Tag Archives: Moving to Dickinson, North Dakota

Housing, Employment, Cost of Living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Building My Home In Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pros and Cons for Staying in Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Economic Information for Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Forecast For Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

Everything That Happened In Dickinson Could Have Been Predicted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meeting Miss Rodeo North Dakota, Codi Miller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2nd Post About Prostitution In Dickinson, North Dakota

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This will be the second blog post that I have written about prostitution in Dickinson, North Dakota.  The first blog post that I wrote about prostitution, was written about six weeks ago.

So far, I have written approximately thirty-four blog posts.  In about half of them, I mention that there is a shortage of women in Dickinson, North Dakota.  There are way more men in Dickinson than women.  I think that the ratio of men to women here in Dickinson is probably 3:1.

Since 2011, I have lived in Dickinson for about thirty-two months, almost three years.  For about the first year, I did not think that there were any attractive women in Dickinson.  I thought that few attractive women were born in Dickinson due to the make up of the local population and the cold weather.  I thought that if there were any attractive women born here, they probably moved away right after high school graduation.  But for the first year that I was here, I mostly worked on oil field sites outside of town.

When I came back to Dickinson in May of 2013, I worked in town more.  When I went to the grocery store during the week, before 5 p.m., I saw some attractive women.  I also saw a few attractive women at the West River Community Center during the week, before 5 p.m.  It turns out that there were a few attractive women in Dickinson, but they were trying not to be seen out in public when the men got off of work in the evening.

The women that I saw at the grocery store and the West River Community Center before 5 p.m., who were attractive, I got the impression that they wanted to be left alone, that they did not want to be bothered, and that they were trying their best to get home before 5 p.m.  I felt sorry for them, they kind of acted like deer.  I think that about 80 percent of them must have been married or were in a committed relationship, and that the other 20 percent were just not wanting to mate.

After 5 p.m., you did not see hardly any attractive women in Dickinson.  You did not see hardly any attractive women in the bars.  From my own personal experience, and from what I saw other men doing, after work, the only attractive women you could talk to in all of Dickinson, were maybe a few bartender women, maybe a few waitresses, and maybe a few convenience store clerks, that was it.  There was a bartender girl that I liked, she did not want to talk to me, I told her that I liked her, but she never would talk to me.  I think that she liked me a little.  In 2011, on some nights this bar would serve about three hundred people, I think that she made about $300 to $400 in tips on those nights.  One night, about an hour before closing, a young guy said to her, that he would pay her $500 to have sex with him, he was serious.  She said,”It will cost you more than $500 to have sex with me.”, and I think she too was serious.

I nearly got into a lot of trouble going to this bar to see her.  One night she made me so mad, that I went outside and turned off the electric power to this bar, and went home.  Another night, she was flirting with this guy in front of me and letting him feel her, I had already warned the guy that I really liked her. I waited for him outside, when he went to his truck, I blocked his truck in with my truck, so that he could not leave.  He was much bigger than me, and he had two guys with him.  He realized that I was very angry, that I had blocked his truck in so that he could not get away, that I probably had a gun, and that I was possibly going to kill him.  He never came back, and she never fucked with me again.

I thought about it the following day, and some times after that.  I was ready to kill the guy.  I had only come to Dickinson to work.  Back home, I had a house on five acres, cars, trucks, motorcycles, everything I had ever wanted to have, but I almost lost it all, and would have spent the rest of my life in prison for shooting a guy at bar because he and the bartender girl had disrespected me, and angered me.

