Tag Archives: Living in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I Am The Most Influential Person Now In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I recently did a Google search for about fifteen different topics concerning Dickinson, North Dakota, and my website comes up near the top of the first page of search results every time.  I said it before, anyone, anywhere in the world, gets their information about Dickinson, North Dakota from me.

I don’t want to be popular, I don’t want to be invited to parties, I want to be the dead chicken around everyone’s neck.  And like a dead chicken around your neck, I want to keep getting worse, reminding you what you did.

Some of the Worst things in Dickinson:

  1. There were no Ethics, Morals, or Decency in what people in Dickinson did to other people during this most recent oil boom when it came to rent and the cost of housing.  Retail store prices might have increased by 5% to 10%, repair service prices might have increased by 15% to 25%, wage rates might have increased by 10% to 40%, but rent and housing prices increased by 400% to 500%.  Many long time local residents could no longer afford the cost of housing.  Many out of state workers could not afford the cost of housing and slept in their vehicles.  There was no reason for 400% to 500% cost increases in housing other than greed.
  2. The Catholic Church is the biggest social influence in Dickinson, North Dakota. The Catholic priests, the Catholic Church leaders, and the Catholic congregations ignored and turned their back on all Christian principles such as, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you”, “So as you do to the least of my people, so do you unto me”, “What profiteth a man that he gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?  Or what shall he give in exchange for his soul?”  In fact, the Catholics actually used their social influence and networks to organize, orchestrate, and control the taking advantage of people.
  3. The local company owners, the local manufacturing companies, and the local people hate, mistreat, and disrespect educated people in every way possible.  Out of fear of being outsmarted and losing control, local company owners seek to hire people who are less intelligent and less educated than themselves, which makes Dickinson one of the least educated and most ignorant places in the United States.  Local companies and manufacturing companies in Dickinson do not hire engineers, instead they offer $18 per hour for “engineering” positions which are filled by people with not even good High School educations.  All of Dickinson functions at a very low level.  The most underpaid people in Dickinson are the professors at Dickinson State University who are paid about the same as unskilled laborers.
  4. In order to staff the restaurant, bar, and retail positions during the recent oil boom, local companies did not perform background checks on these employees.  Vast numbers of mentally ill, criminal, and drug addicted women came to Dickinson to work at these jobs that did not perform any background checks.  The trashiest, lowest class, most corrupt women that you will ever find moved to Dickinson and many of them are still here.
  5. Because Dickinson allowed all of the things above to take place and could not see that these things were wrong, most people made up their mind that they would never stay in Dickinson.

Gray Divorce, Divorce Over 50

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I went back to my home in Idaho after being gone for 1-1/2 years.  The first evening that I was home, I went to a bar & restaurant that overlooks a river, to see a friend of mine who manages the bar & restaurant Monday through Thursday.  He has been managing this place for twenty years.

I was shocked to not see him there, he no longer works there, I couldn’t believe it.  One of the few remaining employees that I know, told me that his wife had divorced him.

I was very upset about this.  I knew him very well.  I would have never expected his wife to divorce him.  I will tell a little bit about him, to explain how I feel about this.

His father was an architect from this town, who had five sons and one daughter.  They lived in a big house downtown across the street from a city park.  All the kids played every sport there was, throughout the year.  The boys particularly liked football and hockey.

The kids were popular in High School, partied a lot, it was the 1970s.  My friend joined the Marines after High School.  After getting out of the Marine Corps, my friend was a police officer in California.  He later got a college degree and his teaching certificate.  In his late 20s, he became head of security for a very large computer technology company, with his own office, company vehicle, expense account, and high salary.

His brothers became teachers and coaches in their home town.  Visiting his home town, he met a women who was a teacher and coach at the same school his brother coached at.  He and this teacher started dating.  He left his high paying, high level corporate job to return to his home town to marry this teacher.

There were not a lot of job openings in this town, but he wanted to support his family, so he took a job as a bartender and bar manager, which is not what he had been doing.  He became good at this job, and he was well liked by the customers and the restaurant owner.  This is why he worked there for twenty years.

He was funny, entertaining, and he had a good personality.  Women that he had gone to High School with, women who were regular customers, women who were just in town overnight, and women employees, would see if he was interested in going home with them, but he would politely refuse.

He was the most proud of his wife and two daughters of anyone I have ever met.  The one fault that he had, was always talking about how well his wife and daughters were doing.  His wife had won several state awards as a teacher, several state awards as a coach, and more than several state championships.

He spent all of his time and energy focusing on his family.  He made sure that his daughters were doing well with their school work, practicing and training effectively for sports, and giving a complete effort in everything that they did.  His daughters did very well in school, and did very well in sports.  They both got athletic scholarships to college.  His two daughters never got into any trouble at all.

When he got home from work at 2:00 a.m., he would begin cooking things like homemade meatballs.  His daughters would wake up from the smell of cooking early in the morning and come into the kitchen to eat whatever it was.  It didn’t hurt them, they burned so many calories.  His wife on the other hand, was about fifty pounds overweight, and he may have been partly to blame, because he was a good cook.

He loved his wife and was so proud of his wife, though she was quite overweight and no longer attractive.  One of the reasons why his wife had let her own appearance go, was because she put so much effort and energy into teaching and coaching, she didn’t spend any time taking care of herself.

My friend and his wife each made the same amount of money.  My friend would seek additional ways to make money, like painting houses, in order have more money for his family.  I once let him borrow a very nice stainless steel .357 Smith & Wesson revolver, which he said he wanted because it was what he used when he was a police officer.  I offered to sell it to him for a low price, but he said he couldn’t buy it because his family needed the money at that time.

He would use his vacation time when his wife had state championship games out of town, in order to support his wife and her team.  He would spend his money on purchasing team shirts for all the girls on the team, and taking all the girls on the team out for dinner at a nice restaurant.  (Not all the girls would have had money for team shirts, or to go out to dinner, so that is why he paid for everyone.)

After both his daughters were in college with athletic scholarships, his wife was ready to move on.  I read a local newspaper article about her retirement from the local school system, and her moving away to become an athletic director.  There was elaboration on all of her accomplishments, and the success of her daughters, but not one mention of her husband.  I could see from the photograph, that she had lost about 50 pounds now, and she was down to a normal size.

I have my thoughts about all of this, but I wanted to read other articles about why this might have happened.  Several authors that I read, stated that divorce over 5o is the fastest growing category of divorce.  One female author that I read, stated that the AARP research showed that 66% of divorces over 50 were initiated by women.  This female author did her own research, and stated that the number one reason for divorce by women over 50 was emotional abuse.

I think that a valid reason for women to initiate divorce from their husband would be: cheating, gambling away money, alcoholism, drug addiction, pornography addiction, physical abuse, child abuse, mental illness, criminal activity, refusal to work, not helping with household work, not taking care of their physical health, and emotional abuse.

In the case of my friend, I don’t think that anything on the above list occurred.  I think that his wife was just interested in beginning a new life without him, a more promising life, a more exciting life, a more adventurous life.  And, keeping her retirement pension all to herself.  He would not have an employer paid retirement pension.

If my friend had wanted to, he could have been having a more exciting and adventurous life, all along, I saw many women offer this to him.  But he was devoted to his wife and his two daughters.  If he had wanted to, he could have planned some scheme five years ago, that when his daughters left home to go to college, he could have had a new career all set and ready to go.  But he did not plan on leaving his wife.

It is all over now.  The harm has already been done, and it will never be undone.  Twenty-five years of Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter together with each other and their children, will never happen again, it has all been ruined.  I don’t think that his wife will ever find anyone that was so interested in her, cared about her so much, and was willing to support her so much, and proved this over twenty-five years.  I don’t know what she was thinking.

There may have been another man that no one knows about, or she may find another man.  Although another man may seem more exciting and appealing, he may need to borrow money from her,  he may be deeply in debt, he may be physically abusive, he may be emotionally abusive, he may have a crazy ex-wife that won’t go away, he may have a psychotic ex-girlfriend that keeps showing up, horrible children, a drug addiction, alcoholism, Hepatitis C, Herpes…

People now, are trying to get a better deal.  It is not that their marriage is bad or that their spouse is bad, they are just trying to see if they can have more fun, more excitement, and trade up for a better life.

Almost Getting Caught By The Montana Highway Patrol With 20 Pounds Of Methamphetamine

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If you read my previous blog post, I wrote that I left Dickinson, North Dakota in a hurry on Sunday March 5, towing 6,500 lbs with a two wheel drive 4,000 lb truck when the weather turned bad in Montana.  I got stuck in the snow on the interstate and had to call a tow truck.  After the roads were plowed, I got started again, but the roads were snowy and icy all the way back to Idaho.  I had to drive between 55 mph to 60 mph all the way back to Idaho because of the snow and ice, and the weight of the trailer, worrying most of the way about getting stuck again on the interstate.

What was also troubling me during my drive back to Idaho, was that I had not been back to my home in Idaho for 1-1/2 years.  I did not know what condition my home would be in.  I had not been able to get off of work long enough to drive to Idaho and back to North Dakota.  I had been warned, that by not using my well pump for that long, it was likely corroded and silted up, and was ruined.  The well pump sits at the bottom of the well casing, about 120 feet deep.  A well drilling derek is required to pull the well pump up by the 120 feet of steel water pipe.  This well pump replacement costs $5,000 to $7,000.

As soon as I arrived back at my home in Idaho, I went to the well house to check the water piping, it looked O.K.  I turned on the circuit breaker to the well pump and the pump came on.  I went inside the house, and I had very little water pressure.  I had to crawl around under my house looking for a water leak, there was not any water leak.  There was no hot water flow at all, and my hot water heater was not working.  I worked on my water lines and hot water heater for the three days that I was home.  I had to do yard clean up, and work on many different things in those three days.

The first evening that I was home, I went to see a bar and restaurant manager that I had known for seven years.  He had worked at this restaurant for almost twenty years, but he was no longer there.  I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t there.  One of the few remaining employees that I knew, told me that the manager didn’t want to go along with changes at the restaurant, and that also his wife had divorced him.

This manager had been married for about 25 years.  He was very proud of his wife, she was a high school teacher and a coach.  She had won several state awards as a teacher, and several state awards as a coach.  I had never met anyone that was as proud of their wife and daughters as he was.  Most people were sick of listening to his bragging about his wife and daughters.  His primary focus in the past 25 years of his life was his wife and daughters.  I telephoned him, he told me that his wife had divorced him, they had sold their house, and now he was living with his elderly mother.  He now has a really shitty, low paying job.

I had had a lot of stress driving back to Idaho, getting stuck on the interstate in the snow and ice, working on so many things at my house that I hadn’t been back to in 1-1/2 years, and finding out bad things had happened to people that I knew back in Idaho.  But after three days, I had to return to North Dakota and either find additional work, or continue moving my vehicles and equipment back to Idaho.  I did not look forward to driving the 750 miles back to Dickinson, North Dakota.

It was easier driving my Ford truck towing an empty 2,000 lb trailer back to North Dakota.  I could go faster with an unloaded trailer, but I still needed to be careful.  When I got into Montana, the speed limit on the interstate was 80 mph, but I stayed between 70 mph to 75 mph because that was as fast as I felt was safe towing the empty trailer.

In western Montana, I saw a dark colored vehicle pulled over on the right side of the interstate on the road shoulder.  I could not tell what kind of vehicle it was.  I could not tell if it was parked and broken down, or if there was someone in it.  I did not see any emergency lights or police lights on top of the vehicle.  The cars ahead of me changed into the left lane, so I changed into the left lane too.

A few minutes later, it was a big surprise to me when a Montana Highway Patrol car pulled up beside me in the left lane trying to read my license plate.  Then he pulled behind me in the right lane and turned on his flashing lights.

I was angry.  All the way from Dickinson, North Dakota to Idaho, and now all the way from Idaho back to North Dakota, I had to drive under the speed limit because of the trailer that I was towing.  I could not believe that I was getting pulled over by the Highway Patrol when I had been driving 70 mph to 75 mph when the speed limit was 80 mph.

I pulled over onto the road shoulder, turned on my interior lights, rolled down the window, and put both hands on the steering wheel.  I waited for the Highway Patrol Officer to walk up to me, and I was surprised when he knocked on my passenger side window.  He said that he pulled me over because I had not used my turn signal to change lanes, he can see that I am not wearing my seat belt, and that I was going 3 mph over the speed limit.

