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Pros and Cons for Staying in Dickinson, North Dakota

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For those of you who have not read my blog before, I am not from Dickinson.  I have lived in Dickinson for about three and a half years now.

I write this blog to provide useful, truthful, helpful information about Dickinson, North Dakota, primarily for people from out-of-state.  I sincerely recommend that you do not come to Dickinson at this time.

I want to warn people from out-of-state, do not use the last of your money to get here, thinking that you will get a job, and things will be O.K.  There is no homeless shelter.  The people who live here were not very hospitable to begin with, and they are especially not hospitable now, because they have grown tired of out-of-state oil field workers and construction workers.

If you are not from here, have no money, and have a hard-luck story, the people here will have no sympathy for you.  You can freeze to death in your vehicle, and they would not care.  If you are down-and-out, have no money, you will very likely not get a job in Dickinson because people will look at you like a bum, a vagrant, an undesirable.  Everyone here is sick and tired of people showing up and wanting help.  The economy in Dickinson is not doing well right now, there are many people who are from here who are struggling now.

If you are from out-of-state, and have enough money to travel to Dickinson, rent an apartment, and look for work, I want to warn you that you might be better off remaining where you are, or doing more research on other areas of the country.  I want to point out some things that you will experience, that you are probably unaware of.

The population of Dickinson right now is probably about 25,000 people.  Most of the residents are from here, they went to high school here, and they have a lot of family members here.  The residents here don’t really like people from out-of-state.  They are suspicious, resentful, jealous, and hateful to people from out-of-state.  There are some values and cultural differences, different beliefs, and different educational levels.  This is about the third time I am saying it in this blog, if you want to know what Dickinson is like, you need to watch the movies “Grapes of Wrath”, “Deliverance”, and “Planet of the Apes”.

I had to go back and edit this blog post, I have so many stories about interviewing and working for companies in Dickinson, what a nightmare, it was taking up the entire blog.  I have to leave out my examples for the time being, about what living and working in Dickinson is like.  It is also literally painful and angering, to write about, and re-live my experiences in Dickinson, it is like writing about what it is like to be in prison.

I am going to switch now, and tell you the reasons why I stay in Dickinson.  I look at the internet job advertisement sites “Indeed.com”, “Careerbuilder.com”, and “Monster.com”.  I search for jobs in the state where I have a home, and I find very few jobs.  I find very few jobs, and low paying jobs.  It refreshes my memory about how ridiculously low the pay is back there, and what it is like to run out of money.  I would be stupid to think that I could go back there now.

I have lived and worked in seven different states.  I have been paid well in large cities, but I can’t stand living there.  The several areas that I loved living in, I could not make any money.  I listen to people’s experiences, advice, and recommendations about where to live.  I read news articles about living in different areas.  Most of what is published about good places to live, is a bunch of shit, because it is contradictory to what I experienced there and contradictory to what other people who actually live there describe.  In short, I can not find any valid information that indicates there is any good place to live in the United States at this time.

In Dickinson, I have my “job, job”, where I am not very busy right now.  Then I have my “self-employment job”, where I am not very busy right now.  And now, I have my “third job”, which I am just starting.  At least I have three jobs.  I am better off here, than the state where I came from.

 

Economic Information for Dickinson, North Dakota

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In several of my recent blog posts, I mentioned where I got some of my information to explain the current economic situation in Dickinson, North Dakota.  I think that my best source was the website titled “A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota”, because this site did not present the website creator’s opinion, instead it was a collection of newspaper articles from North Dakota newspapers going back sixty-five years that recorded events after they had just happened.  Another good source that I found was an article submitted by “Oilman2” to the website “RuralPioneer”, that explained among other things, that North Dakota oil is relatively difficult and expensive to extract, it requires deep drilling, horizontal drilling, fracturing, and can only be produced when the price of oil is high.  The first source that I mentioned above, clearly showed that there had been a boom-to-bust cycle in North Dakota in the 1950s, and the 1970s, it gave all the reasons why, what the growth was like, and what the decline was like.  The second source that I mentioned above, explained why there is always a boom-to-bust cycle whenever and wherever oil production occurs.

The two sources of information that I mentioned above, gave information that did not lead to a good economic outlook for western North Dakota.  In many of my earlier blog posts, I based some of what I wrote on information contained in the “Dickinson Press” newspaper, “The Drill” newspaper, and “The Bakken” magazine.  Though the information in these three publications has been accurate, these publications have most often tried to not say anything too negative, because they rely on revenue from advertisement sales, and they have tried to be a supporter of the western North Dakota economy.  All the businesses and business owners in western North Dakota thought that the best thing for them to do, was to keep a positive outlook going.

In my writing, I wanted to tell what I saw going on.  I got some of my facts from the two newspapers and the magazine mentioned above, but I tried to make an independent conclusion.  I discussed my thoughts on what was happening, with other people in Dickinson, many of them were long time residents of Dickinson, some had lived and worked in other states.  My goal was to provide useful and truthful information about what living in Dickinson, North Dakota was like.

In some of my recent reading, I found an economic forecaster named William Bonner, who founded a company named Agora Inc.  William Bonner founded Agora Inc. in Baltimore, Maryland in 1978.  His company does economic research and forecasting, and their findings are presented in a newsletter that is provided to 2.4 million paid subscribers.  Supposedly, his newsletter is read by more people than the Wall Street Journal.  His writing is very clear, direct, to-the-point, and unambiguous.

I have a lot of time to read because I am not busy in my two jobs in Dickinson right now.  I need to get a third job because the economy is so slow in Dickinson now.  In reading William Bonner’s forecasts recently, I found something which I believe is very important, that William Bonner is very emphatic about.  He explains in much more detail than I can repeat in this post, that there was very nearly a sudden catastrophic economic collapse in the United States in the past ten years that some very high level people knew about, that 99% of people never knew about.  There is no benefit to William Bonner in explaining it, he just believes that people should know about it, it may be inevitable that it will happen again.

As brief as possible:  All U.S. banks have lent out money in the form of loans, mortgages, and credit cards.  On banking records, individuals and businesses owe billions of dollars to the banks due to loans, mortgages, and credit card debt.  Banks have deposit holders who have placed money in the banks and have bank accounts.  We have all probably been told and have heard, that if all the deposit holders showed up at a bank on the same day and wanted to take all of their money out, they couldn’t, because it is not all there, it has been loaned out.

Before you jump to any conclusions about what I am going to say next, don’t jump to a conclusion yet, because I am not going to talk about a “bank run”, where everybody panics and runs to the bank at the same time to get their money out and it is not all there.  I am going to explain a different type of United States bank failure that nearly happened, that did not involve a “bank run”.

William Bonner writes, I believe that he said it was 2008, that some people, and some large deposit holders, were uneasy, and believed that they needed to get their cash money out of the banks, and they did.  On a particular day, the individual banks, the United States government, and the Federal Reserve realized that there was not enough actual cash on hand in the banks to complete all the pending transactions.  There was not a run on the banks, the banks were not insolvent, there was not a panic, the banks just did not have enough cash on hand to complete all the pending transactions.  99% of people never knew that this happened on a particular date in 2008.  William Bonner said that due to the emergency, the government had to make billions of dollars of cash available to the banks.  ( I don’t know if this was freshly printed money, or if there was cash held in reserve somewhere.)  A few government and Federal Reserve officials have commented and made statements about this incident, a few years after it happened, acknowledging that on a particular day, the United States nearly had a catastrophic banking failure.

What almost happened, was that people who were at the banks presenting any kind of check, business, personal, or government, they would not have been able to cash them.  Deposit checks into accounts, yes, get cash back, no.  ATM machines would have run out of cash within a day.  Many individuals and businesses would have had difficulty conducting transactions.  Once word spread that many people were unable to get cash at the bank or ATMs, panic and looting probably would have occurred.  Once stores and businesses are looted, they do not re-stock or re-open until order is restored.  The United States would have been in chaos.

To be clear about what happened, if most of the individuals and businesses with loans, mortgages, and credit card debt continued to make their monthly payments to the banks, and individuals and businesses continued to make deposits to their accounts in banks, there would have been enough cash money on hand for some individuals and some businesses to take cash out.  There would have been enough cash on hand at the banks to stock the local ATM machines.  However, there was a trend and a suspicion that the banks were not a good place for money at that time, some individuals and some large deposit holders made cash withdrawals to remove all of their money, and there became a cash shortage in the banking system.  There was not enough physical cash on hand in the banking system to continue making normal, day-to-day transactions.

William Bonner explained that there were several reasons why there became such a shortage of physical cash in the banking system.  Across the United States, many individuals were hoarding large amounts of cash at their homes or in safety deposit boxes. Individuals and businesses had moved actual physical cash dollars to locations overseas.  I will add here, that drug cartels in Mexico probably had billions of dollars in actual physical cash, probably so did China.

If there would have been some type of authoritarian referee at every bank in every town, that could have forced some people who were hoarding cash at home to make their business loan payment or mortgage payment in cash not check, and also not allow account holders to withdraw all of their money in cash at that time, there would have been enough cash on hand in the banking system to continue making all the normal day-to-day transactions.  But there is no such referee, the physical cash shortage can happen again, it probably will.

In addition to writing about the low price of oil, and how this affects the economy in North Dakota, I wanted to explain another mechanism that could cause an economic collapse.  It is believed that as the economy in the United States continues to decline for a variety of reasons, as people become more fearful, a trend to remove cash from banks could cause there to be a shortage of cash on hand at banks and cause them to be unable to function.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I hesitated to write this blog post, I didn’t want to give this secret away.  On Facebook, I have found so much information about people in Dickinson in a short time, that would have otherwise taken me about fifteen years of living in Dickinson to find out.  I have written in about 40% of my blog posts, that there had been a shortage of women in Dickinson.  During the first year that I lived in Dickinson, I thought that there was some genetic reason why nobody here had attractive daughters.  Later I found out that the attractive women were just hiding.  I found out that if you went to the grocery store before 5:00 p.m., before the oil field workers got off work, you would see some attractive women shopping.

In Dickinson, I wasted probably two years of my life trying to look for women to date on internet dating sites.  I found out, that if a nice looking woman has to advertise on an internet dating site to get asked out, she is probably driving men away in person.  This is an understatement.