I can not explain everything that makes me who I am.  I know that I have some things in common with the other construction workers, oil field workers, and truck drivers that have come to Dickinson to work, especially those over forty years of age.  It is likely that at some point in our lives, each of us has had successes and failures, good jobs and bad jobs, plenty of money and lack of money, happy homes and broken homes, being in love and being lonely, feeling optimistic and feeling hopeless.  We have all had to deal with ups and downs in life, disappointment, and personal tragedies.  It is not that I can not deal with difficulties and problems, or handle not getting what I want, I have had to deal with these things many times.  But in Dickinson, I had left my home, my friends, and the day-to-day life that I liked.  I had left a place that I enjoyed and felt comfortable in, to come to a place that is cold and inhospitable.  I had had to deal with the shortage of housing in Dickinson where they wanted $1,500 per month for an old, small one bedroom apartment, that amount of money would rent a nice 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house back home.  I was acting as a foreman, getting to the shop early to load all the tools, equipment, and material, hooking up the trailer, going and picking up the DUI and drug probation crew workers around Dickinson, getting the job started, laying out the work, solving problems, pretty much what I had done in the past as a superintendent and project manager, but the local company that I was working for wasn’t paying me as a foreman.  I had to deal with local people, co-workers, site contractors, and company owners who were hateful and uncooperative.  So every morning that I woke up in Dickinson, I was already dealing with about six or seven adverse life conditions, just by being here.  Adding on top of that, working for a shitty company, not being paid very well, not ever seeing any attractive women, being ignored and disrespected by the bartender girl, and being disrespected by some guy, made me angry enough to want to kill the guy.

I went home for several months.  Then I went to work in Utah and Texas for a year.  I returned to Dickinson in May of 2013.  I knew that I should probably stay out of bars in Dickinson, and I did mostly stay out of bars.  I had a job as a foreman, it paid O.K.  I soon began to enjoy my work.  After work, and on the weekends, I could not find any attractive women.  I went to Patterson Lake on nice sunny days, and there were no attractive women there.  I went to a new upscale bar and restaurant in Dickinson called “Players Club” several times, the bartender men and women were not friendly.  I tried to speak to a waitress that I thought was very pretty, and she did not like me talking to her at all.  I went to work at a different company that had a very cute and smart girl working there that I liked, she did not want to talk to me.

In my previous blog post about prostitution in Dickinson, I wrote that the first time that I ever had any interest in internet dating sites, was when I came to Dickinson.  There was such a shortage of women, I could not find attractive women anywhere.  I looked at five different internet dating sites for women within 100 miles of Dickinson, and there were very few attractive women.  All of the attractive women had a list of requirements that I did not meet.  I looked and looked on the internet dating sites for women in North Dakota, and then I looked at the profiles of women in other states.  After I had read the profiles of about several hundred women, I found that they all had a list of requirements that would be hard for me to meet, I thought that they were being unrealistic.  In addition to me thinking that the requirements that these women had were unrealistic, and unlikely to be met, I felt that women were fucked up for even getting the idea in their head that you could make such unilateral and inequitable demands from another human being.

Some out-of-state truck drivers told me to go look on the website “Back Page” under escorts.  When I looked at the escorts, some were sleazy, some were not.  Even if you had to pay $250 per hour for an escort, it was beginning to appear to be a much better idea to pay for a prostitute for company, than to waste any  more time trying to find women in Dickinson or on an internet dating site.  Also, from the several hundred profiles of women that I had read, I could see that these women would have griped and complained about everything, wasted my time, tried to get everything they could from me, made me feel inadequate, and would have caused me all kinds of problems.  The only thing stopping me from hiring an escort was that it was not appealing to me to be with a woman that had already been with several guys that day, and I did not want to get arrested.

In 2014, I began to do work where it was important for me not to get into any kind of trouble, or I would lose my job.  I had to stay in Bismarck in a nice business hotel for a couple of weeks.  Most of the attractive escorts on the website “Back Page”, were based in Bismarck.  I was so tempted.  I had a belief that this particular hotel would have absolutely not liked having a prostitute walk through the door, and getting asked to leave this hotel, which was being paid for by my employer, would have caused me to lose my job.  I was also aware that police often try to entrap people by creating false advertisements for escorts on the internet.

In my previous blog post about prostitution, I wrote about seeing on the evening news in Dickinson, that the Bismarck police had placed an advertisement for an escort on the internet, and that they had received sixty calls for an appointment.  They were only able to arrest sixteen of the callers when they showed up to meet the prostitute because they ran out of time.  I was very angry about this.  I just got done explaining in this blog post how difficult it was for me to meet women in Dickinson, there was a shortage of women.  Women in Dickinson did not want me talking to them.  I had gone to a bar many times because I liked the bartender girl, and got so mad that I nearly got into a lot of trouble for turning their electric power off, and for nearly killing a guy.  I tried to see if I could find a girl by looking at five different internet dating sites, and there were very few women in this area.  The police are so fucking god damn stupid, what the fuck do they think they are doing?