Can you imagine what I was thinking…What the fuck is going on?  I was deliberately driving 5 mph under the speed limit because I was towing a trailer.  I gathered that the Highway Patrol Officer was not interested in me going 3 mph over the speed limit or not using my turn signal like he said, he was looking forward to finding something to make an arrest.

I had been through a lot of stress on the long drive from Dickinson, North Dakota to Idaho, working on all the things that were wrong with my house for three days, and now having to make the long drive right back to North Dakota.  I was not happy about being stopped by this Highway Patrol Officer, when I had been driving 5 mph under the speed limit.  I was not completely certain about what exactly was going on.

The Montana Highway Patrol Officer asked for my driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.  Fortunately, I had each of these things, and they were not expired.  The Highway Patrol Officer asked me what I was doing, and where I was going.  I knew that I was not legally required to explain what I was doing and where I was going, and that he was not asking me to be friendly, he was asking me in order to try to uncover possible illegal activity.  I went ahead and tried to explain, but he did not think that my explanation made sense.

I ended up explaining to him three times what I was doing and where I was going.  This made the Highway Patrol Officer think that I could not keep my story straight, that it was false, and that I was lying.  This stop by the Highway Patrol, was unreal and unbelievable, I was trying to make it back to Dickinson, and the Highway Patrol Officer was convinced that something else was going on.

The Montana Highway Patrol Officer was treating me like a drug fiend/drug dealer/drug trafficker from Idaho.  Like I could not tell the same story about what I was doing consistently, because it was all lies, meant to hide the illegal activity that I was involved in.  I also began to suspect that the Highway Patrol Officer was telling me that what I was telling him did not make sense, because he was trying to establish probable cause to search my vehicle.  I then said to him, are you profiling me as a Meth person from Idaho?  The Highway Patrol Officer then asked me to come back to his vehicle with him.

The Montana Highway Patrol Officer entered and searched my driver’s license for warrants, probation, parole, and previous arrests, but eventually found none.   He asked me three more times to explain my job, what I did, and where I lived.

Because I have no criminal record, and I was not doing anything wrong or illegal, and because the Highway Patrol Officer kept asking me to explain myself, I then elaborated quite a bit about the work that I did, what Dickinson was like, what Watford City was like, what the economy was like in North Dakota, what the police were like in Watford City, and what the police were like in Dickinson.  If any of you readers have looked at my blog, you can imagine that I had a lot to say about these subjects, I have written many blog posts about theses subjects.

Inevitably, I became irritating to the Montana Highway Patrol Officer because I had talked so much, but it was his fault for asking me to explain myself.  He had wanted to detect inconsistencies in my story in order to establish probable cause for a vehicle search, not have to sit there and listen to me go on, and on, and on.

I was about ready to ask him if he wanted to search my vehicle.  He was so dissatisfied and disappointed that I didn’t have any outstanding warrants, wasn’t violating probation or parole, and didn’t have any previous arrests.  I hesitated to ask him if he wanted to search my vehicle, because he was so determined to find evidence of crime, that he might have questioned me about each tool box, each tool bag, each piece of equipment, my emergency money that I have hidden, my rifles, and he might have tried to confiscate everything because it could have been stolen or could have been the proceeds from illegal activity.

The Montana Highway Patrol Officer gave me a citation for not wearing my seat belt, and acted like he was doing me a favor for not giving me a ticket for speeding or not using my turn signal.

I have written several blog posts about the police in Watford City and Dickinson pulling people over in order to find out who they are, ask them what they are doing and where they are going, asking for their local address, running their driver’s license to see if there are warrants, probation, parole, and previous arrests, trying to detect and uncover illegal activity.  Yes, this helps deter and detect illegal activity.  However, this time, I didn’t like it when it was done to me.

I didn’t like it because I was already tired, stressed out, and had already had a bunch of things go wrong recently, I didn’t want or need any more problems.  I almost didn’t have proof of insurance, I got a copy from my insurance agent two days before this traffic stop.  This Highway Patrol Officer seemed so determined to find something, not having proof of insurance would have possibly been construed by him as not having insurance, which can result in suspension of your driver’s license.

This Highway Patrol Officer seemed so determined to find something wrong, I wonder if he would have seized my emergency cash and rifles, claiming that they were evidence of illegal activity.  No, they can’t keep them if there turns out to be no illegal activity, but are you going to pay an attorney $3,000 in order to have $3,000 worth of property returned to you?

In the United States there are laws that cover the right to travel freely, against unlawful search and seizure of property, innocence until proven guilty in a court of law, not having to give evidence against yourself, having the right to remain silent.  In the traffic stop that I described above, I felt that my civil rights were somewhat infringed upon:  though I did commit a traffic infraction worthy of a citation, I was prohibited from traveling freely by the repeated questioning which was not related to the traffic citation, I am not required to give evidence against myself, I have the right to remain silent and not answer questions, and there appeared to be presumption that I was guilty of some crime and that I was being required to prove my innocence.

I voluntarily tried to answer the Highway Patrol Officer’s questions and cooperate, but it is unsettling to know that his intentions were to find something in my answers and cooperation to arrest me, take me to jail, lead to my imprisonment, and seizure of my property, though I was doing nothing illegal and merely trying to drive to North Dakota.

 

Getting Gouged And Getting Helped In Montana

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On Sunday March 5, it was a warm and sunny day in Dickinson, North Dakota.  It warmed up to almost 70 degrees.  I sat out in the sun on the back deck for about half an hour.  Then I went to the grocery store to get something to cook out on the grill.

Driving through town, I passed by the Paragon Bowling Alley & Bar.  I thought to myself, why would anyone want to be inside drinking today, it is so nice outside.  At the grocery store, I decided that I would just cook hot dogs outside and make chili dogs.

When I got back to the house, I asked my room mate, the person who owns the home, if he wanted any chili dogs.  He said no, he didn’t think so.  I was happy cooking the hot dogs outside, making chili dogs, and eating them.  My room mate was yelling about political news on television.

There was no reason for my room mate to be yelling, I was ten feet away, and I was eating, not disagreeing with him.  There was no reason to be yelling, no one else was there.  No one else is ever there to listen to my room mate, and he is not welcome in anyone’s home, any social gathering, or any bar because he gets too loud and too carried away, to the point of being offensive.  I could not stand it any more.  I went to my  bed room.  It was only 5:00 p.m.  I thought to myself, this is why people are at the Paragon Bowling Alley & Bar drinking in the afternoon, they have to get away from where they live.  But I am not going to drink at bars all afternoon and through the evening to get away from home.

My room mate continued to mutter to himself and rant in the living room, though there was no one else there.  The problem is, I can hear him.  If another person, police officer, nurse, counselor, or psychiatrist witnessed this, they would start to ask him a series of questions to see if he needed to be taken to a hospital for psychological evaluation to determine what level of help and intervention was needed, due to the nature of what he is saying and how he is behaving.

It would do me no good to ask my room mate, the owner of the house where I live, if he has got something wrong with him, because we both know that he does.  Not long ago, I had a private discussion with a family member of his, to ask if my room mate has ever needed help in the past or has been treated in the past.  The family member said, I don’t know that there is anything that can be done about it, it runs in our family, our father did the same thing.

I could not stand going to bed at 5:00 p.m. on this nice, sunny, warm Sunday afternoon in order to avoid listening to and being around the owner of the house where I live.  I had taken a four hour drive on Saturday to get out of the house, and I was not interested in taking another four hour drive.  I had had many days like this in the past three years, living in this house in Dickinson, and I finally had enough.

I had been unable to move someplace else in Dickinson, because I had four trucks, two equipment trailers, two kayaks, and many mountain bikes.  This was it, I knew this day would eventually come, I would have to move all of this shit back to Idaho.  It would take about four round trips.  I had better get started, on starting over.

At about 5:30 p.m. I began taking all of the equipment off of a flat bed car trailer.  The Ford truck that was going to pull the trailer had a dead battery because it had gotten so cold this winter.  I got the Ford truck started.  The trailer hitch on the car trailer was frozen and stuck in the locked position.  I got the trailer hooked up.  I got a Toyota truck loaded on the car trailer.  It took me a while to get the Toyota truck tied down to the bed of the trailer with six ratchet straps.  I got the entire bed of the Ford truck loaded with equipment.  I packed a small duffle bag with clothes.

All four tires on the car trailer were low.  It was now about 8:00 p.m. and dark.  I drove to the County Line Truck Stop to get air in the tires, fuel, and cash out of the ATM machine.  I was tired and angry.  What had started out as such a nice peaceful day, had turned into me having to unload a trailer, load a trailer, and drive 750 miles unexpectedly.

You aren’t supposed to drive when you are angry.  It doesn’t help when the truck and trailer you are hauling weighs 6,500 lbs, and the truck you are using to pull it weighs only 4,000 lbs.  If you make any sudden movement on the steering wheel that unsettles the trailer, the trailer “wag” will cause the truck to crash within a few seconds.  The trailer can develop a “wag” all on its own, and quickly amplify, to cause your truck to crash within a few seconds.  On Interstate 94 heading back west to Idaho, I found that I could only safely drive about 55 mph to 65 mph because the trailer would get a “wag” going about every fifteen minutes.

I was very tired by midnight.  It began to snow.  I was just beginning to get into a mountainous area of Montana.  I had not planned this trip.  I had only thought that it would be O.K. to make this trip at this time of year because it had been so warm and sunny in Dickinson.  I was also angry, and I just went ahead and did it.  My Ford truck is only two wheel drive, it weighs 4,000 lb, and the load that I am hauling weighs 6,500 lbs.  I became worried that I was going to have all kinds of problems.

I parked in a rest area for the night.  When I woke up at about 5:00 a.m., there was about three to four inches of snow on the ground.  I thought that the interstate would be plowed.  I barely, barely made it out of the rest area onto the interstate.  The interstate was not plowed.  There were just a few tire tracks in the right lane of the interstate.  Within about ten miles, there was a steep uphill.  My tires were spinning and I was losing speed.  Just before I came to a complete stop going uphill, I pulled over to  the shoulder in order to not be stuck in the middle of the interstate.  It was difficult to even get over and not be stuck in the middle of the road.

Several hundred feet ahead of me, a tractor truck had been unable to make it up the hill and had slid off the side of the road into a ditch.  When I pulled over to the shoulder, my truck and trailer had started sliding sideways toward a deeper ravine.  I called 911 to give my location and ask for a tow truck.  The tow truck driver called me and said, “$115 to hook up, then $2.50 per mile.”  I just needed to get moved 18 miles to the nearest town to get off the interstate and figure out what I was going to do.

I realized that I had to get my Toyota truck off the car trailer, which I hated to do because it had taken me about 30 minutes to get it onto the car trailer and strapped down.  As I was having difficulty getting each of the six frozen tie down ratchet straps untied and unratcheted, I realized that the Toyota truck could pull the empty trailer.  I just needed the two wheel drive Ford truck moved 18 miles to the nearest town, then a ride back from the tow truck driver to the Toyota truck and trailer.

By the time the tow truck driver got to me, three or four snow plow trucks had gone by.  I said to the tow truck driver, just pull my Ford truck away from the shoulder with this tow strap, unhook me, and let me follow you to the nearest town, then give me ride back to my Toyota truck.  Twenty minutes later, it was $350 for the “tow”.  The tow truck driver had not told me he was going to charge me $2.50 per mile all the way from where he had come from, and all the way back to where he had come from.

I rode back east on the interstate with the tow truck driver, got out and climbed through a snowy ravine to get back to the west bound lane and my Toyota truck.  In the small town where I left my Ford truck and car trailer, I saw a Ford dealership.  I went to the service department and explained how I had gotten stuck on the interstate, I would not be able to continue driving on the interstate until it was plowed and it warmed up, could they please replace the brake pads on my Ford truck?  They agreed.

I got my Toyota truck back onto the car trailer and strapped down.  I drove the Ford truck and car trailer to the Ford dealership, and unhooked the car trailer.  My brake appointment was at 10:30 a.m.  I was thinking, I already paid $350 for the tow, I had already been quoted $485 for the brake work at the Ford dealer in Dickinson, I wonder what will happen with the brake work here in Montana.

