Town. At night time, when cars drove by, they could see the faint orange glow from the wood fires burning in 55 gallons drums, flickering on the white bed sheets hanging from the clothes lines.

All I want is for everyone in Dickinson to say,”Man, I wish that guy never would have moved here!”

The People In Dickinson Had Better Hope and Pray That I Never Win The Lottery

February 4, 2016UncategorizedCatholic Church in Dickinson North Dakota, charity in Dickinson North Dakota, homeless in Dickinson North Dakota, Living in Dickinson, North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, what is Dickinson North Dakota Likename withheld

The people in Dickinson had better hope and pray that I never win the lottery, because if I did, there would be some changes, and they wouldn’t like it.

There is no homeless shelter in Dickinson now. That is the first thing I would do. In fact, I would put Dickinson “Light-years Ahead” in the homeless shelter business.

Many affluent people in Dickinson live on “Palm Beach Drive”, which runs adjacent to the Dickinson Golf Course. At the beginning of Palm Beach Drive, there is a very large old industrial warehouse, in the middle of a large field. That, would be the homeless shelter.

My focus, would be on restoring hope in the homeless people. To lift them up. And also, to irritate the people in Dickinson, who did not want to help their fellow man. There are probably about five Catholic Churches in Dickinson, yet none have heard,”So as you do to the the least of my people, so do you to me.”

For now, I will just describe what I have in mind for the men’s homeless shelter. A very large facility. A very large entrance and lobby, where friendly staff can greet the new arrivals, ask what difficulties they are having, asses what is needed, and then show the new arrival around. In the dormitory, of course there is a bed and locker for each individual. Here are the bathrooms and showers. Here is the laundry room. Here is the dining hall. Here are the cubicles with computers. Here is the television room and lounge. Here is the recreation area, we have treadmills, free weights, basketball court.

Dinner is served from 5:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m., we have an excellent cook. Tonight, we are having fried chicken, collard greens, black eyed peas with rice, corn bread, and beanie-weenie. In the lounge, after dinner we are watching the newest Terminator movie that just came out.

In the morning, for breakfast, we usually serve eggs and toast, but we have a very large selection of cereal, Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran, Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops. At 9:00 a.m., we have several Lincoln Town Cars that deliver people to the North Dakota Job Service office, and to the day labor offices such as the Command Center. At 10:00 a.m., in the classroom, we have an instructor/job coach that will give some information about creating a resume, what jobs are available, what to expect at these jobs, and answer any questions that you may have.

Usually, we request that individuals take the rides in the morning to go to North Dakota Job Service, or the Command Center, or that they attend the 10:00 a.m. job coaching class. If an individual is recovering from travel or stress, they can remain on the premises and do laundry, telephone or e-mail relatives, but they will need to attend the counseling session that we have here at 2:00 p.m. in order to make sure that you are O.K., not feeling physically ill, and to address any problems that you may have. Since there are not that many people here during the day, we normally just have sandwiches for lunch between 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

If you need clothing, we have clothing here that has been donated. If you need dress clothes for a white-collar job, we have them. If you need clothes for construction work, we have them. If you are going to work on a construction site, we give you a bucket in the morning that has a hammer, measuring tape, level, square, wire cutters, screw drivers, adjustable wrench, work gloves, safety glasses, tool belt, and hard hat. We ask that you bring it all back with you at the end of the day.

We want the individuals here to get back on their feet. We understand that they have undergone much stress in being homeless, not having any help, and not knowing what they are going to do. In order to get people back to a normal life, we want to provide them with a safe, clean, comfortable place to stay, with adequate food and clothing. We want to provide job coaching in order to help individuals become employed. We offer other counseling in order to determine what other help is needed.

The people who drive the Lincoln Town Cars to deliver people in the morning, and pick them up in the afternoon, they are homeless people who came here, who have good driving records and suitability for that job. The people who cook, they are homeless people who came here, who showed that they were trustworthy and were good cooks. The security staff who work here, they were homeless people who came here, who we recognized could maintain order.

The security staff here, they are all older men, they are all level-headed, they maintain order and calm. We make sure that there are more than enough of them, so that it is always safe here. They have their own rooms. We go over with them again and again, that there is to be no drug or alcohol use on the premises; there is to be no fighting, bullying, or intimidation; there is to be no destruction of property, no misuse of property, no theft.