What caused me to write this second blog post about prostitution, was what I heard from a friend of mine this week.  My friend is a construction foreman in Williston.  The project that he is working on has about one hundred workmen every day.  The company that he works for, has had most of their workers working ten hours each day, seven days a week, for the past three months.  One unmarried out-of-state worker on this project, looked on the internet for an escort.  He arranged to meet her at a restaurant.  When he got to the restaurant, it was a set-up, the police were hiding in the bathroom, when he had said enough, the police came out and arrested him.  His name was published in the newspaper, but nothing about where he worked.  He had to request time off from his company to appear in court, he was fired from his job.  I think that this was very unfair.  If you are an unmarried out-of-state worker, and you have worked ten hours a day, seven days a week, for the past three months, and you live in Williston or Dickinson where there is a shortage of women, you have not been able to meet women.

Why are you even alive if all you are going to do is get up, get dressed, drive an hour to your job site, work ten hours, drive an hour back home, eat, take a shower, and go to sleep, day after day after day?  If you work construction every day like this, you don’t have the time or the energy to do anything after work.  One day you stop and get groceries after work, one day you do laundry after work, one day you do dishes and cleaning after work, you are too tired to do much else, and there isn’t time.  Well, I guess this guy has some time now, he got fired from his job.

More About The Dickinson Mafia

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The first time that I wrote about the Dickinson Mafia was in my previous post, “The Dickinson Mafia”.  I stated that the Dickinson Mafia was a group of local business owners and city leaders that had decided among themselves what they envisioned for Dickinson, that they tell themselves and each other that what they want is for the betterment of Dickinson, and in the best interest of its citizens, but what they want happens to coincide with making themselves richer, controlling citizens for their benefit, and helping them maintain power.

In my previous post I gave two examples of the endeavors of the Dickinson Mafia.  Business owners can join the Chamber of Commerce to express their views about what they see for the future, and try to get other business owners to share their view.  Business owners can express their views at City Commission/Council/Zoning meetings.  They can write Letters To The Editor of the “Dickinson Press” expressing their opinions on issues.  They can join the Golf Club, the Eagles Lodge, or the Elks Lodge in order to talk to other business owners and community leaders about their ideas.  In my opinion, when business men want to get things done in a more unseen way, they join the Masonic Lodge.  The Masonic Lodge holds their meetings in private, and they do not publicize who their members are, the rank of their members, and what things they discuss.  The Masonic Lodge is very similar to the “Good-Old-Boy Network”.

Like the “Good-Old-Boy Network” in the South, a newcomer to a city who starts a construction business might be clueless as to why he seems to be having so much trouble, with everything.  The newcomer who started a construction company might know why he is having so much trouble if he knew that his main competitor is the Grand Master of the local Masonic Lodge, and that the lumber company owner, the concrete company owner, the building inspector, the city engineer, the mayor, and the chief of police are also members of the local Masonic Lodge.  Though the Masons publicly claim that this is not the case, their primary purpose and reason for existence is to have an organization of men that secretly gain power and control, and then exert their power and control.  Men that are mayors, chiefs of police, bank presidents, attorneys, real estate agents, and insurance agents do obtain information that is private and confidential, to share some information would be a violation of ethics and illegal, however this information is shared among Masons to allow financial gain, business opportunity, and to undermine, control, and manipulate others.  In the case of the Dickinson Mafia, I do not know yet whether they ever worked within the local Masonic Lodge.  It appears to me that the Dickinson Mafia is able to achieve the same things on its own: having people gain positions of power, using that power to further enrich themselves, using their money to further increase their power, using their money, power, and influence to control what is done in Dickinson, and to control people in Dickinson.  The people in Dickinson are somewhat aware that this is being done.  They think it and they feel it, but they are not always able or willing to verbalize how they are controlled by some of the wealthy business owners in Dickinson.