One day in Dickinson, I met an attractive young waitress, and I later looked her up on Facebook.  On Facebook, she had all of her “friends” listed.  I could not help looking at some of her attractive “friends” profiles on Facebook.   I was just viewing Facebook profiles, when I started to realize, this is telling me a lot.  It was like someone was taking the time to tell me who everybody was in Dickinson.  I could see who everyone’s friends, family members, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives were, where they worked, where they went to school.  A tremendous amount of information.

I still to this day don’t know where all of these good looking women in Dickinson hide most of the time, but I know a lot more about their behavior.  They like to list other good looking women as “friends”, they do not like to show ugly “friends”.  Good looking women like to go places.  It seems like for them, the point in going to some of the places they go, is to take pictures of them being there.  It appears that the young women in Dickinson most often date people that they went to high school with, or people that they work with.

I suppose if a guy wanted to, he could look on Facebook, pick any young woman he wanted to date, look at her pictures, read where she works, read what her interests are, and then go see her at her job at Ace Hardware.  “Yes, I’m here to buy some sealant for my turtle’s aquarium.”.   “Oh wow!  You have a turtle too?”.  “Yes, I got him after my bar mitzvah.”. “Oh wow!  You’re Jewish too, so am I.”

Anyway, as I mentioned in a recent post, I have more than enough young women around me now that 80% of the oil field workers have left the state, and I don’t want any more.  I look at some young women’s profiles on Facebook in order to see how bad an idea it would be for me to date them.

I don’t want to talk about looking at women on Facebook any more right now, in order to talk about some other important things.  I have written about the Dickinson Mafia in about eight of my blog posts.  They are a group of men who have had a great deal of control over what goes on in Dickinson, for many years.  They are not all bad, they have accomplished some good things, but they had a hand in keeping wages low in Dickinson up until this most recent oil boom.  Just as the pretty women on Facebook like to show other pretty women as “friends”, the Dickinson Mafia like to show other connected people, and their minions as “friends”.

Just as I met one pretty girl, and then found her “friends” on Facebook, I looked at the Dickinson Mafia “friends”.  It’s funny, none of the Dickinson Mafia friends have hard labor jobs, or even difficult jobs.  Most of the Dickinson Mafia friends have gone to college, which is not typical for Dickinson.  Though their male offspring sometimes look weak and not sharp, they still have good looking wives.  I’m not too interested in criticizing the Dickinson Mafia right now, I am trying to point out that they look after their own.

If I hadn’t known before, I know now, that I will never get very far in Dickinson.  I am not from here, I didn’t go to school here, I didn’t marry the right person’s daughter, and I didn’t curry favor with the Dickinson Mafia.  Like I started out saying at the beginning of this post, Facebook showed me what it might have taken fifteen years of living in Dickinson to find out: who is who, who knows who, who is related to who, and that’s how that works.

Before some readers go and get depressed, and other readers gloat that everything is as it should be in Dickinson, I want to point out that Dickinson is changing.  There is a likelihood that those who mistreated and took advantage of other people during the past several years will reap what they have sewn, especially the landlords, property managers, and property investors.  Keep me posted on Facebook when you go bankrupt.

That other thing about not being successful if the Dickinson Mafia don’t want you to be, if Dickinson is prohibitive to people making money, there won’t be many people staying in Dickinson. The Dickinson Mafia could end up owning a bunch of failed businesses and property that is worth nothing if too many people move away.

 

 

 

 

My Forecast For Dickinson, North Dakota

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During the past week I read several newspaper articles and several business journal articles about the price of oil.  Each of these articles explained that the price of oil could go down to $20 per barrel.  It was explained that in the past four or five years, many oil companies took out large loans in order to grow and expand their companies, with the expectation that they would have high revenue in the coming years.  In the past two years, the price of oil has fallen from over $100 per barrel, to $30 per barrel.  The oil companies with large loan debt, are having to continue to pump oil in order to pay the interest on their large loans, even though the price of oil is low, which just continues to add to the oversupply of oil on the market, and keeps the price of oil low.

One article explained that there is about $100 billion in venture capital money, that is waiting to buy the assets of oil companies as they go bankrupt due to the low price of oil.  Once the oil companies go bankrupt, and oil wells are purchased at prices that are well below the costs that went into drilling them, the venture capitalists will be able to sell oil at $20 per barrel, and make money doing it.  When the venture capitalists do this, the price of oil will remain low.  The point is, there are reasons why the price of oil will probably remain low for the next couple of years.

If the price of oil remains low, there will be no new drilling, and no new oil exploration in North Dakota.  It is already known that there is a large reserve of oil in North Dakota in the Bakken formation and the Three Forks formation, but you have to drill about 8,000 feet deep to get it, drill horizontally, and then fracture it, which is costly.  Because of the low price of oil, about 80% of the oil field jobs have gone away in North Dakota since late 2014.

Most of the out-of-state oil field workers went back home when they lost their oil field job.  There were very few high hourly wage jobs with a lot of overtime, outside of the oil field in North Dakota.  Rent was high, there was a shortage of women, it was cold for about seven months out of the year in North Dakota.  Most of the out-of-state workers went home.

I made a joke in one of my past blog posts, that the only people who continued to come to North Dakota in 2015, were people who didn’t watch television news or read the newspaper.  I thought this joke was funny, but it actually is happening.  There are some really unintelligent, low functioning people showing up in Dickinson looking for work and for a place to stay.  The church that I go to is trying to help some of these people that show up at church and ask for help.  I have met these people, and they are really difficult to help, because they have never really understood what is going on where ever they lived.  For instance, in Dickinson now, a cheap hotel costs about $350 per week.  At the temporary labor companies, a worker can maybe get about $350 per week take home pay, if they really, really try, because there is not a lot of work right now.  There is just no way an unskilled laborer who is single, is going to make enough money in Dickinson to afford food and housing.  There is no homeless shelter in Dickinson, so the people that arrive in Dickinson who are poor, low skilled, low intelligence, have a very, very difficult time, especially because it is -15 degrees Fahrenheit right now.  It is really not good when these people show up in Dickinson, because they are just a burden.

There is a second group of people who are moving to Dickinson.  There are a lot of black people moving to Dickinson, and at first I could not understand why.  If you go to fast food restaurants in Dickinson, like McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, or Kentucky Fried Chicken, you will see many black workers, though the population in Dickinson is about 95% white.  If you go to WalMart, you will see many black workers.  What was happening was that people in Dickinson did not want to work in fast food restaurants or WalMart, and during the oil boom, the wages in these fast food restaurants and WalMart went up to $15 per hour more or less, in order to get people to take these jobs.  To black people that had already been working in fast food and WalMart in other states, $15 per hour was nearly twice what they had been making.  Over the past couple of years, word got out about the wages paid in fast food restaurants and WalMart in Dickinson.

I don’t want to work in McDonalds or Burger King, even if you can make $600 per week.  But for black people from Minneapolis or St. Louis that had already been working in fast food for years, this is the same job for nearly twice the pay.  Also, if these fast food workers have a spouse or a friend that they can split the rent with, they are actually better off financially than they were in Minneapolis or St. Louis.

There have been about 1,000 new apartment units that have been built in Dickinson in the past several years.  Right now the occupancy rate for these new apartment units is at about 30%.  The rent in Dickinson is still high right now.  But because the occupancy rate in the new apartment units is so low, and the oil field workers are not coming back, the apartment unit price is going to drop down much lower, and there are many apartments available.  For a time in the near future, the news spread by the black workers in Dickinson will be that there are very high paying jobs in fast food and WalMart, and there are many nice new apartments, with low rent.  Many, many black workers will continue to move to Dickinson for the next year.

It will take about a year for the wages in fast food restaurants and WalMart in Dickinson to drop down to about $10 per hour, because of the large amount of available workers, and business being much slower.  By that time, the black population in Dickinson will be much higher.  I have written in several previous posts, that most of the women in western North Dakota are unattractive and overweight.  Black men like unattractive white women who are overweight, and unattractive white women who are overweight like black men.  If you don’t know this, try watching the Jerry Springer Show, Divorce Court, Paternity Court, or the People’s Court on television.  After several days of watching, “Who that baby’s daddy?”, you will be convinced of this.  The next boom in Dickinson, will be a baby boom.  Who that baby’s daddy?

 

 

 

 

The Boom Went Away, And Women Changed in Dickinson

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I have written nearly sixty posts now, and in about 40% of those posts I mentioned the shortage of women in Dickinson.  I have devoted about six posts to describing the shortage of women in Dickinson.  I wrote about not ever looking at internet dating sites until I came to Dickinson, the need for prostitution in Dickinson, women in Dickinson not wanting to be bothered by oil field workers, you can go back and read those posts.

Things have changed now, they have definitely changed.  I waited about one month to write this post, to make sure that I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.  Many women are starting to be nice to me now.  I have lived in Dickinson for over three years now, and in the past, women were never nice or friendly toward me.  I am the same person I was three years ago, only older, what has changed?

So many oil field workers have moved away, that there is probably an equal number of men and women in Dickinson now.  So many young men oil field workers have moved away, that there are more young single women, than there are single men in Dickinson.  Right now, I have, let me count, about seven women under the age of 30, who are acting like they would like for me to ask them out.  They come and sit beside me, come and hang around me, want to talk to me, this is completely different.

I think that the main reason why these young women are interested in me now is, first: I appear to have a job and I am able to remain in Dickinson; second, I have been here for several years and I don’t have a bad reputation, I have not taken advantage of women or been abusive; third, I am kind of mild mannered, polite, and clean.  These qualities weren’t good enough to attract women in the past in Dickinson, but they are good enough now.

I guess these young women are scared, and they want to survive.  They don’t want to be alone, they don’t think that they can make it on their own.  I don’t think that these young women do a lot of reading, I don’t think that they pay attention to economic forecasts.  I think that something in Dickinson has really alarmed them, and alerted them that things are bad.  The only thing that I can think of that would have been noticeable to them, would be the disappearance of oil field workers.  Apparently this scared them so much, that they now look to me as someone who can possibly help them.

The truth is, I am worried too.  I don’t know what I am going to do.  I don’t know what is going to happen to me.  Rather than thinking this is my big chance to have sex with all of these young women, I am not in the mood.  I only feel like talking to them enough to figure out what is going on with them, to see if there is anything I can say or do to help.  The outlook is so bad in Dickinson now, I don’t know what any of us can do.