We do have individuals who return here at night, who are over intoxicated. We do not allow them in the dormitory when they are like this, we allow them to remain in what we call the “ER”. Anyone who is over-intoxicated, on drugs, or is physically sick, we have a large room which is kind of like an Emergency Room waiting area, where staff is able to observe everyone during the night.

There are individuals that we come to realize, are mentally ill, and are not currently able to be employed. In order to stay here, we require that they maintain good personal hygeine, they must shower at least every other day, they must wear clean clothes, we provide them with clean clothes. If they have a lot of junk personal property, we require that they keep it locked up in one of the outside storage bins. If they can maintain civility, we allow them to stay here. We try to find things for them to do. We like for them to take the old bread from the kitchen and go feed the birds out behind the building, and we encourage them to be sure to wave to the people driving by on Palm Beach Drive.

(I had been thinking about this for a long time. I had thought about more obnoxious and offensive things that I could do, like having the non-working homeless people in Dickinson put on the tackiest possible clothing from thrift stores, and then take them golfing for the afternoon in Dickinson, just to put them in the face of the affluent people here in Dickinson. As I began to write this post, I became not in the mood to joke about this. I really would like to have a very large homeless shelter in Dickinson, right there in the field next to Palm Beach Drive. I don’t want homelessness in Dickinson swept under the rug, I want everybody to know about it and see it. I have met and known many people in Dickinson who were living in their cars, some of them had current valid commercial driver’s licenses, some of them were skilled tradesmen, some of them had college degrees. When a person is living in their vehicle, it is very easy for them to become despaired, they worry about buying food, they worry about buying gas for their car, they don’t have good access to showers or bathrooms, and the community treats them with disgust because of their circumstances and appearance. What is disgusting to me, is that Dickinson could well afford to have had a big warehouse where homeless people could get something to eat, get cleaned up, and get some advisement on what to do, and possibly get some help to get out of town, but Dickinson is not about being kind or helpful to people.)

Getting Treated Like Shit in Dickinson, North Dakota, Part II

February 1, 2016UncategorizedDickinson Chamber of Commerce, engineering jobs in Dickinson North Dakota, manufacturing jobs in Dickinson North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, pay in Dickinson North Dakota, working in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

“Getting Treated Like Shit in Dickinson, North Dakota, Part II”, is a continuation of the previous post. It is not absolutely necessary for you to read the previous post, but it would help.

Just before I returned to Dickinson in 2013, after having lived in Texas for a year, I looked at the North Dakota Job Services website and saw a job listing for an estimator and an AutoCAD drafter at the same manufacturing company in Dickinson. This looked promising because I had several years of experience with different companies working as an estimator, and several years of experience with different companies doing AutoCAD drawings, plus, I was an engineer. I e-mailed this company. The contact person e-mailed me back warning me that it was tough to find a place to live in Dickinson, did I have a place to stay? I said yes, I did, I could stay on a friend’s property in my camper. I don’t think that they liked my friend’s name, or that I was going to stay on his property in my camper, because they didn’t contact me back. I was just being honest about where I was going to live.

I arrived in Dickinson and got a job. About ten months later, I saw the same two job advertisements again for an estimator and an AutoCAD drafter at the same manufacturing company in Dickinson. When you see the same job advertisements come up again after a short amount of time, you know that the employee didn’t work out, and they left either by their own choice, or the company’s. The person who owned the property that I was living on, said to me, you don’t want to work at that company, my cousin is the vice-president, they pay very low wages, and they don’t treat people very well, they have been like that for many years. I said to him that I would be working as an engineer, not as a laborer, it would be different for me. My friend told me, you’ll see.

I contacted the manufacturing company, e-mailed my resume, and an appointment was set for an interview. At the interview, I brought a variety of good, detailed AutoCAD drawings that I had made for several different companies, all of these companies had given me pay raises because my drawings were good, the most recent one in 2012.

I had a preliminary interview with the contact person for about fifteen minutes, then he introduced the vice-president of sales, and the head of the estimating department. They interviewed me for at least an hour. Then the contact person interviewed me for another ten minutes. Then I had to take about a twenty minute IQ and personality test.

I was kind of pissed-off, and insulted. I had a degree in engineering from a very large, well-known, University, with a very difficult engineering program. At this University, those who were admitted to the college of engineering after their sophomore year, only about 40% successfully made it through the program I was in. The education that I had was more than what was required. I had been an estimator for several different companies. In my late twenties, I was completing several $200,000 estimates each week. At the next company I went to, I was completing million dollar estimates. Then I became a superintendent over several $100,000 projects running simultaneously. Then I became a project manager over larger projects.