The way that the Dickinson Mafia want Dickinson to be, is that they want to have mechanisms of control in place so that they can control what is going on in Dickinson during the oil booms that come and go, so that they can also have control when the oil booms go away.  It does not matter where you are from, have you ever seen more vacant barren land anywhere than what there is outside of Dickinson?  There is vacant undeveloped land as far as you can see, and beyond as far as you can see.  There is no scarcity of vacant land.  The cost of housing in Dickinson, and the shortage of housing in Dickinson is something that the Dickinson Mafia want.  Though quick, affordable housing was something that was needed starting back in 2010, the Dickinson Mafia didn’t want that.  They didn’t want out-of-state workers to come here, make a lot of money, send money back home, pay off their houses back home, get ahead financially, the Dickinson Mafia wanted the out-of-state workers to be taken advantage of, just like they have been taking advantage of the workers in their own businesses for the last thirty years.

One more thing, if you try to look up the “Dickinson Mafia” on the internet, the first six results of your search are an exact match for “Dickinson Mafia”.  You can go and look at each of these six matching websites, web addresses, or links, and they really don’t contain any content that is relevant to an entity or activity that would or could be called “Dickinson Mafia”.  It is like someone had the expectation that people would be trying to find out information about the “Dickinson Mafia” and they wanted to make sure that your internet search would be sure to turn up their six websites, that contain no information on the Dickinson Mafia.  That is one way to try to keep people from knowing about the Dickinson Mafia.

Oil Field Speculation in Dickinson, Part I

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I arrived in Dickinson, North Dakota, in May of 2011, stayed for eight months, then came back in May of 2013, and have been here since.  I have become friends or acquaintances of several long time residents who are now in their 60s, “DS”, “IB”, and “CL”.  I have to use these initials to protect their identities.  Each of these individuals had business and social dealings with each other, so I have been able to cross check what each of them has told me.

In approximately the mid 1980s, there was an oil boom in Dickinson.  Many local people were making a great deal of money.  “CL” was about thirty years old, and at this time he bought a new truck, a new car, and a manufactured home in a twelve month period.  His friends and acquaintances did the same thing.  Within a few years, “CL” had to move back in with his parents, and had to go to work at a grocery store, because that was the only job he could get.  The same thing happened to his friends, they went from having their own homes and new cars, to living in apartments and driving beaters.  The oil field jobs went away, and it was hard to find even a low paying job in Dickinson.

Within a couple of years of the oil field jobs going away, property prices had fallen tremendously in Dickinson.  “IB” and a business partner were able to scrape enough money together to buy some warehouses on several acres of land for about $6,000 each, even though it was very hard to earn money in Dickinson at that time.  “IB” and his business partner had worked in the oil field and they strongly believed that eventually the oil drilling would have to come back to Dickinson.  “DS” was about forty years old, and he was able to buy 30 acres of land that nobody wanted for about $20,000.

When I got here in 2011, “IB” and his business partner were getting about $30,000  per month in rent from the different warehouse buildings that they had bought, I was told.  Once I found out which warehouse buildings they were, and what they were charging for rent, that dollar amount was approximately correct.  “DS” had his property for sale for about $3 million.

Both “IB” and “DS” were stressed individuals.  They had had to go through a lot to buy their properties when money was scarce, and hold onto their properties through bad economic times, over about twenty years.  Nobody knew when or if the oil drilling would come back.  If it would have been a sure thing, real estate prices would not have gone down, and everybody would have bought property.

Rather than this being a lesson in investment, I want this to be a warning.  The oil drilling came to Dickinson in the past, everybody was making money for a few years, and then the oil drilling went away, leaving many people broke.  Many people spent the money they had made very quickly because they thought that their jobs would last longer than they did, and that they would have the chance to pay off everything that was bought on credit: cars, motorcycles, boats, homes.  Keep in mind also that real estate prices dropped tremendously within a few years.  There were very few jobs in Dickinson then, and the jobs were low pay.  Do not fail to understand the lessons of the past, please try to remember what has happened before and plan accordingly.