I thought, this could have turned out much worse.  I could have slid down the road shoulder embankment into the ravine with my Ford truck, Toyota truck, and car trailer, damaging or totaling each of them.  What would have the tow fees been like on that?  What if I had made it up to the top of the hill, what would it have been like going on a steep downhill that had not been plowed yet with 6,500 lbs pushing behind you.

I called State Farm Insurance, and they said yes, my Ford truck had tow insurance, State Farm Insurance would pay for the $350 tow charges since I got towed to the nearest town.  When I got my Ford truck back from the small Ford dealer in Montana, it was only $265 for replacing all four brake pads.  In Dickinson, the dealer had quoted me $485, which is why I put off having it done.

At this point, I talked to this small Ford dealership in Montana about getting the CV joints replaced on my Dodge truck.  They said parts and labor, $500.  I had been quoted by the Dodge dealer in Dickinson, $785.

Besides all the bad things that happened, State Farm agreed to pay for the $350 tow charges, and I saved $220 on the brake repair.

Almost Getting Caught By The Drug Task Force In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In 2011, at the second oil field service company that I worked for in Dickinson, about 50% of the employees were illegal drug users.  Several of the employees were currently on probation.  More than several of the employees did not have a driver’s license.

After I got the crew truck loaded in the morning with equipment and material, and sometimes had to hook up a trailer, I would leave the company yard to go pick up two or three crew workers who did not have a driver’s license.  After work, I would have to drop these crew workers off.

On the long drives to the job sites in the morning, I would listen to the crew workers talk about how drunk they got last night, how high they got last night, what drugs they did last night, what women they went home with last night.  The talk was mostly funny and entertaining.

At the job sites, when we were tying rebar, or setting concrete forms, there was more talk about each crew worker’s adventures.  How they got caught for burglary, how they got caught for possession of drugs, the police chases, their sentences, their restitution, what each of their probation officers was like.

On Friday, one or two of the crew workers would plead with me to please stop at Wal-Mart on the way into town so that they could cash their pay check.  Sometimes, they would plead with me to stop at the post office so that they could pick up a package of illegal drugs, and I would tell them no.  Half of these crew workers, they spent all of their time talking about, thinking about, and trying to get high.

After working for this oil field service company for several months, I was in a bar in Dickinson one evening playing pool, when in walked a man about 40 years old wearing a hat that said “Mason” on it.  I was thinking to myself, a brick mason would not wear a hat that said “Mason” on it.  This “Mason” was wearing jeans, white tennis shoes, and a t-shirt.  He was not sweaty, filthy, or dirty.  There was a strange looking younger man with him, that was small, who had blond hair, and crooked teeth.

This “Mason” walked right over to where I was, and he wanted to play pool.  I listened to him talk.  He said that he was from Ohio, very near Kentucky.  He said that he was working on a school project in Dickinson.  I asked him if he had found a place to live, and he said that the company he was working for let him stay in the company shop building.  He talked a little bit about the work he was doing, without me asking.  He appeared to know a little about masonry, but a brick mason would not have talked about masonry at all.

He started talking to this other guy playing pool about getting some drugs.  This “Mason” did not look like or act like a drug user, nor did he look like or act like a mason.  I suspected that he was an undercover police officer.  He went on talking with the people playing pool.  He kept returning to the subject of drugs, wanting to buy drugs.  After about forty minutes, I wanted to give him the phone number of one of the crew workers that used drugs, just to get him to shut up and go away, whether he was a cop or not.  I thought that it would be funny.  I got my phone out, and looked at my contact list, I was just about ready to give him a phone number to call, I hesitated, and I did not.

In giving the “Mason” the phone number of the crew worker that I had in mind, who was already on probation for drug offenses, I thought that this crew worker would be suspicious right away that he was a cop, and tell him to fuck off.  I did not know if this “Mason” was a police officer or not, he acted like one.

I thought about it later that night, and the next day.  I began to realize that giving that “Mason” a phone number to call, if he was a police officer, the drug task force would probably try to charge me with conspiracy to traffic narcotics, a four to ten year prison sentence.

I did not use illegal drugs, I did not sell illegal drugs, I was not involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs, I did not have any criminal record.  I came to Dickinson to work in the oil field, which was what I was doing.  The company that I worked for hired people that used illegal drugs and people with criminal records because they were tolerant and these were the people that they could get.  I had to work with these people every day, pick some of them up in the morning in the company truck, and drop them off after work, otherwise I would not have had involvement with these people.  Somehow, probably because of my association with these people, the undercover drug task force police officer came up to me and kept asking about getting drugs.  I didn’t realize that giving him the phone number of some person that was a drug user, would be enough for me to go to prison, but that is exactly what the drug task force does.

I talked to the company owner the following day, and the crew worker whose phone number I had almost given out.  The company owner said that yes, it probably was an undercover police officer.  The crew worker said, you asshole, why would you give him my number, he probably was a cop?  I said because I thought it was funny.  The crew worker said, oh don’t worry, I would have told him to fuck off, I could tell if he was a cop,  only a cop would start talking out in the open like that.

To this day, this still makes me mad.  The asshole drug task force people in Dickinson trying to entrap me into some conspiracy to traffic narcotics charge.  They are such assholes, they don’t even care if I had no involvement in using, selling, or trafficking narcotics.  These people, are worse than the criminals.

Thank God I Didn’t Have Health Insurance In Dickinson, North Dakota

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When I first came to work in Dickinson in 2011, I worked May through December for two different oil field service companies.  The first company that I worked for, I began to have a little bit of pain in my hips at the end of the day from walking around all day on rock scoria.  At many of the oil well locations, the rock scoria ranged from golf ball size to soft ball size, and after ten hours of stepping on rocks the size of soft balls, it became painful.

The second company that I worked for, I was too enthusiastic about getting things done and carrying things that were too heavy for one person to carry.  At my own business that I operated in Idaho from 2007 through 2011, I carried heavy things all day, and at the end of the day my back hurt.  But after sleeping all night, I was O.K. in the morning.  At the second oil field service company that I worked for in Dickinson, my back problems got worse day by day.

In November of 2011, the company that I worked for was doing large concrete pours.  After working twelve hours, and completing the last section of the concrete pour one day, the twenty foot long power screed quit working, its motor would not start.  Instead of vibrating itself across the concrete to level it off, it was sitting there in the middle not going anywhere.  It was many miles from Dickinson, 7:00 p.m., dark, with several concrete trucks backed up waiting to empty the last of the concrete.  We got two people on one end, me and another person on the other end, and we tried to pull the power screed back and forth and forward to level off the concrete.  It was double railed, too heavy, and had too much resistance to pull it by hand.  I hurt my back some standing on one end of it to lift it up and carry it out of the concrete pour area without stepping in the concrete.

I had seen an approximately twenty foot section of black steel schedule 80 pipe laying on the ground at the edge of the location.  Nobody wanted to have anything to do with that piece of pipe, it must have weighed about 300 lbs.  I dragged the pipe across the site with no one helping me, back to the concrete pour, hurting my back some more.  I hurt my back some more getting it out across the concrete with no one helping me.  The owner of the company did make three more people get on each end of that pipe with me and screed out the concrete, pulling it back and forth, and pushing it forward.  The concrete was finished off without any defect at all.

My back was not better the next day, it was not better after several days.  I said to the owner of the company that I could not do the work any more. He said O.K., get your camper off the company property as soon as possible.  I moved my camper  onto a friend’s property in Dickinson.  I thought that in a week or so I would be O.K., and that I would get another job in Dickinson.  I was not O.K. after a week, I had a lot of pain standing up, and I could not walk more than about thirty feet without holding on to something.

I called the North Dakota unemployment/disability telephone number, and I explained that my back problems had gotten worse and worse working for a company until I could not do the work any more.  I thought that I would be O.K. in a week or so, but I was not O.K.  The North Dakota unemployment/disability woman on the phone said, you quit your job, you are not entitled to anything.  I did not think that was correct.  I did not file any disability/injury claim when I was working for the company because I did not think that I had sustained any disability/injury.  I thought that I would be O.K., but I was wrong.  I didn’t want to hire an attorney, I just wanted to go back to my home in Idaho.  I thought that I would be better in a month or so.

I drove back to Idaho to my home in a rural farming area.  For the first month, I lay in bed about twenty hours each day.  My hips hurt and throbbed most of the time, which I thought was due to my back problems.  I had a hard time standing up long enough to wash a dish or plate at the kitchen sink.  I had a very hard time getting into and out of my truck.  On a good day, I would try to go to the grocery store, but I would have to hold onto a shopping cart the whole time after getting out of my truck in the parking lot, in order to walk, and I was in a lot of pain which got worse the longer I was standing.

In January of 2012 I began going to a chiropractor.  I had back X-Rays taken.  The first chiropractor that I went to was not very much help.  After about seven treatments, he even started to suspect and suggest that I might have something wrong with my hips, maybe I needed hip replacement.  I did not have health insurance.  The only way that I could afford hip replacement was if I sold my house to get the money for surgery, which I wasn’t about to do.

I sought out the oldest and most experienced chiropractor in the area.  On the first visit to this second chiropractor, after looking at my back X-Rays and examining me, he said, you have what is called antalgia, it is the most common back problem there is, it means “leaning to one side”.  When you have a damaged area on your spine or disc, your spine will try to lean away from the damaged area.

The second chiropractor that I went to, spent over an hour trying to straighten out my back on my first visit.  He put a kind of hot towels/blankets on my back to relax it for about ten minutes, then he physically pulled my back lengthwise to straighten it, both altogether, and vertebrae by vertebrae.  Then I was laying on my back, he was talking to me, articulating my right leg, and he asked me if I had any knee problems before and I said no, just then he yanked my right leg fairly hard, and my back went “Pop!”  I started laughing, and I said you distracted me, you probably won’t ever be able to pop my back like that again.  He said that’s O.K., sometimes it only takes once like that.  I could tell that he had helped a lot during that first visit.  He only charged $45.

I went back to this second chiropractor about five more times.  I got better and better with each treatment.  I looked forward to these treatments, he spent about an hour each treatment pulling my back straight, trying to “pop” every vertebrae apart one by one.  As my back got better, my hips hurt less and less.  He only charged me $45 for these hour visits, but I paid him more money than this, because I was aware that other chiropractors charge about $45 for fifteen minute treatments.

In April of 2012, I first tried to walk one lap around a grass athletic field, and I just barely did it, my hips and back hurt the longer I was standing.  In a week of trying, I got to where I could walk several laps around the athletic field, but my back hurt the longer I was standing.  It took me all of 2012 to work at getting better.  I became aware that I did not have hip problems, my hip pain was mostly related to my back pain.

In early 2013, I got to where I was 85% recovered from my back injury.  I had learned that I needed to do a variety of back strengthening exercises so that the many different kinds of muscles in my back would keep my back straight.  I came to realize that though my arms, shoulders, and legs had been strong, and allowed me to pick up and carry heavy things, my back never had been very strong, and this was the part of me that gave out.

In talking to an older woman who had broken her back and later recovered from it, she told me that if I would start taking glucosamine, glucosamine sulfate, or glucosamine with chondroiten, I would notice a difference in about one week.  I started taking the supplement glucosime, which you can buy in most grocery stores, and I recovered to about %100 by the Spring of 2013.  In May of 2013, I was back in Dickinson working for a construction company, having to do physical labor all day, without having physical problems or any pain.

I am very grateful that I did not have any health insurance when I got injured, because I am almost certain that an orthopedic surgeon would have insisted that I needed to have both my hips replaced, and probably also that I needed to have a spinal fusion.  I am not a doctor, I didn’t know about these things, I would have believed what a doctor would have told me.  It was a good thing that I didn’t have money for surgery or health insurance, and I had to get better without surgery.  It is now five years later from my back injury, and I don’t have any back pain, back problems, hip pain, or hip problems.

Looking back on everything that happened, especially if you are an older worker, if you are at work and you hurt your knee or back, you should quickly decide if you need to inform your employer of this injury, because if you don’t inform your employer right away, and your knee or back injury turns out to not go away, and prevents you from working, North Dakota workers compensation and North Dakota disability people will deny your injury claim because you didn’t report it right when it happened.  I was out of work without any pay for at least four months, and was unable to do physical labor jobs for more than one year.