 

 

 

Everything That Happened In Dickinson Could Have Been Predicted

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In my previous post, I wrote about a WordPress website titled “A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota”.  I wrote that this website did not contain opinion or speculation from the website owner, the website presented a collection of relevant North Dakota newspaper articles from the past 65 years, which recorded events that had already happened.

In the website “A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota”, one of the things that it showed was that the oil boom in North Dakota from 1978 through 1984 was caused by the price of oil going higher, and the boom ended when the price of oil went back down.  I found some additional articles that explain, pretty much, that this has always happened, and this will always happen.

There is an economic forecaster named George Ure, who has a website titled “ruralpioneer.com”.  In this website, there are several guest articles written by a man “oilman2”.  Oilman2 describes that he has worked in the oil production industry for 45 years.  In one of his articles, he explains his belief on “Peak Oil”, that there has always been a finite amount of oil in the ground, the world is already half way through all the oil there is.  All the easy to get oil, has already been gotten.  Now oil companies are having to go after oil that is deeper and harder to get, like the oil in North Dakota.

Oilman2 explains that when the supply of oil on the market is low, the oil prices become high.  When the prices become high, it is worth it to the oil companies to go after the deeper oil, the oil that requires horizontal drilling and fracturing.  (You can read elsewhere, that many oil industry experts say, that there is no profit in producing North Dakota oil unless the price of oil is at least $80 per barrel.)  Oilman2 explains that as long as the price of oil remains high, deep oil and oil that requires fracturing will be produced.  However, once there is a large supply of oil on the market, the price of oil goes down, and oil companies stop production of the hard to get oil, like in North Dakota.

Starting in about 2014, OPEC was blamed for the low price of oil world-wide because they were producing a lot of oil and there was a large supply of oil on the market.  Here in North Dakota, there were some old-timers working as “lease operators” or “pumpers” that became aware that there was no place to send this North Dakota oil, all of the oil storage facilities in the United States were full.  There was an oversupply of oil in the United States.  So, the price of oil went down, it went down so low that it was not profitable for the oil companies to keep drilling deep wells, drilling horizontally, and fracturing.  About 80% of the drilling stopped in North Dakota.  Jobs went away, workers went away.

In my previous post, I questioned why Baker Hughes, Halliburton, Occidental, and the large property developers in Dickinson did not know that they were at the end of the boom to bust cycle.  There were plenty of newspaper articles describing exactly what happened in North Dakota during the oil boom of the late 1970s, with all the reasons and explanations.  Oilman2 is an example of someone who has worked in the oil production industry for more than forty years, who can explain to you that it is not mysterious when/why oil companies go to an area and start producing oil, and when/why they stop producing oil in an area.

I explained in probably at least four of my previous posts, that it was falsely reported in television news and newspapers that all kinds of people were moving to North Dakota and were making over $100,000 per year.  I have lived in North Dakota for over three years now, and I have only ever met two people who worked in the oil field who made nearly $100,000 per year.  I haven’t mentioned it yet, but there was also this widespread saying here in North Dakota, that this oil boom was going to last for the next twenty years.

If you have read maybe ten of my posts, you can probably detect a tone of anger in my writing.  I do have a lot of anger about how out-of-state workers were treated in North Dakota, particularly in regard to extremely high housing prices.  People were taken advantage of.  Thousands of people moved to western North Dakota because they thought they coud make “$100,000 per year”.  Hundreds and hundreds of people brought their wives and children to North Dakota, and bought houses because they heard and thought, “This boom is going to last for the next twenty years.”

I think that Continental Resources, Conoco Philips, Amarada Hess, Marathon Oil, Whiting, Tesoro Oil, Occidental, Baker Hughes, and Halliburton all knew what was going to happen, they just didn’t know the exact year of the bust.  These large corporations were happy with ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News reporting about all the “$100,000 jobs”, millionaires, millionaires being created daily in North Dakota.  These large oil companies really like it when their new hire brings their wife and kids to some place like Williston or Dickinson, and buys a house, this shows that they are making a long-term commitment to be here.  These large oil companies don’t really care that they just let a bunch of workers go, and their $300,000 house, that they owe $250,000 on, is now worth about $150,000 if they could even find a buyer.

A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota

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I have stated several times that the purpose of this blog is to provide useful, truthful information about Dickinson, North Dakota, so that people from out-of-state will know what Dickinson is like, and so that people in Dickinson can see what other people think about Dickinson.  Later, one of the things that I was trying to accomplish with this blog, was to point out some of the bad things about Dickinson so that they might be changed.  Then, I just went ahead and started trying to change things myself by writing some blog posts such as “Helpful Advice to Women in Dickinson”, for instance.  I was trying to be helpful, I am trying to be helpful.

I found something that probably everybody in the United States should read, the WordPress website titled “A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota”.  I mean it, not just people in North Dakota, or people thinking about moving to North Dakota, everybody in the United States should read it.  The reason why I say this, is because this website explains the historical relationship between the demand for oil, the price of oil, the exploration for oil, and the production of oil in North Dakota.  The creator of this website collected the most insightful and accurate newspaper articles about oil production in North Dakota from the past 65 years.

“A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota” does not contain speculation, or opinions from the website creator, it presents articles from the past, that were recording what was happening at that time, or what had already happened in North Dakota.  There have been three different boom periods of oil production in North Dakota: the exploration and discovery boom in the 1950s, the oil price boom of the late 1970s, and the technology boom beginning about 2005.

The articles in the website explain at particular points in history, what the price of oil was, what oil exploration was going on, what oil production followed, the wealth that was created, the influx of people that occurred, and then the eventual decrease in oil production.  Again, I want to reiterate, the oil boom and bust occurred in North Dakota in the 1950s, then again in the late 1970s, this is completely documented by the newspaper articles in the WordPress website “A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota”.

The old newspaper articles state that the oil boom in North Dakota in the late 1970s came to an end because the price of oil dropped.  The oil prices are given through that time period.  Other old newspaper articles tell about the population of Dickinson, North Dakota going from 16,000 to 22,000, the struggle to build housing and infrastructure, and then the population going back to 16,000, leaving Dickinson with $25 million in debt.

I was surprised and amazed to see that the newspaper articles from the 1980s, that describe the boom and bust that occurred from about 1978 to 1984, describe almost exactly what happened here from 2005 to right now.  I didn’t know.  Nobody told me.  Who else knew?

I guess I am not the smartest person.  But how in the world did Halliburton, Baker Hughes, and Occidental build these huge buildings in Dickinson in 2012, and not know that they were at the end of the boom to bust cycle?  How did all of the large property developers that built about 1,000 new housing units in Dickinson in 2012, 2013, and 2014 not know that they were at the end of the boom to bust cycle?

I believe that I wrote somewhere in my blog, about being at the right place, at the right time, like Phoenix in the 1970s, or Tampa in the 1980s, where there was uninterrupted growth and expansion for the next thirty years.  Who knew?  I guess that there were some people that saw things clearly: warm climate, year-round activity, inexpensive property, easy to develop, vast amount of land available, no limit to expansion.  I thought that I would have liked to have arrived in Williston or Dickinson in about 2007, that would have been a great time to get here I thought.  After reading the website “A Brief History of Oil Production in North Dakota”, I realized that not only did you have to get to North Dakota at the right time, you would also have to have known when to get out.

The Most Helpful Advice for Women in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I wish that I could have written this blog post back in 2010, and that I could have gotten all women in North Dakota to read it.  This is probably the most important and helpful advice that I could ever give to women in Dickinson, North Dakota.  If I had a daughter, I would have a serious discussion with her about this when she was about 10 years old, and then when she was about 12 years old, and when she was 14 years old, and 16 years old.

What I am going to say, comes from my experience in living and working in seven different states, from my 40 plus years of being alive, from my experiences with men and women I have met, worked with, and lived with, experience from my own family.  This is advice that my mother gave to my sister, and advice that my grandmother gave to my mother, which served them very well.

I hope to God that you will listen to this advice.  Even if you are stubborn or strong-willed, and determined to do what you want, I hope that at some level this advice will reach you, and possibly save you at some point.

Here it is:  “Men that you do not know, do not taunt them to anger.”  Women and young girls living in Dickinson, you may have grown up knowing the same boys and men since first grade, and you may think that you understand men.  You probably do understand men to some extent.  I am not going to talk very much about psychology or psychiatry to explain this to you, because an in-depth explanation is not needed right now, I just need to make you understand that when men become enraged, they no longer think about what they are doing, they just act.

Please, please understand, that when you taunt a man to anger, you may unintentionally and unknowingly have caused him to reach that point at which he is going to cease thinking, and just act on his anger.  In a small town like Dickinson, older residents may have only seen this personally a few times in their lifetime, if you are a young lady, you may have never seen this.  In the past thirty years in Dickinson, there have been a few shootings where this has happened.

The best example that I can think of is this one:  In approximately 1990, in Gainesville, Florida there were more than several murders of young college students committed by serial killer Danny Rolling.  However, there were two young women college students that were murdered by a man, who was married, the father of young children, an active member in his church, who was known to be decent and hardworking.  This man owned and operated a carpet cleaning business in Gainesville, where the University of Florida is located.  Two young women, approximately 20 years of age, had telephoned him to have him come and clean the carpets in their apartment.  The carpet cleaner turned himself in to the police after he killed them both with his bare hands.  He said that the whole time he was cleaning the carpets, the young women had been wearing short shorts, and loose tank tops, they had kept bending over in front of him showing their breasts, and bending over in front of him showing their bottoms.  He said he had become very upset trying to fight against the lust and sexual frustration that was building in him, he was married, a father, a Christian, he was fighting against his desire.  He managed to finish cleaning the carpets in all of the rooms without incident, but he was upset and didn’t understand why the two young girls were taunting him sexually.  He asked to be paid, to which the girls replied that they didn’t have any money, implying that the “show” should have been enough.  In a fit of rage, he killed them both.

Another example:  In approximately 2010, I had a man working for me named Clyde.  Clyde had been married for approximately 20 years, and had two teen age children with his wife.  Clyde’s wife wanted a separation, but they were still living together.  One morning, I went to pick up Clyde for work, his daughter answered the door and told me that Clyde had been taken to jail for domestic violence.  I went to jail to see how much his bail was, it was $100,000.  What had happened was, that his wife was getting dressed-up and made-up to go on a date with another man, and was taunting Clyde.  Clyde got a knife and was trying to stab his wife.  She was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher while Clyde was trying to drag her out from underneath the bed yelling that he was going to cut her tongue out and cut her face off, this was all recorded.  In the year prior to this happening, talking about other people, Clyde had always said, “You never hit a woman, you ain’t no kind of man if you hit a woman, I would never hit a woman.”