Bad Service, a Common Problem in Dickinson, North Dakota

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A couple of days ago, I had a problem at a restaurant in Dickinson.  In the past, I had recommended this restaurant to people.  I said that the service was good in this restaurant because the husband and wife owners were always there, waiting on tables, seating customers, checking on customers, making drinks, and serving as cashiers.  A couple of days ago I walked out of this restaurant due to not be waited on.

I wrote a review of this restaurant on the website “Yelp”.  I read other reviews of this restaurant on “Yelp”, and was surprised to see that the very same thing had happened to other customers.  Other customers had had to walk out for not being served, and other customers had been treated very rudely.

I went and read the reviews for the Players Sports Bar on “Yelp”, and found that there were about four or five reviews complaining of bad service, which is what I had experienced.  I then read on “Yelp” all the other reviews for all of the restaurants that I had eaten at in Dickinson, and bad service was common complaint.  Eventually, I started to see reviews that started out saying, “…this is Dickinson, you are not going to find a good restaurant…this one is worse than usual…”

If you have lived in Dickinson for even a short while, you will see “Help Wanted” signs in most restaurants in Dickinson, and most retail stores in Dickinson.  One reason for this is that there are many jobs in Dickinson that pay more than restaurant or retail jobs, so there is currently a shortage of restaurant and retail workers.  So, the wait staff or bartender that served you, that wasn’t good at their job, or wasn’t friendly, was possibly the only person available, or the best of the lot that was not a very good lot.

Additionally, the restaurant that I went to a couple of days ago and walked out of for not being waited on, that I used to recommend, they are very busy.  I believe that the husband and wife owner have come to the point that they believe they don’t have to be nice to every customer, they have enough customers.

If you are poor and come to Dickinson, North Dakota

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If you are poor and come to Dickinson, North Dakota, there is no homeless shelter.  If you think you are clever, and you will sleep in your car in the Wal-Mart parking lot, there have been a couple hundred people before you that have already ruined that, you can’t do that now.  Likewise, if you think that you will sleep in your car at a truck stop, there have been a couple hundred people before you that have already ruined that, you can’t do that now.

If you think that you will bring your trailer with you and stay at an RV park, they will only allow trailers and motor homes that are newer than ten years old, and by the way, the lot rent is $800 per month, plus about another $250 per month for your electric bill.  If you think that you will go to a public campground, there have already been a couple hundred people before you that have ruined that, campground stay is limited to ten days, then you have to leave for thirty days.

If you think that you will ask some farmer if you can park your trailer on some corner of his land, there have already been a couple hundred people before you that have ruined that.  If you think that you will call the Catholic Church to ask for a place to stay, they will tell you,”There have been some rapes and kidnappings in North Dakota, we have some women here, we can’t have anybody stay on that land.”

All out-of-state workers are hated.  You have ruined everything!  Not only will you not be helped, they will try to fuck you in every way that they possibly can.  To get an idea of what it will be like in Dickinson, you need to watch the movies “Deliverance”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, and “Planet of the Apes”.

Getting a DUI in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have thought about it, and probably the most important thing that I could tell someone from out of state, is that you have to be extremely careful not to get a DUI in Dickinson, North Dakota.  In fact, if you have come here to make money, you should probably not go to bars in Dickinson at all.  It seems like that must be the intention of the police in Dickinson, they should probably just go ahead and make bars illegal.

Bars have parking spaces for automobiles.  People drive automobiles to bars.  People have a couple of drinks, and get in their cars to drive home.  The police have already seen your car in the parking space at the bar.  Maybe you are driving too fast, too slow, you did not come to a complete stop, you changed lanes without using your signal, you had a headlight out, you had a brake light out, your license plate light was not working, they could not read your license plate, your license plate was expired, you were not wearing your seat belt, something, you are stopped by the police.

You are asked if you have had any alcohol to drink.  If you say yes, I had one beer, you have just given the police officer probable cause to ask you to step out of the vehicle to take a field sobriety test.  At this point in Dickinson you are probably going to be arrested for DUI and are going to jail.  Once you said that you had one beer, you have just given the police the first piece of evidence of guilt for driving under the influence, you have just admitted that you have been drinking.  The field sobriety tests are just additional pieces of evidence to be used against you in court.  You will be placed under arrest for DUI and you will be taken to jail.  At the jail your blood alcohol level will be tested by breathalyzer or blood test.  You will be given the opportunity to post bail.  You will have a court date set.  From what I have been told by people that I have talked to in Dickinson that have been arrested for DUI,  all of the attorneys in town want $3,000 paid in advance to defend you.  If your BAC was below .08, maybe you will be found not guilty.