What the fuck is wrong with these people in Dickinson? Look, I completed a degree in engineering from a good school, I have had a great deal of experience estimating and producing AutoCAD drawings, at this point, what the fuck difference does my IQ make? At this point, when I am in my forties, and have had twenty years of work experience, and much of the work experience has been at a higher professional level than this job, why can’t they understand that I am somewhat over qualified for this job that they have?

Obviously, obviously, I am not that fucking brilliant if I am in Dickinson, applying for an estimator job and an AutoCAD drafter job, any person that is really fucking brilliant is probably working at Microsoft, the NSA, Lockheed, Batel, Bettis Labs, Bechtel Marine Propulsion. I can’t believe this, the pay they are offering is $18 per hour, 40 hours per week, that’s $720 per week. Neither an engineer, nor a good AutoCAD drafter, nor a good estimator would work for $720 a week, yet I am all three of those things, and they think that they need to give me an IQ test to see if I am up to this $720 per week job. Oil field laborers are being paid about $18 per hour, 70 hours per week at this time in Dickinson. I can’t believe this.

I have said it before in this blog, in Dickinson, they will like you more and treat you better if you did 4 years in prison rather than 4 years in college.

The manufacturing company that I interviewed with, every six months, I see the same job advertisements for estimator and AutoCAD drafter, again and again. From my experience interviewing with them, they treat people like shit.

There are several manufacturing companies in Dickinson. For one of them, about every two months, I see the same job listing for welder and electrician, welder and electrician, again and again. I talked to a welder and an electrician who worked at that company, he said they were assholes.

The other large manufacturing company in Dickinson, I keep reading job advertisements that they have for a manufacturing engineer, again and again. I read the job responsibilities and duties. The job responsibilities and duties are so extensive and numerous, that these would be what an engineering department with four engineers would handle, not one individual.

I can make the general statement, that you do not want to work for any manufacturing company in Dickinson. There is a history in Dickinson, of the manufacturing companies not paying people well, and not treating people well. For just about every manufacturing company in Dickinson, I see the same job openings advertised again, and again, and again, especially in the areas of engineering, estimating, and drafting.

From my personal experience in Dickinson, the people at the manufacturing companies have resentment, jealousy, and contempt for people with an education, especially an engineering education. There are about three manufacturing companies and one engineering company in Dickinson that are having difficulty filling an engineering position right now, because I keep seeing the job advertisements. I am not going to apply. For some reason, people from outside this area are not applying either. Dickinson must have a bad reputation, it is well deserved. I think that the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson, should let people know, that the manufacturing companies in Dickinson do not pay very much, they treat people badly, they especially treat engineers badly.

Getting Treated Like Shit, in Dickinson, North Dakota, Part I

February 1, 2016UncategorizedChamber of Commerce in Dickinson North Dakota, Dickinson State University, DSU, employment in Dickinson North Dakota, Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota, what is it like in Dickinson North Dakotaname withheld

I will begin this story, in the middle of my stay in Dickinson, North Dakota, in 2014. I had applied for a government job in Dickinson. This would be my second job working for the government. The application was very long, approximately twenty pages. Employment history, education history, special qualification history, criminal history/disqualifiers.

I turned in my application. I would be required to take an exam the following week, and undergo further testing after that. On Thursday at approximately 4:00 p.m., an e-mail was sent from the human resources person in Dickinson, stating that I needed to provide my high school transcripts by the following Monday. I happened to check my e-mail on Thursday at 6:00 p.m., and my reaction was,”What the fuck! God damn it! How the fuck am I going to get my high school transcripts by Monday? I have one business day, I graduated from high school over twenty-five years ago, 2,000 miles away, I don’t even know if they still have my transcripts.” I cursed some more, this was the Dickinson human resource’s way of disqualifying me from this job, by me being unable to submit all required paper work by Monday. From my application they knew when and where I graduated, they knew it would be impossible for me to get my transcripts by Monday.

I graduated from a state in the Southeast, twenty five years ago. I telephoned my high school at 7:00 a.m. Friday morning, Dickinson time, it was 9:00 a.m. back East. My high school said that I needed to telephone the county archive office. I listened to the county archivist phone recording which gave their website address. I looked at the county archives website. I understood the instructions about the request for records process, but they needed to receive a payment by check or money order by mail to complete the process. I called the archive office back, and left a polite but desperate voice mail, quickly explaining my situation. I sent a polite but desperate e-mail with my completed application for high school transcripts. About one million people live in the county that I was dealing with. The archivist woman had to go out to a warehouse, locate the high school records, find my high school, find my year of graduation, find my records, go scan them, e-mail them to me, without receiving any payment.