Another example:  At a university that I went to, I had a friend who was Chinese named Mike.  Mike was about 22 years old, his sister was about 24 years old, and she had about two more years to go before graduating from the college of dentistry at this university.  As I already stated, Mike was Chinese, he was about the most non-violent person I have ever been friends with, he was as docile as a Chinese Pug dog.  He and his sister shared a townhouse that was owned by his father who was a medical doctor.  Mike’s sister would pick at him, and pick, and pick, and put him down, all day, every day for a couple of years.  Finally, Mike snapped, he grabbed his sister by the neck, held her down, and choked her.  He let go of her just before she was dead.  Mike was not proud of this, me and his friends only knew about it because of having to help Mike move.

I have many more examples of men that have no history of violence, who have lost their temper with women, and men who have a history of violence who have lost their temper with women.  I don’t think that any more examples right now would make the point any clearer that when men reach a certain point in their anger, they commit violence without any thought of the consequences.

After my mother died, she was about 66 years old, my father started dating a woman that had been a girlfriend in high school, Bobbi was her name.  My father and Bobbi were asking me how my job was going, working for a shipbuilding company.  I was telling them about inspecting tankers and freighters for damage, crawling through the bilges, nearly getting locked in, the welders cutting through their own gas hose when I was in a small bilge space.  My sister replied, that she didn’t know why I was so worried about getting killed.  My father’s girlfriend explained to my sister, that there are a lot worse things than being killed, like becoming paralyzed, or being burned nearly to death.

Apparently, women and young women have a romantic idea about being killed, that it will be over in an instant, and that you will never grow old, that you will always be remembered as being young, that you will be thought of as a heroin, a martyr.  Women should consider that if they are the victim of violence, they may be made disfigured, or be made handicapped.  They may have a long life, but not be able to go places because they are handicapped or not want to go places because they are disfigured.

There are other things that women should consider before taunting a man to anger, such as what state of mind he might be in, or what his past history might be.  Some men, at some point in their lives, feel that they have nothing to lose, they are unafraid of going to jail, unafraid of the police, and may additionally be more dangerous when they are in this state of mind because they have one or more firearms.  There are some men that have spent a lot of time in prison, or in the military, or in combat, who have become desensitized to violence, the threat of violence against them, and have become skilled in hurting and killing people.  Most women do not know, that if you taunt some men to anger, without intending to, they will change from being the person who gets along in the community, to the person that used to have to hurt or kill people to survive.

A friend of mine, Don, spent many years in the military, and many more years in prison.  When Don was about 50 years of age, he was camping, and drinking with some people he had become acquainted with.  He doesn’t know exactly how it got started that they attacked him, he thought that possibly they wanted to take his gold necklace.  They attacked him with a tire iron, he took it away from them and killed them both.  He hid their bodies under a bridge.  The bodies were found within three days, people remembered Don, and Don was caught within a couple of months.  He served approximately fourteen years in prison.  Don’s sentence was not that long, due partly to his advanced age, and partly due to his mental condition.  The court did recognize that due to Don’s combat experience as a Marine in Vietnam, when he was attacked, he snapped back into that person that killed people.

 

Bartender Women in Dickinson, North Dakota

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In this post, I would have liked to have named the bar that I am writing about, but I can’t.  I suppose that what I write may be applicable to many bars, in many places.  Young women, please don’t let this happen to you.

I have written in this blog many times that it is very dangerous to go out to bars in Dickinson at night because the police in Dickinson are overly eager to arrest people for DUI.  I try not to go to bars, especially in Dickinson.  Sometimes, like when my room mate has been drinking and is talking to himself like a crazy person,  I want to go some place else.  I don’t want to drink, but if you don’t want to go to the movies, or go to the West River Community Center, the only place you can go for a couple of hours at night in Dickinson is a bar.

In December, the bar that I decided to go to, I had not been there for about a year.  It has a restaurant associated with it, so this narrows it down to about four possibilities in Dickinson.  In the past, I had met some people that I became friends with in the restaurant.  One of the waitresses who no longer works there, she is very pretty and funny, and I see her about once every two months somewhere in town, she is always nice to me and we always talk.  Some other waitresses that have worked there have been very nice and friendly to me.  Usually, the waitresses in the restaurant are too young to work as bartenders.

After having not been in this bar for about a year, I went into the bar.  I was shocked that a bartender woman, who I will call “Cuddles”, was working there.  I had first met Cuddles in the fall of 2011 when she was a bartender at this bar.  I had told her that I really liked her, and I did.  I had a shitty construction job at that time, it was more dangerous and screwed up than most construction jobs, and I thought about Cuddles all day at work, and looked forward to seeing her after work.  After work, when I got to the bar, I would say hello to her, and go sit down and behave.  When nobody was around, I would ask if I could talk to her and she would say, “No, I don’t want to talk to you.”

Cuddles knew that I liked her, because I had told her.  Unwisely, she started to kind of antagonize and taunt me.  When she did, I became angry.  Not admitting any guilt, not admitting any involvement, must have been just a coincidence, the building lost electrical power.  For a time after that, Cuddles didn’t screw with me.

About a month later, Cuddles started taunting me again.  There was a guy that would come into the bar, and start joking with Cuddles.  She would stand there and let him pull her shirt neck down and open, let him play with her breasts, in front of me.  I asked him if he was her boyfriend, he said he was not, why did I ask.  I said that I liked her a lot, that if he was her boyfriend, I would leave her alone.  He said he was not her boyfriend.  I said,”I am letting you know, that I like her, a lot.”  About a week later, the same thing happened with the same guy, when I was sitting there.  I had had enough.

I was angry about the shitty job that I had, I was angry about how shitty Dickinson was, I was angry about Cuddles and this guy disrespecting me.  Both of them knowing that they were making me mad, I had already warned the guy.  I went outside the bar, I drove my truck around to the other side of the parking lot where I could watch the door where this guy had entered, and I waited for this guy and his friends to come out.  When he and his friends came out of the bar, and walked to a truck, I pulled my truck in right behind them so they couldn’t leave.  I got out of my truck and started yelling at the guy, that I had already given him warning about what he was doing with Cuddles in front of me, so now it was time for him to get a beating.  The three of them were very surprised, scared, didn’t want to fight, and seemed to sense something was wrong.  They pleaded with me to let them go.  They were correct about something being wrong, I wasn’t going to lose that fight, for several different reasons which I am better off not naming.

I didn’t see those guys again.  Cuddles quit fucking with me.  That was 2011.

I left Dickinson in December of 2011.  I returned in May of 2013.  While I was away, working in a part of Texas that had even fewer women than Dickinson, I spent a lot of time after work on the internet.  I looked at Cuddles’ Facebook page, she was in a relationship with a guy I will call “Lucky”.   I believe that Cuddles had her first child by Lucky in 2012, and they became engaged.  Cuddles looked happy in her photos, though she had put on some weight.  I felt happy for her, and happy for me too.  I would not have wanted to have had children with Cuddles outside of marriage, not sure that I wanted to have children at all.  I also would not have been happy with the way she was putting on weight, so I was glad that she was with Lucky, not me.

I got back to Dickinson in May of 2013.  I went to the bar and saw Cuddles and said hello.  She was civil toward me.  She was still not married.  I could have misread her, but it seemed that she was happy to have one of her admirers back.  She was a little heavier, and now a mom.  I think that she missed not having as many guys propositioning her as she used to.  She was pregnant with her second child by Lucky.  They were still engaged.  I believe that they got married in August of 2013, and moved to eastern North Dakota.  I thought that this was good for both of them, and for their children, to get away from Dickinson.  Cuddles had been a little bit of a party girl, she was known for that, so it would be good for her to go someplace else and be a housewife and a mom.  Good, good riddance.

So it is now December of 2015, and I am going to the bar because my room mate is drunk and talking to himself. I walk into the bar, and here is Cuddles.  I wasn’t expecting to see her.  It was like 2011 all over again.  She was not as pretty as she had been four years ago.  She was just an average looking woman now.  I said,”Cuddles, I thought you had moved to eastern North Dakota.”  She said,”I did, I moved back six months ago.”  I complied with the rule established back in 2011, “She doesn’t want to talk to me.”, so I went and sat down and behaved.

I had not been in this bar for at least a year.  To my surprise, here was bartender “Morticia”.  I said to Morticia,”Did you move away too, or have you been here since 2011?”.  Morticia said that she had been here the whole time.  Then Cuddles and Morticia had to have a conference to decide what to do about me.  They didn’t do anything mean to me that night.

I came to the bar a few days later, different bartender women were working, they were nice looking, and were pleasant to me.  I came to the bar a few days later, Cuddles and Morticia were working.  The bar was not busy, I went and sat at the end of the bar, because I didn’t feel like talking to bar patrons.  Neither Cuddles nor Morticia were waiting on me, I thought, “Uh oh”.  Time went by, enough time for me to start thinking about what side of the building their electrical weatherhead was on, what rope I had in the back of my truck, what type of knot I was going to tie in the rope after I threw it over their power line and tied the other end to my trailer hitch.  “Come on Cuddles!, don’t you and Morticia start pulling this shit on me again, I don’t want to go to jail for pulling down your power line.”

I knew where the bar owner was sitting, “Ringo”.  I was thinking of going over to Ringo and saying,”If I am kicked out of the bar, let me know, otherwise can you get me a drink.”  I was mulling it over,”Did I want to get Cuddles and Morticia in trouble?  I would probably be kicked out, if in fact Cuddles and Morticia said that they really couldn’t deal with me being here, for some reason.”

Cuddles eventually walked by, after too much time had passed, and asked me if I wanted a drink.  Was this their way of telling me that I was not wanted there?  Were they just fucking with me?  I was feeling angry mostly because they were making me mad enough, to where I was going to do something to retaliate, and end up in trouble.  Why are they giving me a hard time?

When I got home, I looked at Cuddles’ Facebook page, and Morticia’s Facebook page.  I got the full name of Cuddles’ husband, Lucky, and put him into my background check service.  I am very experienced in running background checks, and it was very nearly 100% clear that Lucky went back to the state where he came from, far far away, he was gone.  Huh, no wonder Cuddles is being mean to me, the father of her two kids, has left and gone away.  I guess she is just plain mad.