The law in North Dakota is that you can be convicted of a DUI if your blood alcohol level is greater than .08.  But you have to remember that in North Dakota, you are just a piece-of-shit, out-of-town, oil field trash, piece-of-shit construction worker.  They don’t want or need any piece-of-shit construction worker or oil field worker driving around, trying to rape their women, ruining their town, probably trying to kid nap their children.  Dickinson was nice before you got here.  Make them pay that $3,000 to my cousin the attorney, we got ten of them boys this month, boy we is making some money now, and we ain’t even working on no oil rig.

Hey, I know that you would rather be back home where it is warm, back in your own home with your wife, your kids, your family, your friends.  It would be nice just to be home mowing your own lawn, changing your oil in your driveway.  Here in Dickinson, because you are tired of work, you are lonely, there is nothing else to do, you don’t know anybody in Dickinson, you don’t know anywhere else to go, you go to a bar.  You might only have a few drinks.  You get a DUI on your way home.  You know that you are going to lose your job, you know that you really don’t have an extra $3,000 to throw away. But you have to have the whole North Dakota experience, first you get fucked paying fifty percent of your take home pay for an apartment, then you have to work out in the -20 below freezing weather, there aren’t any women, there isn’t anything to do, now you’ve got a DUI on your record, you are out $3,000 for an attorney, thousands of dollars more in court fines, fees, and the mandatory substance abuse counseling sessions, you have lost your job, and probably your apartment, and probably just about everything you own if you were making payments on a vehicle or anything else.  Hey it’s “Legendary North Dakota”, you come back now, you hear.

Night Life in Dickinson, North Dakota

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(This post was re-written and updated on 4/18/2018 in order to provide current information.)

I am going to start at the north end of town, and work my way south, in naming the bars and restaurants that serve alcohol in Dickinson, North Dakota.

But before I begin listing places where you can drink alcohol, I want to tell everyone the most important thing that they need to know about Dickinson, and that is, that the Police in Dickinson try as hard as they can to arrest people for DUI, like no other place that I have ever been.

Many bars and restaurants, will provide customers with a free voucher for the Camajur Bus Service and Taxi Service to get a ride home.  Even without a free voucher, the Camajur Bus or Taxi Service is very cheap, and I recommend using it.