Watford City Police Chief Arthur Walgren Resigns, February 2017

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I was shocked and disappointed to read the February 6, 2017 Williston Herald newspaper article titled “Watford City police chief resigns”.  I thought that the Watford City Police Department was well run, unified, and all on the same page.  What happened, what was this about?

In January 2017, Police Chief Walgren logged into Assistant Police Chief Jesse Wellen’s e-mail account, and sent an internal e-mail to the entire police department saying that he was coming out of the closet as a homosexual.  It was meant as a prank.

No police officers complained, but city officials found out about the e-mail as Assistant Police Chief Jesse Wellen tried to find out who the culprit was.  The “city officials” once they found out about the e-mail, decided that it was “inappropriate” and “wasn’t going to be tolerated”, and to suspend the Police Chief without pay.

I don’t even know where to begin.  On a scale of 1 to 10 of what police officers have to deal with every day, this is about a “2”.  The police officers know, that an e-mail like this is most likely a prank, and if it was true, so what, big deal.

Most police officers, corrections officers, paramedics, firefighters, and military service members that make a career as a first responder have a sense of what is a big deal and what is not a big deal.  Someone getting shot, stabbed, burned, losing a limb, that is a big deal.  A stupid prank, not a big deal.  If a first responder is going to get upset about every small thing, they are going to be upset all day, every day, and probably have a short career.  But the newspaper article said that no police officers complained.  Good.

I wish that the “city officials” in Watford City would have looked at the “big picture”.  Is the crime under control in Watford City?  Are there complaints against the police department by citizens?  Are there internal complaints within the police department?  Are they unable to hire and retain police officers?

I had to deal with Watford City police officers about three times in 2015, and about six times in 2016.  I would say that crime was very under control in Watford City, I didn’t have any complaints against the officers, I never detected any dissent among the officers, and all the officers appeared to get along.  This is probably why the Police Chief felt it was O.K. to play this joke within his department, everything was going O.K., and everyone was getting along.

I believe that the Watford City Police Department was well run.  I met Police Chief Walgren once in 2016, he was very mild-mannered, alert to what was going on, intelligent, and to the point.  I don’t know what the “city officials” in Watford City were thinking, I don’t think they were thinking.

It would have been a good idea for the “city officials” to offer the counsel, “Please refrain from logging into other people’s e-mail accounts, it could create problems, you can see that can’t you?  Pranks of this sort could result in a formal complaint, and some type of legal action.  Please refrain from pranks like this.”  This counsel could have been given verbally.  This would have been appropriate for a city employee on their first offense, especially since a good job was being done overall.

I bet everyone in Watford City will begin to wish that a big deal hadn’t been made about this.  I know I wish it hadn’t.

I Can’t Believe Women Are Like This In Dickinson, North Dakota, I Couldn’t Even Make This Up

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I was looking up something on the internet, when I stumbled upon a divorce case from the Dickinson, North Dakota area that made it to the Supreme Court of North Dakota.  I was reading the statement of fact summary from this case, and I couldn’t believe it, I could not have made this up, it was so horrible.  I want to tell about this case, but I don’t want to use the people’s names.  Even without using these people’s names, some older local people will know who these people are.

In 2009, a local man from the Dickinson area, decided to get married for the third time, at the age of approximately 51.  The woman he wanted to marry was approximately 48 years old, and this would be her fourth marriage.

The man was from a farming and ranching family.  It was not stated outright that he had inherited land.  It was stated that from about 1976 through 1996 he had worked on oil drill rigs to make money to help support his farming operation.  At the time of his 2009 marriage, he owned approximately 4,000 acres of land.

On the 4,000 acres of land, he raised cattle. He also allowed rock scoria mining to be performed on the land which provided additional money.  The determination of assets, liabilities, and income was straightforward, but lengthy.  At the time of marriage, the land was valued at over $3 million, but there were almost $1 million in loans against the land, farm equipment, and cattle.  One recent year of gross income from farming and ranching operations was approximately $250,000, but all the operating expenses totaled $500,000 that year.

The wife at the time of marriage, was employed at a fairly high level local government job that paid $60,000 per year.  Her assets were $100,000 in a government retirement account, and a six year old automobile.

The farmer had adult children from a previous marriage, and the woman had adult children from a previous marriage.  The farmer said that he had discussed with the woman, having a prenuptial agreement in their discussions about getting married.  When he asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement, she tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills.  It was documented fact that he found her nearly dead in a cemetery and he barely got her to St. Josephs Hospital in Dickinson in time to save her life.  She was hospitalized for several days.

The farmer felt so bad about it, he didn’t ask her again to sign a prenuptial agreement, and he went ahead and married her.  Shortly after getting married, the woman quit her job because she said that is was too stressful.  He did not ask her to get a job.  He had a cleaning woman that he paid to clean the house, but his wife let her go.  His wife chose to take care of the house work.  He added his wife to his checking account, and all of their bills, all of her bills, and whatever she wanted or needed was taken out of his checking account.

During their almost four year marriage, there were periods when his wife would frequently get drunk at home, and leave to continue to go drink elsewhere, hitting things with her vehicle, and being found later drunk in her vehicle.  She attempted to commit suicide approximately three more times.  One of these times, a group of hunters found her passed out laying face down in a puddle in the woods out in the middle of nowhere.  Each of these attempted suicides required several days of hospitalization, observation, and psychiatric evaluation.  The farmer would sometimes have to follow her footprints at night through the snow across the farm to find out what happened to her, only to find that she had doubled back and was hiding in the house in a closet.

The farmer was called to bars to come get his wife because she was overly intoxicated, too drunk to drive, and kissing other men.  When he would come to get her, she would walk away, not go with him, and go someplace else to buy more alcohol.

The last straw was when his wife had been yelling and cursing at him all day and all night, and slamming doors in the house as hard as she could more than a hundred times during the night.  They separated.

In all the discovery of fact in this court case, there was not one allegation of anything wrong ever having been done by the farmer.  He did not ask his wife to get a job, he did not ask her to help very much doing farm work, he had a house cleaner which his wife let go, he had paid farm workers to do the farm work.  The farmer paid for all of their bills and for all of her bills.  The farmer had to take her at least four times to the hospital after she tried to commit suicide.  He tried to deal with his wife getting drunk at home, leaving home to drink more, and then having to go and try to find her and bring her home.  He finally had enough when she went on a tirade against him all day and all night.

Of course, of course, she wanted half of everything he had in the divorce.  She came into the marriage with a 2003 Honda, he paid for everything during their marriage, why shouldn’t she be entitled to 2,000 acres of land and his truck after almost four years of marriage?

The lower court and the Supreme Court of North Dakota did not see things the same way as the wife.  The courts cited many legal precedents and legal considerations in determining the division of marital assets: what assets each person brought into the marriage, what income each person earned prior to marriage and during the marriage, what each person contributed to the marital assets during marriage, what income earning potential each person had after the marriage.

The courts determined that the wife was entitled to approximately $161,000, minus approximately $28,000 for expenses.  The court determined that based on her previous employment, and the recent employment that she had undertaken, she should be able to support herself.

Decline In People, Employment, Business, And Real Estate In Dickinson, North Dakota

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This last week of February 2017, I saw a decline in people, employment, business, and real estate in Dickinson, North Dakota.

In the business that I work for, there has been a very sharp decrease in work over the past year.  Early this week, I had to telephone the manager of a company here in Dickinson that I have been dealing with for a year and a half.  The owner of this business answered this manager’s cell phone and said that this manager was no longer with the company.  This was upsetting to me because this manager was very hard working, he put in many hours of overtime though he was on salary, and he had a wife and three children.  Knowing the manager, the company that he worked for, and what was going on at this company, I believe that he was let go due to a decline in business and an attempt to cut costs.  This manager and his family were not from North Dakota.  This manager was positive, upbeat, intelligent, and fun to work with.  I am sorry that he is gone.

There is a young woman in Dickinson that I like, that I had included in my blog post titled “List Of Attractive Women In Dickinson, North Dakota”.  I had not seen her for several months, and I was becoming concerned that something had happened to her too.  I have seen her father twice at the West River Community Center in the past several months, and once at an event in Dickinson, but not her.  In the past several months when I saw her father, he did not appear to be his normal self, he seemed unhappy and angry. She should have been at this event recently, because she is a human resources person at a company that was involved in the event.  This week I looked at her Linkedin.com page, and she is no longer working for this company in Dickinson, and she has moved to Montana.

This young woman who was a human resources person with a company here in Dickinson, I can’t believe that she isn’t working there any more.  I thought that she was very happy there and was well liked.  She was very pleasant, positive, intelligent, and funny.  I thought that she made that company better for being there, and made people want to work there.  She graduated from Dickinson State University a couple of years ago, and she has many friends in Dickinson.  Her family is not from North Dakota, her father came to Dickinson to work when the oil boom started.  Her mother, father, and younger sister are still living here, I can’t believe that she left.  I don’t think that she would have left Dickinson unless she lost her job, and I could only see that happening due to the company she worked for downsizing due to reduced work.

This morning I saw another young woman that I liked, that I hadn’t seen for several months.  I met her in 2014 where she worked.  She was a sophomore at Dickinson State University then.  She wasn’t from Dickinson, but she came to Dickinson because there was an oil boom, and she could work and go to school.  She recently completed her degree at Dickinson State University.  I asked her what she had been doing, and she told me that she was moving to Colorado next week.  I talked to her for a while, one of the things that I said was that I couldn’t believe that human resources young woman that we both knew, moved to Montana a couple of months ago.  This young woman that was moving to Colorado told me that she was so looking forward to getting out of Dickinson.  A woman that we know, asked her if her boyfriend was moving to Colorado with her, and she said no, he moved back to the state where he came from several months ago.

I was sad that she was leaving, I like her.  I felt bad for her that she had been living, working, and going to school in Dickinson for the past four or five years and now she is leaving her friends and everyone she knows, to go someplace where she doesn’t know anyone.  It is normal for people to leave and go someplace else when they graduate from college, but for the past eight years, Dickinson was a place that people from all over the United States tried to get to because of the many job openings and higher rate of pay.

Several times this week, I looked at job posting websites like Indeed.com, Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, and North Dakota Job Service for job listings in Dickinson.  There were not very many job listings in Dickinson, and the jobs that were listed were not very good jobs as far as desirability, pay, job security, or job longevity.

On Sunday I read the Dickinson Press Newspaper.  In the classified section under housing, there was a 2 bedroom/1 bathroom house for rent for $600 per month, and one bedroom apartments for rent for $425 per month.  Three years ago, this house rental listing would have been $2,500 per month, and this apartment rental listing would have been $1,500 per month.

This Sunday edition of the Dickinson Press Newspaper came with a Home And Land Company Real Estate Guide.  This real estate guide from the Home And Land Company, had as many homes listed for sale now, as the whole entire Real Estate Guide for all the realtors in Dickinson used to have a couple of years ago.  There were many very nice homes for sale, some of the nicest homes in Dickinson, that must have belonged to the highest paid people in Dickinson.  It appears that many of the highest paid people in Dickinson must have lost their jobs, or had their business income greatly reduced in order to have to sell such nice homes.  There are plenty of working class people homes for sale too.

These people that I know losing their jobs or leaving Dickinson, the lack of very many good jobs posted in Dickinson, the greatly reduced rent of rental housing, and the greatly increased number of homes for sale, show that work and business has slowed down in Dickinson.