I put Morticia in my background check service.  I did not know that she had been married before.  After her first marriage ended, she moved to Dickinson.  Morticia had a kid about a year ago.  Let’s see who the father is.  Oh man, this guy is a loser, no accounts, no bills, no utilities ever in his name, looks like no current job, looks like he never moved out of his mom’s house here in Dickinson.  No wonder Morticia is being a bitch to me, I think that she’s just plain angry too.

I thought about Cuddles and Morticia differently, once I realized that they both had had kids by guys that were no longer with them.  Although I believe that both of their guys were not very good people to begin with, I wondered,”Did Cuddles and Morticia act so bitchy that both of those guys didn’t want to be around? I think so.”  I was grateful that I had never been in an intimate relationship with Cuddles or Morticia, both of them had gotten pregnant outside of marriage, and I would not have wanted to have gotten either of them pregnant.

Eric Smallwood, Dickinson, North Dakota

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Today, in this post, I write about Eric Smallwood, the Alive @ 5 event organizer, music promoter, business promoter, and community advocate living in Dickinson, North Dakota.

Eric Malone Smallwood was born September 11, 1979.  He was raised in the small town of Buhl, Idaho, population 4,000.  After high school, Eric studied agriculture and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

In approximately 2007, at the age of 28, Eric moved to Dickinson, North Dakota, after hearing from a friend, Nick, about the build-up in Dickinson, indicating what could be an oil boom.  Not long after moving to Dickinson, Eric and a Nick bought the old Dickinson Press building.

At the time Eric Smallwood moved to Dickinson, a very good way to make a lot of money was to work in the rapidly expanding oil field, to work a lot of overtime, at one of the highest rates of pay, directly on an oil rig.  At that time, oil companies were looking for quick well completions.  Drilling companies were pushing their workers to go, go, go for more than twelve hours each day.  Work conditions were very dangerous, and in 2009, Eric lost half of his right index finger while working on an oil rig.  After that, Eric worked in the oil field as a crane operator.

The location of the old Dickinson Press building which Eric and Nick had bought, was on 1st Street, directly across from the historic old Elks Lodge building.  Within 1-1/2 blocks, were several historic buildings, the American Bank Center building, the Park Square building, the Odd Fellows Lodge, the Jessen building, the Masonic Lodge, and the Brickhouse Grille.

The historic Elks Lodge building renovation had been going on since approximately 2004.  Jacob Siewart, the owner of the old Masonic Lodge building, had been working on his building renovation for more than ten years.  In 2012, Adam Metzker moved to Dickinson and purchased the Park Square building and the Jessen building, and began their renovation.  Eric worked on the remodeling of his building, helped with work on the Odd Fellows Lodge building, and visited Jacob Siewart and Adam Metzker during the work on their buildings.  One of Eric’s favorite things was the stamped tin metal ceilings in several of these buildings, popular in the 1800s, and early 1900s.  Eric took an interest in the downtown Dickinson historic district building preservation, and he became a supporter, activist, and organizer.

The first report that I could find about the Thursday evening street parties in Dickinson, was a June 2012 article in the Dickinson Press written by Kevin Holten.  The Alive @ 5 event was at 1st Avenue & 1st Street, from 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm, and organized by the Odd Fellows Lodge.  I believe that the event was also supported by the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Dickinson Business Owners Association.

In 2014, Eric Smallwood became the lead organizer for Alive @ 5 in Dickinson.  As the summer went on, the street parties got bigger and bigger, and went to 8:30 pm or 9:00 pm.  Some of the crowds in 2014 were probably 2,000 to 3,000 people.  Hundreds of people remained downtown after Alive @ 5, and continued to drink at the Rock Bar, Bernie’s Esquire Club, and the Brickhouse Grille.

Eric Smallwood was able to bring increasingly bigger and better performers to Dickinson.  The highlights in 2014 were Gwen Sebastian and Kat Perkins.  The work had begun months in advance by Eric, selling advertising, selling VIP tickets, getting donations of money, material, equipment, and labor from local companies.  For every Thursday event, stage set up took all day.  Stage tear down and clean up took all night through to dawn.

Eric Smallwood got a lot of donations and cooperation from the Dickinson Mafia.  I don’t think that there was anyone else accept for Eric that could have gotten so much cooperation from the Dickinson Mafia.  Eric was persistent, high energy, enthusiastic, and he got results in the form of successful events, bringing performers that people wanted to see, creating good publicity for Dickinson every week.  With the Dickinson Mafia’s favorable opinion of the event, the Dickinson Police absolutely left everyone alone at Alive @ 5, the Dickinson Police were 100% helpful during the event.  The Dickinson Fire Marshal was cooperative with the event.  Probably one hundred businesses in Dickinson contributed to the events.

In 2015, the Alive @ 5 events were even bigger.  Eric Smallwood not only got Gwen Sebastian and Kat Perkins to come back, he got them to come back together!  Because of the growing enthusiasm in Dickinson for the event, and because of rumors “to expect something big”, the attendance at this concert was close to 6,000 people, on a Thursday night!  This was probably the highest attendance ever at a concert in Western North Dakota.

Other big performers in 2015 were Firehouse and Aaron Tippen.  Eric also booked performers that were not well known in Dickinson, such as Corb Lund.  Many people had not heard of Corb Lund before, but when they heard him at Alive @ 5, everybody recognized that this was something different, and very good.  Other performers that were well liked at Alive @ 5, were the two sister band, Tigir Lilly, who had as many autograph seekers afterward as the more famous Nashville bands.

Most people in Dickinson were positive about Alive @5.  Many people looked forward to going, downtown business owners were happy about thousands of people seeing their businesses every Thursday, the Chamber of Commerce and the City of Dickinson were happy about the publicity.

In addition to the summer street parties in Dickinson, in 2014 Eric Smallwood began bringing performers to Dickinson during the winter.  Eric would have liked to have used the large ballroom in the old Masonic Lodge building to hold events, but it wasn’t ready yet, so Eric used the Odd Fellows Lodge theater to have performances with people like Mitch Malloy.  There were so few seats in the theater, guests were limited to the major donors of the summer Alive @ 5 events.

In the winter of 2015, Eric continued to bring entertainment to Dickinson, organizing a formal Christmas dinner party with two hundred guests at the Astoria Hotel ballroom, where Kat Perkins was the performer.

At the end of the summer in 2015, Eric Smallwood was working on a business plan, to create a very large, indoor, year-round, event center in Dickinson.  In order to bring big, famous performers to Dickinson, the idea was to be able to seat at least 10,000 people.  From what I heard, this business plan was presented by Eric to the biggest donors and supporters of the Alive @ 5 event, and his plan was well received.  As I have mentioned in several previous posts, there are a group of men in Dickinson who own businesses, own properties, are on board of directors, are involved in city government, who control what goes on in Dickinson.  These men had the money, and the power to have a large event center built in Dickinson, and they wanted one.  This was probably the last and only thing that was missing, to put Dickinson on the same level as Bismarck and Fargo.  Too bad the price of oil went down so low when it did, or Dickinson would have become the Fargo of western North Dakota.

 

 

 

The Oil Boom is Over, How Did the Dickinson Mafia Fare?

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In Dickinson, North Dakota, there is a group of men who own businesses, own properties, are on board of directors, are members of development associations, and are involved in city government, who control much of what goes on in Dickinson.  Though they tell themselves, and each other, that what they decide is for the good of Dickinson, it happens to coincide with what benefits them personally.

In this blog, I have not yet listed the names of the members of the Dickinson Mafia, because I want to be able to write the truth about Dickinson without interference, but it is fairly well known in Dickinson who the members are.  The members of the Dickinson Mafia have each lived in Dickinson for more than twenty years, their individual deeds are well known, and their influence has been seen again and again.

In a recent previous post to this blog, I wrote that prior to 2008, the wages in Dickinson had been very low, this was intentional, this was the work of the Dickinson Mafia.  The purpose of the low wages in Dickinson, was to control the people.  The wages were so low, that the workers could not save any money, they could not get ahead, they were paycheck-to-paycheck people.  The workers could not save enough money to move away from Dickinson.  The workers could not afford to be without a job even for a short time, so if the wages were low at their job, if they were not paid for all of their time, if they were treated badly, they had to stay in that job even if they wanted to quit.  Also, if a worker did quit, he would be “black balled” by the Dickinson Mafia, so he could not get another job.  The workers knew that if they quit a job, the Dickinson Mafia would prevent them from getting another job, so they were scared.  This is what the Dickinson Mafia wanted, keeping most of the people in Dickinson like slaves, unable to get away, unable to get ahead, unable to speak out.

If you are a new resident of Dickinson, and you become acquainted with an older, long time resident of Dickinson, if you ask them in private about the things that I have written in this post, there are several possible reactions that you could get.  They might get very angry about you asking anything about the Dickinson Mafia because they are still afraid.  They might be both angry and embarrassed, they might still feel humiliated about what was done to them.  They might laugh, “Ha ha ha ha, oohh, ha ha ha….” and walk away, thinking it is better to not talk about it.  The only type of long time resident in Dickinson that would talk to you about it, is someone whose anger and stubbornness outweighs their fear.

I did not intend to write such a lengthy introduction to the Dickinson Mafia in this post, this information is given in two previous posts.  Also, I wrote in a previous post that the way the Dickinson Mafia guided the property development in Dickinson, they actually did a good job.  In this previous post, I described that Williston, Watford City, and Bismarck each were made a mess by the wrong type of development in the wrong area, it is hard to drive around town in those three cities.  In contrast, it is still very easy to drive around Dickinson even though there is a great deal of new development.

So how did the Dickinson Mafia fare, now that the Oil Boom is over?  Four of them did very well.  These four that did very well, their families were from Dickinson, and these four sons continued to run their family businesses in a conservative manner, and these businesses did very, very well.  They did begin paying higher wages to their workers, once they saw that they were losing essential workers to the oil field.  These four sons of Dickinson families did financially back at least four new businesses in Dickinson that were very much needed.  So I will admit, that in addition to exercising some beneficial control of development in Dickinson, the Dickinson Mafia did bring at least four greatly needed businesses to Dickinson.

One of the Dickinson Mafia, did not really do so well, in my opinion.  In both his personal, and business life, he saw something that looked attractive, got involved, and controversy followed.  He has had some problems, and it looks to me like he will continue to have problems.  But, he was not from Dickinson.