  • Players Club – On the north side of Dickinson, just south of WalMart, is the Players Club sports bar and restaurant.  This building and restaurant, was built and is owned by the Fisher Group.  This sports bar is probably more upscale for Dickinson, and professional people and their wives would feel comfortable in the bar area.  The formal restaurant dining area is completely separate from the bar area.  Though you could expect that the formal restaurant would be suitable for an important business dinner, birthday dinner, or anniversary dinner, I would recommend to anyone in Dickinson who is planning a special dinner, to telephone the restaurant manager before hand, to emphasize that you are planning an important dinner, and ask if there was some way to help make sure that you would not be seated beside over intoxicated or rowdy people.
    • For any nice restaurant in Dickinson, I am going to have to give this warning, that if you are planning an important business dinner, family dinner, a date with your wife, or a date with a girlfriend, you are going to have to take steps yourself, to make sure that your dinner is not ruined by construction workers or oil field workers.  The young or inexperienced wait staff in Dickinson, will not hesitate to seat a group of intoxicated and rowdy males, beside a business meeting, family dinner, or couple on date, so you will have to do something about this yourself.
  • The Crossing – On the north side of Dickinson, on State Avenue, this upscale bar and formal dining restaurant was built and is owned by Seth Murphy, owner of SM Fencing and Energy Services.  From what I hear, this is the most expensive bar and restaurant in Dickinson, and that it is very nicely furnished.  I will not go there, because I do not like the owner and his wife.  If you work in construction, or if you work in the oil field, and you have a big pay check, please gather your friends together, have some drinks before hand, and then go try the Crossing bar and restaurant.
  • Grand Dakota Lodge – On the north side of Dickinson, southwest of the Prairie Hills Mall, is the Grand Dakota Lodge.  The Grand Dakota Lodge is probably one of the nicest hotels in Dickinson, with a bar, restaurant, several lobbies, conference rooms, and indoor swimming pool.  This hotel is a fairly safe, comfortable, indoor environment.
  • Elks Lodge – Just south from the Grand Dakota Lodge, the Elks Lodge in Dickinson has recently downsized, has sold the upstairs to their building, in order to move into the basement of the building.  I don’t know what they are doing.
  • New Life Pentecostal Church – Just south from the Grand Dakota Lodge, the New Life Pentecostal Church has recently purchased and renovated the upstairs of the Elks Lodge building.  Live music and entertainment on Wednesday night and Sunday morning.  A place to meet friendly people in Dickinson.
  • El Sombrero Restaurant – On the north side of Dickinson, just south of the Prairie Hills Mall.  Just average Mexican food.  A restaurant with a small bar.  At this restaurant, you can experience not being waited on, which was a common experience for myself, my friends, acquaintances, and other people that I have asked.
  • El Puricatan Restaurant – On the north side of Dickinson, just south of the Prairie Hills Mall.  A small Mexican restaurant with a wide variety of authentic, good, unique Mexican food, for reasonable prices.
  • Astoria Hotel – At the intersection of I-94 and Hwy 22, is the Astoria Hotel, which is one of the nicer hotels in Dickinson.  The very large ballroom is often used for shows, parties, and events.  There is a recently opened restaurant and bar inside the hotel, adjacent to the main hotel lobby.  A fairly safe, comfortable, indoor environment.
  • Applebees Restaurant – At the intersection of I-94 and Hwy 22, is Applebees Restaurant.
  • Sakura Japanese Restaurant – On the north side of Dickinson, across Hwy 22 from the Prairie Hills Mall, is the Sakura Japanese restaurant where you can order sushi, or watch your food being cooked at your table top hibachi by an entertaining chef.
  • Sanfords Pub And Grub – On the north side of Dickinson, adjacent to the Sakura Japanese restaurant, and surrounded by newer hotels, is Sanfords Pub And Grub sports bar and restaurant.  A fairly normal and fairly safe sports bar.  I believe that it is O.K. for wives and children.
  • The Wurst Shop – On the north side of Dickinson, behind Sanfords Pub And Grub and Sakura Japanese restaurant, is the Wurst Shop which serves bratwurst, hot dogs, sausage, and other meats that they create and process right there on the premises.  Though they might not serve alcohol, this food is something interesting to try in Dickinson.
  • Buffalo Wild Wings – On the northwest side of Dickinson, at the new Menards and Family Fare shopping center, is Buffalo Wild Wings.  This Buffalo Wild Wings is a fairly large sports bar and restaurant, which I believe is O.K. for wives and children.
  • Army’s West – On the south side of I-94, just west of Hwy 22, is Army’s West Sports Bar.  This bar, which is owned by Dan Porter of Dan Porter Motors, sometimes has live music.  Though adults of all ages go to this bar, it is sometimes the most liked bar of the Dickinson State University college students.
  • Mavericks Saloon – On the south side of I-94, next door to McDonalds, is Mavericks Saloon which is a fairly normal and safe bar.
  • Red Coach Lounge – Across the street from McDonalds, inside of the Motel 6, adjacent to the motel lobby is the Red Coach Lounge.