Confusion About Proposed “Davis Refinery” West Of Belfield, North Dakota

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I had some confusion about the proposed “Davis Refinery” west of Belfield, North Dakota.  I spent several hours trying to find more information.  Here is what I found:

  1.   According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global: “Meridian Energy Group was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.”  I also found on the the website gust.com, that Meridian Energy Group was founded in 2012, and was based in Irvine, California.  (Meridian Energy Group is the owner/developer of the proposed “Davis Refinery”.)
  2.  According to the website Bizapedia: “Davis Family Partners LLP is a North Dakota LLP filed on February 26, 2013….The company’s principal address is 18493 Ray Ridge Dr, Lake Oswego, OR 97034-7531….The company has 1 principal on record. The principal is Richard Palaniuk from Irvine CA.”  (Davis Family Partners LLP is said to be the largest shareholder in Meridian Energy Group.)
  3. In a July 14, 2016 press release on the Meridian Energy Group website: “The largest shareholder of Meridian is the Davis Family Partners, which was formed to handle property asset acquisition and mineral rights arising from the family’s original farming operation in Emmons County, North Dakota.”
  4. In a July 14, 2016 press release on the Meridian Energy Group website:  “Tom Williams, Meridian’s EVP of Planning and Permitting, and who sits on the Meridian Board of Directors….Mr. Williams and his cousin, Richard Palaniuk, are the current managing partners of Davis Family Partners.”
  5. In a July 14, 2016 press release on the Meridian Energy Group website: “William Prentice, Meridian’s CEO added, “Meridian was actually founded by the Davis Family Partners when Mr. Williams and Mr. Palaniuk, whose family originated in Billings and Stark Counties, were back in North Dakota on family business….Tom and Richard identified and optioned the Davis Refinery site at the time.””
  6. Performing a Google search I found:  https://www.meridianenergygroupinc.com/wp-content/…/2015/…/Meridian-Summary:  Executive Summary of the Meridian Group, Inc., Confidential Private Placement Offering Memorandum, dated May 4, 2015, where it is stated: “Meridian Energy Group, Inc. (“Meridian” or the “Company”) is a recently formed South Dakota corporation that will build and operate a crude oil refinery on a 600 acre site near Belfield, N.D., in the heart of the Bakken.  The proceeds from this Offering will provide Meridian with the working capital to acquire the necessary permits, secure project financing and perform all pre-construction activities to bring the project to “shovel ready” status.”
  7. The Dickinson Press newspaper article dated December 30, 2015, titled New Refinery Proposed In Billings County: “Billings County may soon see another diesel fuel refinery rise. California-based Meridian Energy Group Inc. is looking to build a refinery on 620 acres of land west of Belfield. It would refine crude oil produced in the Bakken.”
  8. Lauren Donovan of the Bismarck Tribune newspaper wrote an article dated January 27, 2016, titled Planned Billings County diesel refinery still needs a zoning permit:  “Meridian Energy Group Inc. says it plans to start preliminary work on a 55,000-barrel diesel refinery project between Fryburg and Belfield in that time, but so far has not made a zoning application, says deputy zoning inspector Juliana Pemberton.  Meridian’s vice president of business development, Fred Bloom, said it’s possible zoning could be accomplished within two weeks and the company could start site prep for fabrication facilities that will be used for building the refinery components….Bloom said the plan is to finalize engineering plans, begin construction on the refinery this summer and be selling diesel within two years.”
  9. Lauren Donovan of the Bismarck Tribune newspaper wrote an article dated April 5, 2016, about the difficulty in the proposed refinery getting an air quality permit:  “That proximity to Theodore Roosevelt National Park at Medora — less than 3 miles as the crow flies — is guaranteed to make the acquisition of an air quality permit a difficult process, says Craig Thorstenson, environmental engineer with the North Dakota Health Department’s air quality division….The park — home to buttes and buffalo — has a Class I air quality standard. Any new source of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate will face a federal standard to prevent significant air quality deterioration that’s far more stringent than for all other air, Thorstenson said….He said it will take as long as a year to run computer models that factor in existing pollution, new pollution from the refinery and wind and weather data.”
  10. In a July 6, 2016 press release on the Meridian Energy Group Website: “Meridian Energy Group, Inc. announced today that it received unanimous approval from the Billings County Board of County Commissioners on the Zoning Certificate and Conditional Use Permit for its proposed Davis Refinery.”
  11. If you go to the North Dakota Department of Health Air Quality website, their website states that they will review air quality permit applications in the order which they are received.  The website shows what air quality permit applications they are working on, when each of these applications was received, and the review status of each.  The website shows that the Meridian Energy Group “Davis Refinery” air quality permit application was received on 10/17/2016, but they state that this application is so complex, it could take up to one year to complete the review processes, and, as of today 2/24/2017, the status is “received” it does not show it as “under review”, they aren’t even reviewing it yet.  What this means is, if they started the air quality permit application review process today, it could take until 2/24/2018 to determine if they will issue a permit.

In the above timeline, I tried to list the key facts about the Meridian Energy Group proposed “Davis Refinery”, and provide documentation of where I got these facts.  There are a few more things that I want to cover.

Local people in the Dickinson, Belfield, and Medora area have asked the questions, has the Meridian Energy Group ever built a refinery before, and who are their investors?  The Meridian Energy Group was formed in 2012, and the Meridian Energy Group has not built a refinery before.  The Meridian Energy Group has stated that their main investor is the Davis Family Partners.

If you look up Meridian Energy, you might see that it is an electric company based in New Zealand that was founded in 1999, but this is not the Meridian Energy Group of Irvine, California.  If you looked up the Davis Family Partners or Partnership, you would see one in Austin, Delray Beach, Little Rock, Tampa, and Tuscaloosa, but these are not the Davis Family Partners LLP of North Dakota filed in 2013.

It is reported that the Dakota Prairie Refinery that was completed in 2015 on the west side of Dickinson cost $430 million to construct.  The Dakota Prairie Refinery was a joint venture between MDU Montana Dakota Utilities, WBI Energy, and Calumet Specialty Products.  The market capitalization or net worth of MDU is $5.28 billion.  The market capitalization or net worth of Calumet Specialty Products is $312 million.  After the newly completed Dakota Prairie Refinery had approximately $7 million in losses in every quarter for the first year of its operation, MDU-WBI-Calumet sold the refinery to Tesoro in June of 2016.

The Meridian Energy Group proposed “Davis Refinery” is projected to cost $900 million to construct.  The city of Belfield is eager to see the “Davis Refinery” constructed because it is expected to create 500 direct jobs during construction, and create 200 full time direct jobs to operate the refinery after it is completed.

On the Meridian Energy Group website, there is a tab for “Meridian Properties”.  If you  click on this tab, you can read the following: “Meridian is a co-founder of Meridian Properties Corporation. We will develop important industrial, commercial and residential properties on land adjacent to the Davis Refinery site…. Meridian will provide developed sites for over 1,000 residential units, ancillary commercial services such as restaurants and theaters, educational and acute care space, water and sewage treatment facilities, commercial, retail and industrial space as well as a new police and fire facility. The development will include two hotels that will house workers during refinery construction…”

I could not believe the above information.  Dickinson is about a 20 minute drive from Belfield.  Right now in Dickinson, there are approximately 1,000 newly completed apartment units that are at about 50% occupancy.  There are at least 500 new apartments that are unoccupied, not to mention the old apartments, manufactured homes, and rental homes available.

Dickinson has about twelve newly completed hotels and extended stay hotels.  Including the old hotels, Dickinson has a total of approximately 2,000 hotel rooms.  The occupancy rates of the hotels in Dickinson at this time is probably 20%.  There are at least 1,600 hotel rooms available in Dickinson.

I would not build any more residences or hotels at this time in this area.

Update 10/1/2018:  Please see the update & follow up of this blog post: 

Update On Confusion About Proposed Davis Refinery West Of Belfield, North Dakota

What A Day Is Like Working For An Oil Field Service Company In Dickinson, North Dakota

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Let us say that it is December and it is 0 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  I would wake up at about 5:45 a.m., and put on wool socks, sweat pants, sweat shirt, overalls with a winter lining, steel toe work boots, and then a heavy winter jacket.  This is at least $350 in clothing.  It would have been about $700 in clothing if it were FR “Fire Resistant” rated, which some companies require.

I had a large duffle bag which contained my hard hat, safety glasses, sun glasses, gloves, climb harness, towel, roll of paper towels, bottles of water, map, pen, calculator, and paper.  I had taken a black permanent marker and wrote my name and phone number very clearly on the outside of my duffle bag.  My climb harness, lanyard, and carabiner was at least $200, and I wanted my duffle bag full of stuff back if it fell off or out of the truck.  I had to carry all my personal gear in a duffle bag, because you never knew for certain what truck you would be driving or riding in, or if the truck you planned on taking would be gone.  Also, I was prepared to say at any time, “Pull over and let me the fuck out of this truck.”

I would get to the company shop at about 6:30 a.m.  I would check the engine oil on “my truck”.  I would check the engine oil and fuel level on the truck generator.  I would check the hydraulic fluid level on the bucket lift.  I would bleed off the water on the air compressor tank.  I would check the gasoline cans and diesel cans on the truck.  After discussing where we were going and what we were doing that day, we would load whatever parts, supplies, material, equipment, and special tools we needed that day.  We might have to hook an equipment trailer up to the truck.

We would drive to a truck stop to get diesel fuel in the truck, diesel in the diesel cans, gasoline in the gas cans, and water for the water jug.  Everyone would buy food, drinks, and snacks if they needed to.  There would be no other place that day to stop for food or drinks.  You could never be completely certain that you would be stopping to get fuel in the morning, so you had to come to work with some food and drinks.  After the truck stop, it would be time to go pick up the workers with DUIs.  You waited to do this last, so that they would hopefully be up and ready to go by this time.

The workers with the DUIs that you had to go and pick up, would have a strong stench of alcohol and cigarettes from being at the bar all night, staying up all night, and rolling out of bed at 7:00 a.m. wearing the same clothes from yesterday to come and get in the truck.  They would begin telling about the girl they went home with from the bar last night, but would interrupt themselves to beg to stop at the convenience store.  You had better stop or they will be complaining all day, and possibly run you over with a piece of equipment.

While driving to the jobsite, the drug addicts and DUI people would begin exchanging oxycontin and hydrocodone in a way that you weren’t supposed to see or hear, but how could you not see or hear, they are sitting next to you and behind you.  Keep in mind, that many oil field service companies participate in the “Axiom” program, where a positive drug test is reported to all the other oil field service companies, and you are barred from working in the oil field for three years.  If you are offered a hydrocodone, and you take one, and then the drug addicts who gave it to you go and report you so that you are required to take a drug test, do not take a drug test, leave the company without saying a word.  You could go and get another job, but if you test positive, you are banned from working in the oil field for three years.

At the jobsite, the first thing that you have to do is fuel the equipment: generators, bobcat, lull, snorkel lift, backhoe, etc., but make sure the DUI people and drug addict people, who are either hung over or high, are putting diesel fuel in diesel equipment, and gasoline in gas equipment, and of course with a lit cigarette hanging out of their mouth.  Smoking is not permitted on oil field locations.  You need a “hot work permit” from the oil field location owner prior to having any open flame on the location.

Remember on a remote jobsite, you are on your own.  Always expect your coworkers to run you over with any piece of equipment either on accident or on purpose.  Always expect your coworkers to drop something on you, cause something to fall into you, or hit you with something.  Identify something on your truck to use as a weapon, like a pipe or pipe wrench, that you can hit your coworkers in the head with.  Most of your work crew will be convicted criminals, drug addicts, and alcoholics, so being on a jobsite with them, is the same as being in prison.

The work that you might do at your jobsite: install fencing, a cattle guard, spill containment barrier; dig trenching and install conduit for electrical and controls; set rebar, set forms, and pour concrete; erect a steel building; assemble and set a pump jack in place.

Depending on your crew, you can look at the work plans, measure locations and perform layout, begin dragging equipment and material where it needs to be, all on your own, while others are happy to operate the backhoe or skid steer loader.  I preferred to find an area of responsibility and do it well, in order to be left alone, and other workers would identify another part of the work that needed to be done and complete that in order to be left alone.  Ideally, I would do layout, a couple of people would begin tying rebar, and a couple of people would start setting forms.  It never failed that a couple of workers would stand there watching.  Eventually you could ask the stand still workers to help carry forms and rebar to where they needed to be, once things got underway.

Each of the workers had some ability, some more than others.  Some were O.K. operating equipment and that is what they liked to do, some were good at digging with shovels and carrying things and that is what they liked to do, some were good at assembling things and that is what they liked to do.  Almost everyone figured out that it was better to get to work doing something that you liked to do, rather than standing there and being told to do something that you didn’t like to do.  The crews were like pirates sometimes, everyone going and doing what they wanted to do, and everything getting done, without orders.

It was very cold in the winter.  Hopefully there would not be any wind.  Hopefully it would warm up from 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning to 20 degrees Fahrenheit during the afternoon.  If you could keep busy doing something once you got out of the truck, you could stay warm, you might even start sweating with all your winter clothes on.  One of the most dreaded things, was having to poop, because there were no portable toilets most of the time.  You had to walk out into a field with a roll of paper towels, take off your jacket, unfasten and drop your winter lined overalls, squat, and try to hurry up and poop without falling over or pooping on your bulky overalls around your ankles.  Make sure your wallet, car keys, and cell phone didn’t fall out of your overalls, they probably did.