The human resources lady in Dickinson, was trying to disqualify me from the job because I was from out-of-state. There was no chance that I was going to get my high school transcripts from twenty-five years ago, in one day. The archivist lady back where I was from, dropped what she was doing, dug out my records, scanned them, and e-mailed them to me by 1:00 p.m., breaking the rules, without receiving payment. They do things like that in the South.

I was grateful that I got my transcripts on Friday, in plenty of time to deliver them. But I was surprised at what I got, I got about thirteen pages. I don’t know if this was supposed to happen, but I got everything. The first three pages were grade reports, but I had never seen them in this format. Rather than reporting grades by quarter, they were reported by course and final grade for the year. 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, every course was an “A”. There was an official stamp, “Rank 1 out of 290“. Mother fucker! I was the salutatorian, I gave the salutatorian speech at graduation. They lied to me! I was actually the valedictorian, well how about that. They fucked me out of that, oh well.

What were these other ten pages? They were a psychological assessment and evaluation. In 10th grade, the school system did a personal evaluation, which I somewhat remember. There were test results, explanation and interpretation of results, scores plotted on a chart. The first two types of intelligence testing, my IQ was 124, 125. The third type of intelligence testing, verbal/vocabulary, my IQ was 134. The fourth type, awareness/socialization, my IQ was 118. The last, I believe was math, my IQ was 125. My overall IQ was 126. The assessment explained that 126 IQ was classified as “highly intelligent”, that 130 IQ was classified as “gifted”. The concluding recommendation was that I should be taken out of advanced classes, and placed in the “gifted” program.

Well, that explained a lot. I had read when I was about thirty years of age, that in order to be an engineer, you needed to have an IQ of more than 130. No wonder that I had had such a hard time passing my engineering classes, I didn’t have a high enough IQ. It also explained why I wasn’t working as an engineer, I found it tedious, frustrating, and difficult. It explained why I wound up in Dickinson. If I had my wish, if I would have been able to make enough money, I would have liked to have lived in a home on the water in Florida. I did not have a high enough IQ, hence, I am in Dickinson.

I turned in the grade reports only, to the human resources department in Dickinson on Friday. The following Monday, I took the exams and got an 82%, 93%, and 93%. I only needed to get 70%, 70%, and 70% to pass and be eligible. I thought that I did really well at the interview, there were four interviewers. I did not get the job. I decided, fuck them, that is the last time I will ever apply to any government job in Dickinson.

About four months later, I applied to a job at Dickinson State University. The job did not pay that well, but I was very much looking forward to being eligible to take tuition-free, or reduced-tuition classes at Dickinson State University. DSU had had my completed application for more than a month, when the human resources lady sent me an e-mail requesting that I send them my resume before Monday. The DSU human resources lady waited until the end of the day on Thursday to send this request by e-mail. I was furious when I checked my e-mail on Saturday. I had been working on a construction site out of town. When I tried to send my resume first thing Monday morning, I already had an e-mail in my in-box from DSU, stating that the position I had applied to, had now been filled.

The point of this blog post is this: When someone from out-of-state applies to a job in Dickinson, these local people here will do whatever it takes to try to make sure that you don’t get the job. Both of the employment examples that I have given in this post, these two jobs were not advertised very well, they were practically hidden. Both of theses jobs were not advertised in the newspaper, North Dakota Job Services, Indeed, CareerBuilder, or Monster.com. Both of these jobs were advertised for a very short period of time. The local people here in Dickinson, they wanted to tell their friends, tell their relatives about a job opening in the government or Dickinson State University, and make sure that there would not be any competition from better qualified candidates from out-of-state. When an out-of-state person did apply, the human resources people tried to wait until the last minute to request additional paper work, so that the applicant would be unable to submit the required paper work in time, and be disqualified. I later met the individual that was hired for the position that I had applied to at Dickinson State University. He had far less qualifications than I did in both education and experience, but he was from Dickinson.

I stated in a previous post, that I wanted to beat the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson, North Dakota, that I wanted to tell people the truth about Dickinson. I want to tell people from out-of-state, that though the Chamber of Commerce wants to paint a pretty picture of Dickinson, if you come here, you will be treated like shit.