I would like to point out, that now that the Oil Boom is over, I can not think of any out-of-town person, or out-of-town business that has clearly emerged as a winner.  To date, I have never, never, met an oil field worker that was, or is financially well off.  I can not think of one out-of-town business that is here in Dickinson now, that is doing well.

The out-of-town oil companies, they may have made enough money to be able to afford to shut down operations now, and still have made money overall.  The out-of-town oil field service companies, it will really be close if they made any money now that they have shut down.  The out-of-town real estate developers and property investors, they are probably going to go bankrupt in the next couple of years.

The Dickinson Mafia could have been real estate developers and property investors between 2008 to 2014, probably more easily than anyone else, but they didn’t.  Why didn’t they?  Because they are from here and their families are from here, their families have been successful here for the past fifty years.  The Dickinson Mafia don’t lose money, they make money, again and again over a long period of time, they are not nouveau riche.  The Dickinson Mafia were happy to see out-of-state developers and property investors come here and buy land.  The real estate prices went up and up.  For that matter, the Dickinson Mafia helped the real estate prices go up and up, the Dickinson Mafia made sure that man-camps and temporary housing were not permitted in Stark County, which created a housing shortage.

Out-of-state real estate developers, property investors, and oil field service companies have built commercial buildings, warehouses, houses, and apartment buildings all over Dickinson.  In about one to two years, all of these newly constructed buildings will be selling for about sixty percent of what they cost to build.  At that time, that is when the Dickinson Mafia will buy property.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Over, Dickinson, North Dakota

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It’s Over.  The Oil Boom is Over in North Dakota.  Just about everyone living and working in Western North Dakota can see that it is over, and they acknowledge that it is over.

My recollection is that the price of oil started to decrease in December of 2014, and that the price of oil continued to decrease each month after that.  In the summer of 2015 in Dickinson, though the price of oil had fallen, there was still quite a bit of work going on.  There were a couple of large road improvement projects on State Avenue, the new Public Safety Building was being completed, Trinity High School was being worked on, there were several large commercial developments that were having site work done, several large apartment communities and one hotel were nearing completion.  There were still a lot of workers in Dickinson, and Dickinson was busy, just not as busy as it had been in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

I can remember in the summer of 2015, there was discussion of the number of operating drill rigs, continuing to decrease.  Many oil field workers were losing their jobs that were related to drilling and fracturing, but oil field workers that were doing service, repair, installation, and oil hauling were not losing as many jobs.  In the summer of 2015, and fall of 2015, it seemed like if the price of oil increased, everybody that was currently employed would keep their job, that more oil drill rigs would become operational and many people that had lost their job, would get their job back.

In the winter of 2015, the price of oil continued to drop.  The number of drill rigs operating continued to decrease.  Outside of Dickinson, drill rigs were positioned close together in tight rows and columns, for long term storage, not easy access for moving.  In Dickinson, Baker Hughes parked all of their trucks and equipment nose to bumper, side by side, in one great big mass, so you couldn’t get anything out, they were done.  Occidental took their sign off the entrance to their building, they no longer have a receptionist, and no one will come to the door.  In order to not have to talk to people, some drilling companies have locked the entrance gates to their property during the day.  I know of one oil field service company, where the manager parks his vehicle inside the building, so that nobody knows he is there and stops by to ask for a job.

Some of the real estate investors are trying to sell their properties, but it is too late, they waited too long.  They were waiting to see if things were going to turn-around, but it is apparent now that they aren’t.  I thought that by the summer of 2016, the price of oil would have gone back up.  I thought that by the summer of 2016, the people that were here in Dickinson would all have jobs, and that some of the people that left Dickinson would come back because there would be quite a few job openings by then.  That doesn’t look like that will happen now.

It looks like the price of oil will continue to drop.  It looks like Continental, Marathon, Whiting, Conoco Philips, Tesoro, Hess, Haliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Nabors, Patterson, H&P, all the small oil field service companies, all the man-camps, all the apartment communities, all the hotels, all the real estate developers/investors, all the business owners, all the restaurant owners, know that the boom is gone, that it is not coming back, and that there is not going to be much new oil production work in the foreseeable future.

 

 

 

 

Helpful Advice for Women in Dickinson, North Dakota, Part II

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In this post, I want to give more advice for women in Dickinson to consider.  I hope that young school girls in Dickinson will pay attention to this advice.

Women, and young ladies, you probably see many women in Dickinson who are married and have children.  You might get the impression that this is what you should do too.  Wait, wait, just because it seems like everyone in Dickinson gets married at a young age and has children, doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.

For women, getting married at a young age, and having children right away, makes it very difficult for them to change their mind if this is not what they want.  It might feel like it is impossible to continue education or pursue a career at this point.

At a young age, or in high school, women may think that it would be cool to move in with a guy right when they turn 18.  They can have sex any time they want, as much as they want, drink as much as they want, smoke pot, and nobody can say shit.  Oops, oh shit, I’m pregnant.

The things that young women in Dickinson might be impressed with right now, like a cute guy with a big truck and an apartment, might not seem important, exciting, or anything they want when they get older.

I hope that I am not the only one telling you young women that you should continue your education after high school for at least another two years to get your associates degree.  Your math skills and English skills are good enough right out of high school for you to continue on through the basic college general education courses in math, English, biology, foreign language, western civilization, psychology, political science, etcetera.  You will be much more appealing to employers, you will have a wider variety of career options, and you will have a higher rate of pay.  Also, if you ever want to, you can go another two years and get a bachelor of science or bachelor of arts degree.

Please get your associates degree!  You will always know that you could have easily have gotten your B.S. or B.A. if you had wanted to.  Some of the college courses that you take to get your associates degree will make you see things differently than you did in high school.  Some of the college courses that you take to get your associates degree will show you the level of writing, detail, research, calculating, and presentation that would be required of you in a professional work environment.  If you do get married and have children, with an associates degree, you will be better able to earn money for your family if you ever need to.

If you go to college, you will have a chance to meet people from different areas of the country.  You might find that you like different things that you didn’t even know about.  Give yourself the chance to see what the world is like before you get married and have children.

I want to talk a little bit now about not getting pregnant.  You should not get pregnant until you are absolutely sure that you want to get pregnant.  I don’t want you to be scared of having sex, I want you to be knowledgeable about sex.  Please read several women’s health articles on the internet that explain clearly, scientifically, the whole process of an egg going down the fallopian tube, when it reaches the uterus, and when it is able to be fertilized by sperm, and where you are at in your menstrual cycle.  Don’t rely on where you are at on your calendar to not get pregnant, but be aware of where you are at.

Women, you should carry several good, not out-of-date condoms in a concealed area of your purse.  Yes, you.  It is not the guy that is going to get pregnant.  You are the one that is going to let him do it, he might not know.  I say several, because one can get damaged just getting it out of the wrapper, now you’re down to two.  I recommend getting Trojan condoms that have the spermicide lubricant.  Yes, you need the lubricated ones, they break a lot easier if they aren’t lubricated.  Keep them in a concealed area of your purse or handbag so that they don’t get damaged, so that your little brother doesn’t find them, and so guys don’t see them and think “they are in”.  You need to have them with you, sometimes you might want to do it so bad that you don’t even care, so you need to have them with you.

When I just started having sex in my late teens, I used a condom that was not lubricated, and it tore, and I didn’t stop, I might have only had one.  In my twenties, I wanted some women so bad in the moment and I trusted that they knew what they were doing so I didn’t use a condom, I didn’t know they were going to let me have sex so I didn’t have any.  In my thirties, I had some women on top, and that position causes condoms to pull off, at the worst possible time.  Each of these instances was a mistake.  Each of these instances caused me a lot of worry.  At least once, a girlfriend chose to take the morning-after-pill, so that she would not become pregnant.

Helpful Advice for Women in Dickinson, North Dakota, Part I

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In this post, I would like to give some helpful, useful advice for women in Dickinson.  It is not too late for you.  You young school girls in Dickinson, you need to read this too.  I would like to give you some advice to better your physical, mental, and emotional health.

Please start exercising.  It may be difficult to get started, but try to do just a little at first.  The West River Community Center is a very warm, safe, pleasant environment to not only exercise, but to socialize with other women.  Take the time each day to get out of your house, away from your work, away from your children, away from your husband, and take time for yourself.  Try walking the track on the upper level, try stretching and doing floor exercises upstairs.  Later, you may want to join the group stationary cycling class, or the aerobics class.

Start with making a small amount of daily exercise, a daily habit, and a lifelong habit.  When I worked in healthcare, I often saw elderly women naked.  Some women in their eighties, who did water aerobics daily, had smoother, tighter bodies than women in their 20s!  The women nurses even complained, “Shit, you’ve got better legs than me!”  The women in their eighties just laughed, and said they did water aerobics every day.

When you begin exercising, and taking care of yourself, your self-esteem increases, and your positive mental attitude increases.  Within a couple of weeks of beginning a daily exercise routine, your flexibility, strength, and endurance will improve.  You are better able to engage in life activities, whether it is playing with your kids, going on outings, working, or having sex.

Please, please try to take care of your physical health.  Your children, your husband, your boyfriend, your parents, or your employer probably already depend on you.  Be physically able and strong to help take care of your family and your responsibilities.  Being in good physical shape and exercising daily will help you cope with stress.

For selfish reasons, please also take care of yourself.  If you can afford it, go to a beauty salon, get your nails done, get your toe nails done.  Please read fashion magazines like “Cosmopolitan” and “Vogue”, so that you can get ideas on how you might do your hair, your makeup, your nails, your clothes.  It is obvious in these magazines that the models are beautiful, glamorous, and greatly desired.  Don’t you want to be beautiful, glamorous, and desired too?  It is O.K. to admire shoes, dresses, coats, handbags, and jewelry.  There are events in Dickinson where you can get dressed up, such as the events at the Astoria Hotel ballroom, and the Grand Dakota Lodge.

Even if your husband, boyfriend, and family are from Dickinson, and have never encouraged women getting dressed up, that doesn’t mean they know everything and are always right.  Although it might be too much of a shock to them if you changed completely overnight, I bet they might be happy and impressed if you got a hair cut that really looked good on you, or an outfit that really looked good on you.