Concrete pours would sometimes cause us to remain at an oil field location until 10:00 p.m. to finish it and cover it.  Then drive an hour back to Dickinson, and drop people off, before heading to the shop to put the truck away, maybe having to unhook a trailer.  The longest day that I can remember, we left the shop at 7:00 a.m., we worked at about five locations that were pretty far away, we got done at the last location at 2:00 a.m., and made it back to the shop at 4:00 a.m.  That was working 21 hours straight.  Wireline operators and casing installers often have to work that many hours straight.

Most days, me and the other workers looked forward all day long to making it back to Dickinson that night.  We were cold, tired, aching, injured, and hungry.  We had been outside all day, probably 12 hours.  My feet, ankles, hips, and back were killing me from walking around all day on big chunks of scoria rock carrying heavy things.  Most of the oil field workers in Dickinson experienced the exact same thing, or worse.  Going to the bars and restaurants, this was the only time the workers would see or speak to a woman all day long, and the women bartenders and waitresses were shitty, there were hundreds of men, why be nice?  The Dickinson police would wait around the bars and restaurants to give the oil field trash DUIs.

A Dickinson Resident’s Justification For The Greed In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I finally heard from a Dickinson resident’s own mouth, the justification for the greed in Dickinson, North Dakota.

I have known an older retired gentleman in Dickinson for a year.  He and his family are from Dickinson.  He owns several properties in Dickinson through inheritance.

This older gentleman discusses religion with me most of the times that I see him.  I don’t mind discussing religion with people, though I am beginning to change my mind.  I am beginning to see that often times when people are eager to discuss religion, they are interested in trying to persuade you to their way of thinking.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have tried to tell me that when someone dies, they are dead in the ground until the resurrection.  Other Christians say that when someone dies, they go to heaven.  Other Christians say that you can’t go to heaven unless you are Baptized.  Some Christians say that the Sabbath day must be observed on Saturday instead of Sunday.  The people expressing their opinions on religion, are often so certain that they are right, that they feel they need to convince everyone else to believe what they believe.

I listen to the older gentleman from Dickinson, who tries to point out a truer interpretation of some of the passages from the Bible, because I don’t mind hearing what he has to say.  The past several times that I have met him, I have tried to discuss what he thinks about how Dickinson has treated out of state workers.  He recognizes that there was a lot of greed in Dickinson, and that the Bible addresses greed over and over again.  I think that he even said that the term “usury” in the Bible, does not just mean lending out money at interest, it means any manner of taking advantage of someone else, which is what I believe.

However, it was very illuminating when this older gentleman began to express the view, “These people that came here from out of state that aren’t doing well, you can kind of tell that they have brought it on themselves, can’t you?  By the way they were living, the things that they were doing, they weren’t right with God.”

At this point, what I was thinking in my mind, was that in 2009, the economy got bad in the area of Idaho where I lived.  The young male workers, and the older male workers who had wives and children, thought that they could support themselves and their families better by going to work out of state.  The economy got bad in many places in the United States in about 2007.  That is why you see vehicle license plates from Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho in Dickinson, North Dakota.

The older gentleman from Dickinson continued to explain himself, he had the belief that all of the out of state workers that came to work in North Dakota, must have done something wrong in order to deserve their financial difficulties.  I said, “Don’t you remember the Book of Job in the Bible?  Job was a good person in the sight of God, though he allowed Satan to test Job with every type of torment and calamity.  The human witnesses to Job’s problems, believed that Job must have done something wrong to deserve all the bad things that happened to him.  But this was not the case.”  I said to the older gentleman from Dickinson, “I thought that that was the point of the Book of Job, to let people know that you can’t assume that bad things happen to someone because they must have done something wrong.”

I gave some examples of people that I have known for a many years, who are honest, hardworking, moral, and ethical, yet their life has been a constant struggle and difficult since childhood.  Other people that I have known for many years, are less hardworking, lazy, selfish, and inconsiderate, yet they have had easy lives since childhood.  What kind of life you get, is not based on how “good” a person you are.

I said that it was very illuminating what this Dickinson resident elaborated on.  Because he and his family were doing well financially, he and his family were righteous and good, whereas these people who came from out of state to work in Dickinson who were not doing well financially, must have been living immorally.

The only difference that I am aware of, is that there was an Oil Boom in North Dakota, instead of Arizona, Utah, or Idaho.  If it would have been the other way around, North Dakotans might have had to travel out of state to go work in Idaho.

What I finally heard from a Dickinson resident’s own mouth, was why they felt they were entitled and justified in treating out of state workers so badly in many different ways.  To take advantage of them so egregiously in the price of housing.  To disrespect and mistreat the workers with experience, training, and education.  These people from out of state were not “good” people, they must have done something wrong in order to cause the financial need for them to have to go work out of state.

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear And Everything You Read In Dickinson, Watford City, And Williston, North Dakota

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The Oil Boom is over in North Dakota.  It has been over for at least a year and a half.

I did not like it when lies were told in order to lure people here during the Oil Boom, and I don’t like it when lies are told now in order to prop up businesses and real estate.

The Big Lie that was told to lure people here during the Oil Boom was, “Everybody is making $100,000 per year in the oil field.”  I have lived in Dickinson for over four years now, and I only ever met three people who made close to $100,000 per year in the oil field:  a drill rig boss, a wireline operator, and a union electrician.

The second Big Lie that was going around was, “This Oil Boom is going to last for twenty years.”  This lie was told in order to get the out of state workers to bring their families here and buy a home here.

These two Big Lies hurt people.  I met many truck drivers that were never paid during the Oil Boom, and they left North Dakota worse off than when they came.  I met many other out of state workers who left North Dakota broke.

Currently, the local people who own property like to say, “Things are starting to pick up again, the oil field work is coming back.”  No, it is not. The local people keep saying this because they don’t want all the out of state workers to leave, and cause the local businesses to fail and real estate prices to collapse.

The local people, business owners, and real estate agents don’t like what I have to say and what I write.  I think, “Don’t try to save yourself from going broke by tricking other people.  What you are doing is no better than picking someone’s pocket or perpetuating some kind of fraud on other people.  Don’t think that there is no harm in it, because there is.”

What I have seen in Dickinson and Williston for the past several years, is that a business will make a big deal about advertising jobs or announcing a job fair.  Often times, this is mostly propaganda in order to promote a business or make a business appear to be doing well.  My room mate falls for this every single time without fail.

If you want free advertising, because your business is doing so poorly that you can’t afford to pay for advertising, contact the chamber of commerce, North Dakota Job Service, and the newspaper, and say that you want to have a job fair.  All the stupid people in Dickinson and Williston get so excited when there is a job fair, just like when a state lottery jack pot gets big, they think “This is my big chance!”

If you are a good mechanic, good crane operator, good heavy equipment operator, good plumber, good electrician, or good auto body person, you already know that you can walk into any business and talk to the owner or manager, and probably get a job in Dickinson or Williston within a couple of days, if you are good at what you do.  This does not work if you are an idiot, a drug fiend, or so severely overweight and out of shape that you have a hard time walking and standing upright.

The people that get excited about a job fair, are people that normally can’t get hired, and they think of a job fair as an occasion where the normal rules don’t apply:  “They’re giving away free jobs!”, “My brother got a job, my sister got a job, my mother got a job, that guy that pushes his shopping cart around town got a job!”, “They want to fly me out to Denver for two weeks to swamper school, then when I get out I get a $1,000 bonus, and I start out at $30 per hour, they told me it didn’t matter about my hemoroids, I even showed them!”

Throw in some free hot dogs and free hamburgers, and your business will be the most widely known and successful business in town in the minds of the idiots and people who can’t get a job.  They will not realize no one got hired or one or two people got hired to work in the warehouse.

Current Indicators Of A Work Slow Down In Dickinson, North Dakota

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On Wednesday February 15 at 8:30 p.m., I went to the new Family Fare Grocery store in Dickinson, North Dakota that opened in approximately 2015.  I would estimate that the shopping area in this grocery store is 300 ft long x 200 ft wide, pretty big.  In the parking lot there were about ten vehicles.  While shopping inside, I saw two other customers.  When I went to check out, none of the cash registers had a light on, and there were no cashiers on duty, not one.  This is the first grocery store that I have ever been to in my life that did not have a least one cash register open and one cashier on duty.  Keep in mind that it was now 8:45 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and it was a good weather night, not cold and not snowing.

I went through a self-check out line to pay for my groceries.  On the way out, I looked to see if they had anyone working at their coffee shop, and there was not a soul around.  At the old Family Fare Grocery store beside Runnings, and at this new Family Fare Grocery store near Menards, I had noticed that through the latter part of 2016 and into 2017, these two stores began to minimize their staff more and more.  But not having even one cashier on duty seemed very drastic.

But if I think back a little further, the Family Fare Grocery store and the Wal-Mart in Dickinson had both been open 24 hours a day up until approximately the end of 2015.  I can remember when there used to be a long line at the check out in the Family Fare Grocery store in Dickinson at 8:30 p.m. on a week night.  I can remember when there were more shoppers in the Family Fare Grocery store in Dickinson at 2:00 a.m., than there are now at 8:30 p.m.

On Saturday afternoon February 11th, I had to go to the Ace Hardware store in Dickinson.  I regretted that I had not gone there during the week, I thought that the store would be crowded and very busy on Saturday.  When I got there, I thought that the store must have closed at noon or something, because there were no cars in the parking lot, and hardly any cars in the parking spaces in front of the store.  The store wasn’t closed.  There were only two customers inside.  Since 2011 when I first came to Dickinson, I have never seen the Ace Hardware parking lot anywhere near that vacant.

In the same shopping center where the Ace Hardware store is located, there is the King Buffet Chinese restaurant.  This has been one of the most popular restaurants in Dickinson for the past several years because it is all-you-can-eat, it is not expensive, they have a variety of food, and the food is pretty good.  In approximately 2014 this restaurant nearly doubled its size by expanding into the adjacent business spaces.  Driving by the King Buffet Chinese restaurant this past week after 8:00 p.m., the parking lot was nearly vacant, there were hardly any customers.

Throughout Dickinson, the local people who own homes here, keep saying, “The oil field work is picking up again, it is coming back.”  I see no evidence for this, the evidence shows the exact opposite.  I hate and dislike local people saying, “The oil field work is picking up again, it is coming back.”, because this is an outright lie, meant to keep people here and prevent the real estate prices from collapsing.  I don’t like people trying to lie to and trick other people for financial gain.

The only thing that I see happening, is oil production continuing at current levels, and the people involved in maintaining the current level of production keeping their jobs.  I believe that for the next several years, the number of oil well drill rigs operating in North Dakota will be between 40 to 80 drill rigs.  I don’t see any reason for a mad rush to drill as many oil wells as possible as quickly as possible, because a great number of oil wells being completed and coming into production at the same time would make an oversupply of oil, and cause an oil price drop that would make each of the new oil wells not profitable.  It seems obvious at this point, due to the current low price of oil, that oversupply of oil makes oil wells not profitable.

Because of the steady rate of oil production, and 40 to 80 drill rigs operating, there will not be a huge demand for new workers in the oil field in North Dakota in the next several years.  Many workers will not have the opportunity to work a great deal of overtime hours.  Pay will not be as high as it had been during the oil boom years of 2007 through 2015.  The decrease in pay, the decrease in the demand for housing, and people leaving the area due to the inability to find replacement jobs when jobs are lost, will make the price of housing decrease.  My guess would be that the price of housing in Dickinson will decrease 10% by the end of 2017.

Warning About Patterson Lake In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In May of 2011 when I first came to Dickinson, North Dakota to work in the oil field, I began going to Patterson Lake on the weekends.  Patterson Lake is just a few miles from downtown Dickinson.  During that summer, on the north shore of the lake where they had public parking, a beach, boat ramp, cook out grills, and campground, there would be several hundred people on Saturday and Sunday.

When I returned to Dickinson in May of 2013, I was disappointed to see that on every weekend that summer there were fewer than fifty people at Patterson Lake beach.  It was kind of lonely.  I talked to other people to ask what happened, what changed.  I came to the conclusion that the Dickinson State University girls became tired of being ogled by both the out of state oil field workers and the local men, that the out of state oil field workers became tired of the locals, and the locals became tired of the out of state oil field workers.  The DSU students, the out of state oil field workers, and the locals all quit going to Patterson Lake in the summer.

I still enjoyed going to Patterson Lake.  I would sit in a beach chair and read, swim, cook out with friends, go kayaking, and walk my dog.  But often times there were very few people at Patterson Lake.  On the north shore of the lake, the paved public parking area had the capacity for approximately six hundred vehicles, and there would be only six vehicles.

In 2013, I began to see some things that I didn’t like at Patterson Lake.  I would park in the nearly completely vacant main parking lot on the north shore of the lake, and walk east along the trails and along the shore line to the end of the park to follow the trail loop.  At the very last parking area, about 1/2 mile from the main parking area, fairly often there would be a parked vehicle with a couple of Hispanic males in it.  At the very last parking area, I never once in the past four years saw these people who parked like this walking, exercising, bicycling, playing frisbee, or cooking out.  What I did see, was other vehicles enter the park not slowing down for anything and drive 35 mph to 40 mph all the way back to the last parking area, and then leave within five minutes driving 35 mph all the way back out of the park, looking straight ahead not at the scenery, and not slowing down for anything.

There was no reason for adult males to be sitting in a parked car at the most distant and remote area of the park, and having other vehicles drive fast through the park to get back there, and then quickly leave, other than for drug dealing, or other illegal activity.  I didn’t like walking the trails and shore line, and on the way back come across this activity.  I felt like talking to the police about it, but I believed that I wouldn’t be telling them anything that they didn’t already know.

Sometime in 2016, improvements were made to the north side of Patterson Lake.  Two new additional children’s play grounds were constructed adjacent to the main parking area.  A wide concrete path was constructed for walking, rollerblading, and bike riding that makes a big loop through park.  In the past, most of the people that I saw walking through the park, were exercising large dogs.  Now with the new wide concrete path and new playgrounds, I have seen many more women and women with children using the park.

I had been concerned about women walking the park by themselves in the past, because of the strange males that would park and sit in their cars in the most distant and remote area of the park.  When I saw more women and women with children coming to the park and walking the new concrete paths that lead out to the distant and remote areas of the park, I was even more worried, because these women seemed to be under the impression that it was safe now.  No, it is not entirely safe.  The concrete paths are only thirty feet from the woods in areas of the park where the users are far from the parking lot, so far they can’t be seen, and so far they can’t be heard.  It is possible for a male to wait in the woods, leap out, and grab someone and drag them back into the woods, without there being any witnesses.

In the Fall of 2016, I observed an adult male at Patterson Lake that was behaving very strangely.  He was not relaxing, resting, exercising, or recreating, he was acting very agitated.  He would drive to an area of the park, look, then drive to another area of the park look, then drive on, until he made it back to the main parking area. He got out of his car and behaved strangely, he acted like he was mentally ill.

The next time that I went to Patterson Lake, I parked in the main parking area and I began writing checks to pay bills, looking up from time to time.  There was no one else on the north shore of Patterson Lake at that time.  After about fifteen minutes, I saw on the south shore of Patterson Lake something splashing in the water like a person or a large animal.  I got out of my vehicle to walk on the new concrete path down to the edge of the north shore of the lake to see what it was in the water on the south side.  I stood there and I looked and I looked, and all of a sudden about seventy feet from me, here comes that strange mentally ill man jumping out of the bushes right beside the concrete path.  I had spooked him, he had thought that I had spotted him hiding in the bushes, but I hadn’t known he was there, he startled me.

I can only guess why he was hiding in the bushes right beside the concrete path.  I wrote down the license plate number of his vehicle, a description of his vehicle, a description of him, and how he had been acting, and I gave this in writing to a Sheriffs officer.  After I left, I believe that the Sheriff officer probably ran the license plate number to see if this person had been convicted of any type of assault in the past.

I want women who visit Patterson Lake or plan on visiting Patterson Lake, to not get on the trails, shoreline, or concrete paths alone, and follow them out into a remote and hidden area.  I have been going to Patterson Lake regularly for more than four years, and I have seen strange men parked in the remote areas, and, hiding in the bushes.

Here is a video of Patterson Lake in Dickinson, North Dakota:

When Can Health Care Workers Report Someone?

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In July 2012, James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 70 others in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater pre-meditated shooting.  He was arrested outside the movie theater immediately after the shooting.  Not long after his arrest, the public defender attorneys representing James Holmes began to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

James Holmes’ defense attorneys, three psychiatrists hired by his defense attorneys, police investigators, his family members, university administrators, health care professionals, and other investigators found and reported the following facts:  James Holmes had suffered from mental illness since at least age 11 when he tried to commit suicide.  In June of 2011 at the age of 24, James Holmes enrolled as a Ph.D. student of neuroscience at the University of Colorado.  During his one year period of enrollment at the University of Colorado, James Holmes met with three different mental health professionals.  One of these mental health professionals considered placing him on an involuntary mental health hold because of his homicidal thoughts, but she did not.  During his enrollment at the University of Colorado, James Holmes expressed to  a female student that he was dating, his desire to kill people.  He made a similar statement to a male student.

One month prior to the shooting, a University of Colorado psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton believed that James Holmes was mentally ill and possibly dangerous, and at that time she reported to the University of Colorado campus police that James Holmes had made homicidal statements.  During this time, James Holmes purchased a Glock 22 pistol, a Remington 870 Express tactical shotgun, a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle, 3,000 rounds for the pistol, 3,000 rounds for the rifle, and 350 rounds for the shotgun.

A few hours before the shooting, James Holmes mailed his notebook which contained all his thoughts and plans about killing people to his psychiatrist Dr. Fenton.  A few minutes before the shooting, James Holmes called an emergency mental health crisis line to try to get help, but the crisis line disconnected him before he could speak to anyone.

In the days and weeks following the shooting, when I heard about the school psychiatrist Dr. Lynne Fenton having told the campus police that James Holmes was mentally ill, possibly dangerous, and that he had made homicidal statements, I thought that she had really stuck her neck out in order to try to prevent murder and tragedy.  At that time, I thought that whatever James Holmes had told her, was bound by doctor-patient confidentiality.  I thought, “Didn’t the campus police understand that the threat from James Holmes was so severe, that the psychiatrist was violating professional rules of conduct in order to let them know that they had to do something?”

Most people have heard about and know about HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.  What most people know about HIPAA, is that it restricts and prohibits the disclosure of PHI, an individual’s Protected Health Information, which means any part of their medical record.  In my experience working in healthcare, every day, there is always someone accusing someone else of a HIPAA violation, to a ridiculous degree.  For a healthcare worker to go so far as to call the police and give a an individual’s personal identifying information, that is unheard of.  But did you know, that there is a specific law in HIPAA that allows this?  In the whole entire hospital that I worked at, and in this hospital’s parent health care system, no one knew about the following section of HIPAA:

Section 164.512(j):

§ 164.512 Uses and disclosures for which an authorization or opportunity to agree or object is not required.

A covered entity may use or disclose protected health information without the written authorization of the individual, as described in §164.508, or the opportunity for the individual to agree or object as described in §164.510, in the situations covered by this section, subject to the applicable requirements of this section. When the covered entity is required by this section to inform the individual of, or when the individual may agree to, a use or disclosure permitted by this section, the covered entity’s information and the individual’s agreement may be given orally.

(j)Standard: Uses and disclosures to avert a serious threat to health or safety –

(1)Permitted disclosures. A covered entity may, consistent with applicable law and standards of ethical conduct, use or disclose protected health information, if the covered entity, in good faith, believes the use or disclosure:

(i)

(A) Is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a person or the public; and

(B) Is to a person or persons reasonably able to prevent or lessen the threat, including the target of the threat; or

(ii) Is necessary for law enforcement authorities to identify or apprehend an individual:

(A) Because of a statement by an individual admitting participation in a violent crime that the covered entity reasonably believes may have caused serious physical harm to the victim; or

(B) Where it appears from all the circumstances that the individual has escaped from a correctional institution or from lawful custody, as those terms are defined in § 164.501.

(2)Use or disclosure not permitted. A use or disclosure pursuant to paragraph (j)(1)(ii)(A) of this section may not be made if the information described in paragraph (j)(1)(ii)(A) of this section is learned by the covered entity:

(i) In the course of treatment to affect the propensity to commit the criminal conduct that is the basis for the disclosure under paragraph (j)(1)(ii)(A) of this section, or counseling or therapy; or

(ii) Through a request by the individual to initiate or to be referred for the treatment, counseling, or therapy described in paragraph (j)(2)(i) of this section.

(3)Limit on information that may be disclosed. A disclosure made pursuant to paragraph (j)(1)(ii)(A) of this section shall contain only the statement described in paragraph (j)(1)(ii)(A) of this section and the protected health information described in paragraph (f)(2)(i) of this section.

(4)Presumption of good faith belief. A covered entity that uses or discloses protected health information pursuant to paragraph (j)(1) of this section is presumed to have acted in good faith with regard to a belief described in paragraph (j)(1)(i) or (ii) of this section, if the belief is based upon the covered entity’s actual knowledge or in reliance on a credible representation by a person with apparent knowledge or authority.

Most readers probably don’t have much interest in reading the above section of HIPAA law.  There are some health care workers, and their attorneys, who might rejoice at finding this section of HIPAA law.  What it means, is that if you are a health care worker, and you are treating a patient that is an imminent threat to you, others, or the public, you can inform security, your supervisor, your department, and even law enforcement if you believe that this is necessary to prevent the imminent threat to a person or the public.

Women From Grant County, North Dakota

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Several months ago I wrote a blog post titled “Reasons Why The Women In Dunn County Are Prettier And Healthier Than The Women In Dickinson”.  In that blog post, I explained that Dunn County was a completely rural county, with most of the people living out in the middle of no where on large farms and ranches.  The children have to walk 1/4 mile to the end of the driveway in the morning to wait for the school bus when it is 0 degrees Fahrenheit.  After school, the children have to walk 1/4 mile back up the driveway and begin their farm chores and taking care of farm animals.  They also have to do housework like cleaning, vacuuming, doing laundry, and help getting dinner started.

The children have to do farm chores and housework because their mothers and fathers typically both have full time jobs, and their mothers and fathers have to do farm work when they get home too.  Because all of the children and women have to do so much physical activity and work, they are in very good physical condition.  They are not overweight because they get so much exercise, they don’t sit around eating and watching television all day.  They don’t eat junk food, and there aren’t any fast food restaurants in the completely rural county.

Grant County, North Dakota is very similar to Dunn County, almost identical.  Grant County is 1,666 square miles, and only has a population of 2,400.  The towns are Carson, Elgin, New Leipzig, Leith, Raleigh, and Heil.  Have you heard of these town?  Probably not very often, or not ever.

For about two years, I have been distracted by a very polite, friendly, healthy, good looking young woman who works at a business in Dickinson.  She is different from the other young women in Dickinson because she is not crazy, trashy, low class, and mean.  In order to repay her for her politeness and friendliness, I have not bothered her at work by trying to talk to her about anything other than business, although I would have liked to.  I did not want to delay her in her work, and possibly/probably make her uncomfortable and embarrassed.

Recently when I was looking at Facebook, I saw this young lady on Facebook.  I looked at her Facebook profile.  I had not known that she was from Grant County.  At first, I thought that Grant County included Beaulah, which is northeast of Dickinson.  Grant County is southeast of Dickinson.  Finding out that this polite, friendly, healthy, good looking young woman was from Grant County explained a lot, and was to me, the final piece of a puzzle.

In the more than four years that I have lived in Dickinson, with the shortage of women, lack of attractive women, and problem women, the very few decent respectable young women that I have met were from Amidon population 20, Beulah population 3,200, Dunn County population 5,000, and Grant County population 2,400.

I have already written at least four blog posts about Miss Rodeo North Dakota Codi Miller and her sister Kit from Amidon.  This young lady from Grant County that I had to do business with from time to time for the last couple of years, is very much like Codi and Kit, in just about every way.  It wasn’t until I saw her Facebook page that everything became so clear.