For your sake, and for the sake of your kids, please try to read to become knowledgeable about different things outside of Dickinson.  Just think, do you want your kids to be able to experience more things in life, or not know about opportunities they have in life?  Just as an example, every now and then, buy a magazine like “Architectural Digest”, “Yachting”, “Sailing”.  These magazines show how wealthy and successful people live, their homes, their furnishings, their jewelry, their cars, their boats, where they travel, the things they get to do.  In a big way or a small way, when people or kids see some of these things, it inspires them to want to be successful, to finish school, to think about what type of career they may want to have, to think about marrying a person that will help them to be successful.

If you are of the opinion that it is not a good idea to see expensive clothes, jewelry, furniture, houses, cars, boats, planes, vacation destinations, beautiful glamorous women, when these things are not relevant to you or your children, I think you are wrong.  Any progress that we have made as human beings has come through education and becoming more and more aware.  It is harmful, limiting, and dangerous to not know what is going on in the world.

School Assignment, Dickinson, North Dakota

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Hello, and thank you for reading my blog.  The purpose of this blog is to tell people from out-of-state, what Dickinson, North Dakota is like.  Additionally, I hope that people from Dickinson read this blog.  The people here in Dickinson should be ashamed of how badly they treated everyone during the oil boom.  The people here in Dickinson were hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, and they took advantage of people.

I want people to know the truth about Dickinson.  I don’t want people to get misinformation about Dickinson from the Chamber of Commerce, the City of Dickinson, or Dickinson State University.  Because I have written approximately forty-five blog posts about Dickinson, this site usually comes up on the first page of search engine results for “living in Dickinson”, “working in Dickinson”, “moving to Dickinson”, “relocating to Dickinson”, “women in Dickinson”, “corruption in Dickinson”, “nightlife in Dickinson”, and “the Dickinson mafia”.

Even though this site comes up on the first page of search engine results, there should be more views every day, from school kids doing their homework assignments for instance.  There should be more school kids looking at this site, but that doesn’t surprise me too much, North Dakota ranks first in some categories of illiteracy.

I want to write this blog for the school kids in Dickinson, to give them some useful information for their school assignments and reports on Dickinson, and to give them some useful life information.

The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is probably about 3:1, which is not normal.  Because there are way more men in Dickinson than women, there is a shortage of women for men to date, and marry in Dickinson.  There should be a strip bar, where men can go and talk to women and see them naked, but the City of Dickinson will not allow that.  There should be prostitution in Dickinson to provide women for men to date, but the City of Dickinson will not allow that.  Thank God there aren’t any rapes!  Because there is a shortage of women in Dickinson, most of the women in Dickinson do not try to stay in-shape, dress nicely, look nice, or be pleasant.  Most of the women in Dickinson are overweight and unfriendly.

There is not a lot to do in Dickinson.  It is cold from about the beginning of October through the end of April, that’s seven months.  It would be nice to go out to bars at night to have some drinks, but the City of Dickinson has instructed its police officers to be very aggressive in arresting people for Driving Under the Influence.  In fact, the Dickinson police arrest people and take them to jail, even before giving them a breathalyzer test, if they are under the legal limit at the police station where the breathalyzer test is given, they are still under arrest, are processed into jail, later post bail, and pay $3,000 up-front to an attorney.  Don’t let mom and dad go out to bars in Dickinson, they might get a DUI, lose their job, and then you’ll be out on the street!

Going out to restaurants in Dickinson is not that great either, the service is usually very bad.  The servers in Dickinson restaurants have been led to believe that all of the oilfield workers in Dickinson make over $100,000 per year, that’s what the television news says.  The servers have had the expectation that every oil field worker would spend $100 every meal and leave them a $20 tip.  The servers are angry that they aren’t making $300 per day at Applebees, Perkins, Country Kitchen, and Players Club.

There are not a lot of restaurants in Dickinson.  Prior to 2008, people in Dickinson did not go out to eat because they did not have much money, they were paid very low wages.  The local companies in Dickinson paid very low wages in order to control their workers.  The workers could not get ahead, they lived paycheck-to-paycheck, they could not afford to lose their job, they had no savings, they were completely dependent on their employer, they had to keep their job even if they were mistreated.

Because wages were low in Dickinson prior to 2008, home rents were low.  A one-bedroom apartment was probably $300 per month, a three-bedroom house was probably $700 per month. Due to the oil boom, by 2011, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment went up to $1,500 per month, a three-bedroom house went up to $3,500 per month.  This huge cost increase in housing not only hurt the oil field workers, it hurt the local people too.  This is why some people say that people in Dickinson were very greedy and took advantage of people.

That’s enough for now, your brains are probably jumping like a toad!  Please, please feel free to write comments and ask me questions.  I’ll go ahead with what will probably be a FAQ, Frequently Asked Question:

Question:  You seem to hate Dickinson, why don’t you just leave?

Answer:  I stay here because currently I can make more money here than elsewhere.  I have a home in a different state that I would like to go back to, but unemployment is high in that state.  While I am here, I would like to get the truth out about Dickinson, so that people from out-of-state will know what it is like, and maybe not come at this time.  I hope that I can change some things in Dickinson by exposing them.

 

 

Dickinson mayor Dennis Johnson resigning at the end of October 2015

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I have written about forty-two blog posts trying to explain what Dickinson, North Dakota is like.  Maybe some of the people who have read my blog don’t believe me.  Please, please read the Dickinson Press newspaper article dated October 6, 2015 titled, “Dickinson mayor Dennis Johnson resigning at the end of October.”

Dennis Johnson became mayor of Dickinson in year 2000.  According to my research, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of MDU in 2001.  MDU, Montana Dakota Utilities is a a large utility company that provides electric and gas service in North Dakota.  MDU also owns a construction company called Knife River Construction.

I would have thought back in 2001, that being mayor of Dickinson, and being on the board of directors of MDU, would probably lead to conflict of interest accusations and suspicion.

In about 2013, MDU began constructing a refinery in Dickinson, called the Dakota Prairie Refinery.  Again, I would have thought people in North Dakota would have thought that Dennis Johnson as mayor, was not able to be neutral, objective, and unbiased concerning MDU’s activities in Dickinson.

In approximately 2014, Knife River Construction was awarded a large road construction project on State Avenue in Dickinson.  There are several civil construction companies in Dickinson: Northern Improvement, Martin Construction, Tooz Construction, Baranko Brothers.  Did a citizen, a city council member, or a construction company owner finally say, or make the accusation that there was something corrupt going on?

In the Dickinson Press newspaper article, Dennis Johnson said that he was resigning as mayor of Dickinson because MDU stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and the New York Stock Exchange has a rule that you can’t be a government official and be on the board of directors of a company that does more than 2% of that government entity’s business.

My personal opinion is that Dennis Johnson’s increased status as mayor of Dickinson in 2000, probably increased his potential for being appointed to the board of directors of MDU in 2001.  Being on the board of directors of MDU probably helped Dennis Johnson be re-elected mayor several times.  Being mayor of Dickinson and being on the board of directors of MDU probably also helped Dennis Johnson’s company, TMI cabinets, a manufacturer of cabinetry for institutions and facilities like schools and hospitals.

There are some other things that I would like to say, that I was told by people who are in a position to know, that I believe are true, that Dennis Johnson is a large stockholder in MDU.  How can you be mayor of Dickinson, where MDU is building a refinery, and Knife River Construction is awarded a large road improvement project, and appear that you are not personally benefiting every time an employee of the City of Dickinson makes a decision favorable to MDU or Knife River Construction?  Did City of Dickinson employees, city council members, and business owners feel pressure to give MDU and Knife River construction preferential treatment in order to not get on the bad side of the mayor, or win favor with the mayor?

I encourage readers to go look up other news articles about the City of Dickinson, in particular articles related to the arrest of the Trinity High School principal and his coerced confession, and also news articles about illegal practices at Dickinson State University.  You will get a much better understanding of Dickinson.

I Want To Beat The Chamber of Commerce In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I want to beat the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson, North Dakota.  I want to get to you, before they do.  I want to tell you the truth, rather than have you listen to lies and bullshit.

The individuals in the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce may not be bad people, but they have a job to do, and that job is to lie to you about Dickinson.

When I first wrote this blog post in November of 2015, the housing prices in Dickinson were very, very high.  Extremely high.  This was the result of greed, lack of human decency, and stupidity.  There was this lie going around that everybody in the oil field was making $100,000 per year.  In the five years that I have lived in Dickinson, I have only ever met three people who made over $100,000 per year in the oil field.

The Oil Boom was over in western North Dakota by the end of 2015, due to the price of oil falling from over $100 per barrel down to $40 per barrel.  Many oil field jobs went away, and many out of state workers returned to the states where they came from.  Once the apartments, manufactured home parks, and trailer parks in Dickinson became less than half occupied, the rents throughout Dickinson dropped greatly.

During the Oil Boom, the people in Dickinson were not friendly, not helpful, and not cooperative.  Now that the Oil Boom is over, the people in Dickinson are even meaner, in part due to increased competition for fewer jobs, and also because they want people to leave Dickinson.

The people in Dickinson dislike people who are from someplace else, and they also dislike each other.  Anything you say to people in Dickinson, will probably make them dislike you more.  If you arrive in Dickinson now, you are better off staying away from people.  Remain in your hotel, or your home, there isn’t anything to do or anywhere to go anyway, and you will likely be followed and stopped by the Dickinson Police.

There is a shortage of women in Dickinson, and a lack of attractive women.  The ratio of men to women in Dickinson is probably 3:1.  The Dickinson Police Department try as hard as they can to not allow prostitution in Dickinson, though it is needed.  The Dickinson Police create fake advertisement for women wanting to have sex, and then arrest people when they show up.

You can not safely go out to bars or restaurants in Dickinson at night, because the Dickinson Police try as hard as they can to arrest people for DUI.  In Dickinson, the Police are so eager to arrest people for DUI or other charges, that they will follow you and stop you for any reason that they can think of.  The Police try to encourage people to leave Dickinson.

In Dickinson, all of the restaurants have employees and servers that don’t like their jobs.  All of the restaurant employees think that everyone else is making over $100,000 per year, and they aren’t, and they are mad about it.  The servers are disappointed and can’t understand why people don’t spend $50 per meal and leave them a $20 tip, like they all heard about.  How are they ever going to make $300 a night at Applebees like they planned?

There is not a lot to do in Dickinson.  It is cold and grey from about October through April, at least seven months of cold weather.

The oil field work has been reduced by about 80% over the past several years.  Most of the oil field workers who lost their jobs went back to the states where they came from because housing prices were so high here, the people are unfriendly, there is a shortage of women, you can’t go out to bars or restaurants at night, the restaurants have terrible service, there is not a lot to do, the Police encourage people to leave Dickinson, and it is cold for at least seven months of the year.

The people in Dickinson, and the employers in Dickinson, hate people with an education.  The employers in Dickinson would much rather hire someone with several felony convictions, than someone with a college degree.  In Dickinson, your supervisors and co-workers will be people convicted of robbery, theft, assault, and drug charges.  Perform a Google search and look up your company owners, managers, and personnel on www.ndcourts.gov/publicsearch/default.html before you accept a job with a company in Dickinson.

What do I want?  I want the truth to be known.  I had thought that Dickinson could change, but once the Oil Boom was over, the local people in Dickinson became ever meaner.  I had not realized that the local people in Dickinson were on their best behavior during the Oil Boom.  All I can do now is warn people what Dickinson is like.

Some Good Businesses In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have written a lot of negative things about Dickinson, North Dakota:  Extremely high housing prices, shortage of women and lack of attractive women, prostitution not being allowed though it is needed, police being over zealous in DUI arrests so you can’t safely go out to bars, lack of entertainment and things to do, inhospitable and uncooperative local people.  Why would you want to live here?  You probably don’t want to live here, I don’t recommend it.  Right now, you do not want to move to Dickinson, North Dakota, because many people have just lost their jobs, and there are not many job openings.

If you are here in Dickinson, or if you come to Dickinson, there are a few businesses that I have good things to say about:

Don Pedros Restaurant:  I have eaten here about fifteen times in the last two years.  The servers have always been pleasant and quick.  The food has always been good.  Every time I have eaten here, I have had to get a to-go box because there has been so much food.  By far the best restaurant in Dickinson, because it is always quick, good, and more than you can eat.

Dan Porter Motors:  I have had a Toyota truck serviced several times, and had several repairs done.  They have always been quick, did a good job, and the prices were fair.

Charboneau Dodge:  I have had a Dodge truck serviced several times, and had several repairs done.  They were able to fit me in a couple of times so that I wasn’t without the use of this truck for long.  The prices were fair and the repairs were done right the first time.

Parkway Ford:  I have had a Ford truck serviced and repaired a couple of times.  The prices were slightly higher than what I thought they should have been, but I knew the specific repairs would take a long time, and they were done right.

Paradise Cleaners:  Huge improvement over the cleaners/laundry that had been in Dickinson in the past.  This cleaner is what you would find in a normal city.

Prairie Hills Mall Cinema:  The three movie theaters are in good condition, they are not over-full, many different movie times throughout the day.  You can watch a movie and forget you are in Dickinson.

Almost:

I can almost recommend the West River Community Center:  It has two indoor pools, one outdoor pool, four full-size basketball courts, three indoor racketball courts, two indoor tennis courts, indoor track, weight room, rock climbing wall, cardiovascular equipment.   The WRCC is open to everyone for a small daily fee.  However, Dickinson State University, which is not even a fourth-rate college, has its thugs/athletes come and use the WRCC.  Given that Dickinson State University has academic standards that are less than that of most community colleges, and their level of athletics is less than that of a large public high school, you can imagine the type of trash they get for their football and track programs.  Probably 80% of the people that came from the hood, that are now living in Dickinson, that can hook you up with some crack, came here because of an invitation from DSU.

How I Live In Dickinson, North Dakota

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The purpose of this blog is for me to tell people from out-of-state what it is like living in Dickinson, North Dakota.  Also, if people who live in Dickinson, North Dakota, should happen to read this blog, I want them to see what I see, and know what I have experienced.

I want to be able to tell the truth, so I don’t publish my name, and I try to be vague about the details of my life, so that no one can figure out it is me, and make me stop.

In particular, I did not want the owner of the house where I live, to find out that I write this blog.  I have lived in this house for two years now, and the owner of this house and me, we have had a lot of arguments.  The owner of the house where I live is in his fifties, he is from Dickinson, and he graduated from Dickinson State University.  If he became aware that I was writing so many negative things about Dickinson, he would probably say, “You need to get that shit off of there right now!”

I didn’t start out planning to write so many negative things about Dickinson, I just try to write truthfully, and I don’t want to censor myself on this blog. I have to mostly keep my mouth shut when I am out in Dickinson in order to not have problems.

There are some good points and some bad points about the person who owns the house where I live.  I have gotten a lot of information from him about the history of Dickinson, and things that have gone on in Dickinson.  The rent is not too high.  I have been allowed to keep construction equipment on the property without complaint.

I want to tell about some of the bad things, so that people can know what it is like when you have to live with somebody else due to the very high cost of housing in Dickinson.

Though the owner of the house has lived in Dickinson his whole life, he does not have any friends.  This is not uncommon in Dickinson, because the local people are not friendly to each other.  He has never been married, and he has not had a girlfriend for a long time.  This is also not uncommon in Dickinson, because there is a shortage of women.  Not having any friends or a girlfriend, has led to some quirky behavior, annoying behavior, gross behavior, which I am exposed to and have to deal with.

If you have ever seen the television show from the 1970s, “Sanford & Son”,  about an African-American junk dealer in Los Angeles living with his son Lamont, the inside of the house where I live is exactly the same, and I am kind of like Lamont.  The house has junk throughout the house, there has never been a girlfriend or a concerned friend that has helped the owner to see and understand that this had gotten out of hand.  I have had a couple of my friends come by the house, who I knew could take it, and they thought it was kind of funny.  But I know that I can never invite a woman over here, because they would freak out in a number of ways.  They would be scared of the carpet, the furniture, the bathroom, they would probably not want to have anything to do with me either after seeing where I live.

There would be several additional problems with me inviting a woman over to the house where I live.  The owner of the house is always here, he does not have anything to do or anywhere to go, which is a common problem for everybody in Dickinson.  He has not had a girlfriend for a long time, and there is a scarcity of women in Dickinson, so if I brought an attractive woman home, he would be unable to take his attention off her.  As it is, he stays in the living room all the time, even if he should fall asleep at 6 pm, 8 pm, 10 pm, midnight, he just stays in his Lazy Boy chair in the living room, as if he is guarding the living room, as if he is scared that he is going to miss out on something by going to his own bedroom.

When the owner of the house is in the living room, whether I am in the living room, or my bedroom, he talks to himself.  He sometimes mutters,” I did the best I could…bla, bla, bla”, or cries out, “I’m sorry!…bla, bla, bla”  Sometimes when I am in my bedroom, he goes on a long angry rant talking to himself out in the living room, when I am trying to fall asleep, and I feel like yelling, “Shut the fuck up, you fat fuck, shut up!”  I can only imagine what a fiasco it would be me having some woman in my bed, trying to have sex with her, and she would say, “Stop, stop, what the fuck is that?  Is that your room-mate out in the living room talking to himself?  This is too creepy, I’m getting out of here!”  Yup, can’t bring any women over to my house.

Meeting Miss Rodeo North Dakota, Codi Miller

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I have written a lot about the shortage of women, and the lack of attractive women in Dickinson, North Dakota, but today I will write about meeting Miss Rodeo North Dakota, Codi Miller in 2014.  I don’t want to say exactly where, and how I met her, because I like her and want to protect her.

I was out in a remote area, when I saw an attractive young lady.  I thought she was a little plain, because she was wearing no make up, a T-shirt and jeans, but I liked her.  When I spoke to her, I did not know if she was out of high school.  I was careful in speaking to her because I thought that she was possibly still in high school, inexperienced, innocent, naïve.  She did seem very sweet and innocent.

As I looked at her behind her eye glasses, and listened to her talk, I realized that she was not plain, she actually had almost model like beauty.  At the same time she was telling me that she was from Amidon, and that there were only about forty kids in her entire school growing up, I was thinking to myself, “My God, she doesn’t even know that she is beautiful, she doesn’t know, nobody ever told her.”

I asked her about herself, what she liked to do.  I found out that she had graduated from college.  I was beginning to feel like a dumb ass, because I had mistakenly believed that she was so young, completely innocent, and naïve.

After I had asked her some more questions, I realized that she was Miss Rodeo North Dakota.  Then I felt like a complete dumbass.  I had fooled myself, and she let me.  I did not let on that my mind was having to completely re-orient, I was dumbfounded.  Codi had a slight smirk.  Though Codi was enjoying the joke of me mistakenly thinking that she was a simple country mouse, and I was confused, my mind and thoughts quickly began to process that her being in her early twenties and Miss Rodeo was potentially  better for me.

As I was talking to her to find out what kinds of things she liked to do, I was planning on asking her out on a date, I was looking forward to taking her out.  I was much older than her, but she did not seem to care, she was talking to me.  As we were talking, she lay on her back, continuing to talk to me, we were alone.

Sometimes, I thought that it would be nice to be on a deserted island with an attractive actress or model.  It would be possible to get along, without her having to worry about what other people thought, without her worrying if I was up to her standards, or without her worrying if I was successful enough.  These things wouldn’t matter on a deserted island.  This is how it was with Miss Rodeo North Dakota, we were getting along fine, I wished that it would never end.  But someone drove up to us after about fifteen minutes, and she had to go.

I said to her,”You are like two completely different people.”  She said, “I know, sometimes I’m Rodeo Codi, and sometimes I’m just plain Codi.”

When I got home, I looked her up on the internet.  I saw many of her pageant photographs, where she looked stunning.  I saw her swimsuit photographs, and I saw that she had a perfect body.  In person, when she was wearing a T-shirt, I had not realized that she had such nice large breasts.  I had no way of knowing that she had a tight, flat stomach, perfect bottom, perfect legs.  I was very impressed with her photographs, but I felt a little worse.  It seemed that she was too glamorous for me, out of reach, not obtainable.  I was happier when she was just being herself, just plain Codi, I thought that we could date.

I wrote her a couple of letters, trying not to say much of anything, especially not saying that I liked her and wanted to see her again, just trying to be funny.  I offered to send her some opossums, but she didn’t write back, maybe she didn’t want any opossums.

How this relates to my blog, I have to say that I have met a few attractive women in Dickinson, but they are scarce.  The Miss Rodeo North Dakota that I met looked beautiful and glamorous in her modelling photographs, she was attractive in just jeans and a T-shirt in-person.  She was friendly, funny, entertaining, and easy to talk to in-person.