When I wrote the blog post titled “Reasons Why The Women In Dunn County Are Prettier And Healthier Than The Women In Dickinson”, I wrote that the families living out in the middle of no where were able to raise their children without interference, and without bad influences.  I have already described that all the family members are constantly working and busy doing physical activity, not sitting around eating junk food and watching television.  The mothers, fathers, farm animals, and farm work are the main influence in each others lives, not television, not movies, not things from the city like meth, heroin, crack, drug dealers, pimps, trashy women, lesbians, gays, or transgenders.  The children learn to listen to their parents, what is right and wrong, what is respectable and what isn’t, what is good and what is bad, how to behave, what is expected of them, and how to work.

In Florida and in Idaho, I have seen and met children who grew up on a farm, that got into every kind of trouble there is:  drugs, crime, sexual promiscuity, self destructiveness.  But this seemed to have always been the direct result of the children becoming influenced by bad children and bad people that their parents were unaware of.  Fortunately, for places like Amidon and Grant County, there aren’t any bad children and bad people that the parents are unaware of, there aren’t any unknown outside influences ruining their children.

I wish that I would have known and understood earlier in my life what women are like who grow up in completely rural areas like Amidon, Dunn County, and Grant County.  I think that I understand now why they want to get married early, with the intention of it being a life-long marriage, and just stay home out in the middle of no where at the end of a dirt road.

IDF Women Of Israel On Facebook

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I recommend that everyone look at and read the Facebook page IDF Women of Israel.

In Israel, when women reach the age of 18 years, military service is mandatory for at least two years.  I like this.

No matter who they are, they are drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces.  They all must complete boot camp training, with all the women together on a military base, living in barracks.  When the drill instructor wakes them up at 4:00 a.m., or 5:00 a.m., they must jump out of their bunks and stand at attention.  If they are ordered to get dressed, get geared up, and get into formation outside, they have just several minutes to get out there.

In the Israeli military, the women either already know, or learn quickly, that they can’t take an hour to get ready, or not show up on time, now means NOW!  Not only do they have to get outside with their rifle, helmet, body armor, and pack immediately, they are going on an eight mile hike, whether they want to or not.  I am sure that they don’t like it, but they do it.

By the time their boot camp training is completed, which I believe their basic training is six weeks, they can all run for several miles with all of their packs, body armor, and weapons in the desert heat.  You can look at their pictures on the IDF Women of Israel Facebook page and see that they are all in very good shape and are proud of themselves.

During their basic training, they have all learned how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble their handguns and automatic rifles.  They have learned how to accurately shoot their handguns and rifles.  Some of them qualify as marksmen or sharpshooter.  They have all been trained in hand-to-hand fighting, performing guard duty, and going on patrol.

The IDF Women of Israel, after completing their basic training, are assigned to patrol duty and guard duty all along the border in Israel, which they perform very competently and effectively.  Any enemy of Israel knows that they are just as likely to get shot by an IDF woman guarding the border as an IDF man guarding the border.

What the IDF Women of Israel have that most American women will never have, is the knowledge that they can jump out of bed, get their body armor on, get their pack on, grab their weapon, and run to their duty post, ready and able to shoot an intruder.  They are not scared or faint of heart in doing it, they have done it hundreds of times, and they will not hesitate to shoot someone.  Many of the IDF Women go on to have advanced training in hand-to-hand fighting, sniper training, special weapons, explosives, reconosaince, surveillance, and special missions.  All IDF Women are expected to be able to be recalled to active duty until the age of 38.

At first when I looked at the IDF Women on Facebook, I was impressed that they were all in such good physical shape, and were happy and confident after completing basic training.  Then when I saw and read about their training and duty assignments, I could see that they were very competent.  I was glad for them that they were able to fight and shoot to defend themselves.  They were trained enough and had enough practice that they would be able to fight and shoot for the rest of their lives.  Keep in mind that all women in Israel are required to do this.

In the United States, especially for women that don’t want to do it, I would enjoy it being mandatory for them to complete basic training, where they have to jump out of bed, get all their gear on in a couple of minutes, and hike eight miles through the desert, every day for six weeks.  To learn how to fight and how to shoot.  And be required to perform guard duty and border patrol for two years.

Getting A DUI In Dickinson, North Dakota

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On Saturday evening the owner of the house where I live in Dickinson, North Dakota started on an angry rant while I was asleep on the sofa.  I woke up and asked him what is wrong with him, and I said I had to go someplace else.

I had no intention of going out this evening, but now I had to.   The Paragon Bowling Alley diner has prime rib night on Saturday, so that is where I went.  Luckily for me, two nice waitresses that I knew and get along with, were working in the diner on this night.  I saw some other people that I knew sitting in the diner.  The prime rib that I ordered was very good. One of the bar waitresses and one of the bartender women came into the diner and they were both attractive, pleasant, and friendly.

I hardly ever go into the bar at the Paragon Bowling Alley, but I needed to not go home yet, and the women staff this night were pretty and nice.  When I went into the bar, I don’t know where the other women staff went, but Morticia and Divine were behind the bar, so I left.

With nothing to do, I drove east on Villard to the Family Dollar to buy some paper towels, and walk down every aisle looking for anything else to buy.  I didn’t want to go to any other bar in Dickinson,  because the police try as hard as they can to get everyone for a DUI, but I didn’t want to go home, and there is no where else to go.  I thought that I would drive downtown and maybe go to The Rock Bar, Bernie’s Esquire Club, or the Eagles Lodge.

Driving east on Villard toward downtown, I passed a police car that was going west.  Then when I drove past the Rock Bar downtown, I passed another police car.  The police, and the lack of attractive women in bars in Dickinson, was making me just want to drive back to where I live.  I  drove past the Esquire Club and the Eagles Lodge, I didn’t feel like going in.  I got back on Villard to drive west back home.  A police car got behind me and followed me for about a mile to the end of Villard.

I didn’t like being followed by the police all the way to the end of Villard.  I was in the left lane driving 25 mph, the police car was in the right lane driving 25 mph.  Because of the snow and ice on Villard, you could drive for a couple of blocks without seeing the lane markings at all.  The tire tracks from all the previous vehicles that had melted through the snow down to pavement in the left lane, were not actually in the left lane, the worn in tire tracks crossed into the right lane.  What was I supposed to do?  It is safer to drive in the tire tracks of all the previous vehicles that have worn down through the snow to the pavement, which is what most people do, especially when you can’t see the lane markings, but I had to drive on top of the snow and ice for a mile because there was a police car just behind me and to my right.

The police officer was just hoping and waiting for me to cross over a lane marking, which were mostly covered in snow, and the worn in tire tracks of the previous vehicles had crossed over the lane markings.  This would be the reason to pull me over for suspicion of DUI.  In the police officer’s opinion, I would have failed the eye tests, and he would be very certain that I was intoxicated.  However, I had not had any alcohol, I have had something wrong with my eyes my entire life.  Proceeding from there, the police officer would say that my speech was slurred even if it wasn’t, that I could not count off correctly even if I did count off correctly, that I could not stand on one foot even if I could.  If a Breathalyzer test would have shown 0.00, or 0.01, that couldn’t be right, I was either drunk or on drugs, because the police officer doesn’t want to not give someone a citation for DUI, especially me.

I think that I know who this police officer was, because he was driving a Chevy Tahoe instead of a Ford Explorer.  In November of 2014 this police officer pulled over Damon Prescott Butterfield in Dickinson for suspicion of DUI.  Damon Butterfield did agree to take several field sobriety tests like the ones that I described above.  There was almost not enough evidence against him to be convicted of DUI after the field sobriety tests, however after being asked several times, he had admitted to having a few beers.  He refused to take a Breathalyzer test, and was placed under arrest, and was informed of the North Dakota law about driver’s license suspension for refusal to submit to chemical tests.

Damon Butterfield was taken to jail in Dickinson where he continued to refuse to submit to any chemical test.  At a court hearing, his driver’s license was suspended for 180 days for refusal to submit to chemical tests when requested, which is a North Dakota law that you can go look up.  Damon Butterfield appealed his driver’s license suspension on several grounds, one of them being that the North Dakota law was unconstitutional, and that some of the processes of the traffic stop and sobriety tests were unconstitutional for various reasons.  This case was heard on appeal, and it eventually was heard in the Supreme Court of North Dakota.  It should not come as a surprise that the Supreme Court of North Dakota stood by the North Dakota law to suspend someone’s driver’s license if they refuse to submit to chemical tests.

However, what many people have discovered in North Dakota, especially truck drivers, is that it is better to have your driver’s license suspended for 180 days for refusal to submit to a chemical test, rather than submit to a chemical test and have the blood alcohol result used to convict you of DUI.

I had a long discussion about the Damon Prescott Butterfield VS Levi Supreme Court case two weeks ago, and I was on the side of law enforcement mostly.  I did not like the tactic which can be used to get out of a DUI:  do not admit to having had any alcohol, no matter what the police officer says; do not take any field sobriety tests, no matter what, perhaps say that you are sick; do not take any Breathalyzer or chemical tests; if you are placed under arrest, advise the police that you wish to speak to an attorney;  at jail continue to refuse to take any chemical test on the grounds that you have the right to speak to an attorney.  This is a delay tactic, which some attorneys may participate in, to have enough time pass that when you finally have spoken to your attorney hours after your arrest, if you took a Breathalyzer test at that time, the blood alcohol level would be much lower.  Because all questions, field sobriety tests, and chemical tests were previously refused, and a chemical test taken a couple of hours after arrest was below the blood alcohol level limit, there exists no evidence to support a DUI conviction

I described the tactic to get out of a DUI, because I didn’t like being followed by the police, and likely being railroaded into a DUI, even though I had not had any alcohol.  It is not illegal in North Dakota to drive to and from a bar.  It is not illegal in North Dakota to have one or two alcohol drinks and drive home.  The way the police act in Dickinson, they assume that everyone driving at night is guilty of DUI, and they need to be followed until there is a reason to pull them over, so that they can be questioned, given sobriety tests, and given a Breathalyzer test.

What Other Researchers Found About The Cost Of Housing In Dickinson, North Dakota

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There are many people who do not believe what I write about Dickinson, North Dakota.  So I wanted to write some blog posts that show what other people write about Dickinson.

In mid January 2017 I wrote a blog post titled, “How Excessive Land Greed Has Hurt Dickinson For Ever”.  In that blog post I explained that during the Oil Boom the price of housing in Dickinson quadrupled.  There was not a scarcity of land around Dickinson, there was more vacant unoccupied land around Dickinson than just about anywhere else in the United States.  Though the local land owners, local property owners, property managers, and real estate agents may have been able to gouge the out of state workers from 2007 through 2014, this made the out of state workers make up their minds that they would never be able to make Dickinson their home.  They all planned on leaving when the Oil Boom was over.

If you do a Google search for “relocating to Dickinson, North Dakota”, you will find an article from the Inforum.com website titled “Survey: Most out-of-state oil workers not interested in moving to ND”.  This article was written by Mike Nowatzki of Forum News Service in February of 2016.

Two North Dakota State University researchers named Nancy Hodur and Dean Bangsund surveyed 15 firms representing 8,100 employees in 2014 and 2015.  These two researchers presented their results at the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency annual conference in Bismarck in February 2016.

Here are a few quotes from this Inforum.com website article:

“More than 80 percent of nonresidents working in North Dakota’s oil and gas industry don’t want to put down roots in the state, while those who want to relocate see housing costs as a major barrier, researchers found in a survey released Tuesday.”

“When asked if they would like to move to North Dakota, only 19 percent of nonresident workers said yes.

“I thought that was one of the more startling statistics out of this,” said Hodur, an assistant professor in NDSU’s Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics.

Those workers most frequently cited the high cost of housing and the fear that home values would someday fall below current prices as factors affecting their ability to relocate.

“It’s not because the weather’s too cold. It’s not because they think North Dakota’s a lousy place to raise a family” or that the state’s schools are lacking, Hodur said in an interview. “It’s because it’s too expensive.””

I encourage readers to go read this Inforum.com website article.  You can see, that I am not making this up, the high cost of housing in Dickinson made out of state workers decide that they could never live here permanently.  What the land owners, property owners, property managers, and real estate agents did during the Oil Boom is going to hurt Dickinson for ever.