  • King Buffet – On Main Avenue, in the T-Rex Shopping Center, is the King Buffet Chinese restaurant, which is a fairly large buffet style restaurant.  You can have fresh food prepared on a hibachi, at no additional cost to the buffet.
  • JDs BBQ – Across the street from the West River Community Center complex, very close to DSU, is JDs BBQ restaurant, which is a medium sized restaurant, with fairly good food, and it is safe for families with children.
  • Liquid Assets – Across the street from the West River Community Center complex, very close to DSU, is Liquid Assets, which is a fairly large sports bar.
  • The Spur – On the west end of Villard Street near DSU and downtown Dickinson, is The Spur bar, which is as medium sized bar.
  • The Paragon Bowling Alley, Diner, and Bar – Near the west end of Villard Street, DSU, and downtown Dickinson, is the Paragon Bowling Alley, Diner, and Bar.  During the day, the diner and bowling alley are fairly safe for women and children.  Once it gets past about 8:00 p.m., the Paragon begins to fill with more adults and college students who are interested in drinking, and it becomes less suitable for families and children.
  • Blue 42 – In the heart of downtown Dickinson, on Villard Street, is a new sports bar owned by Mike Lefor, called Blue 42.  It is a medium sized sports bar, which is currently fairly popular.
  • The Rock Bar – In the heart of downtown Dickinson, on First Street, is a small bar owned by the Kathy Fisher family, called the Rock Bar.  This is a fairly calm and mellow community bar, which has outdoor sidewalk seating during the Spring, Summer, and Fall.  The Rock Bar is usually the sponsor for the downtown Thursday Summer concerts which sometimes bring thousands of people to downtown Dickinson.
  • Odd Fellows Lodge – In the heart of downtown Dickinson, on First Avenue, is the Odd Fellows Lodge.  Though the Odd Fellows Lodge is active throughout the year, their main effort is organizing and operating the downtown Thursday Summer concerts in Dickinson, which host well known bands and music performers.
  • Bernie’s Esquire Club – In the center of downtown Dickinson, on First Street across from the Post Office, is Bernie’s Esquire Club, owned by the Bernie Marsh family.  This is a medium sized bar, which is a little like a biker bar, but also like a community bar.  In the Spring, Summer, and Fall there is outside sidewalk seating.  Bernie, his wife, his sons, and his daughters operate the bar, and if you are very lucky, you might even get to see Marinna Marsh.
  • Brickhouse Grille – In the center of downtown Dickinson, on Villard Street, across from the old train depot is the Brickhouse Grille and Lounge, which is owned by Mike Riesinger.  The restaurant is located inside a restored historic building, with one bar located downstairs, and a larger bar located in the lounge upstairs.  This is Dickinson’s nicest fine dining restaurant, and there is a dress code requirement.
  • Eagles Lodge – In the heart of downtown Dickinson, situated between the Post Office and Villard Street, is the Eagles Lodge.  In Dickinson, the Eagles Lodge is open to the public.  There are lunch specials for dining in the afternoon, but in the evening the Eagles Lodge is primarily a community type bar.
  • Southside Bar – Located on Broadway Street, on the south side of Dickinson, is the Southside Bar, which is a fairly large bar, frequented mostly by local working class people.  I advise non-local people to not come into conflict with local people in this bar.
  • Upin Thai – Located on the south side of Dickinson, on Main Avenue, is the very small Thai restaurant, which is used mostly for take out, called Upin Thai, which has very good and unique Thai food.

More Culture Shock In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In the South, where I grew up, education is valued and respected.  If a person was a teacher, a preacher, a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer, they were respected.  I believe that there were several reasons for this.  Church and the Bible were important in the lives of people in the South.  The preacher was looked upon as a person with higher learning, as wise, as having sound judgement, as someone to be respected.  The preacher, nor the citizens, would tolerate disrespect towards a preacher. Similarly, teachers were looked upon as someone with higher learning, as wise, and having sound judgement, as someone to be respected.  Doctors were very highly valued, they were treated with respect and were treated as very important people.

Anyone in the South, would hope that their child would grow up to be a teacher, a preacher, a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. It was good that a child would grow up to be knowledgeable, well read, knowing about the world, able to make informed decisions, to be able to practice their profession where they chose, to not be tied to a place, or to be limited in life by the lack of understanding or lack of knowledge.

I did very well in school, my classmates who liked me were proud of me, my classmates who didn’t like me wouldn’t deny that what I had done was good, that I would go to college, that that was good.  When I was going to college and working, my co-workers whether they liked me or not, they would not disagree that what I was doing was good.  When I graduated with a degree in engineering and went to work as an estimator, engineer, superintendent, and project manager, my employers and co-workers either acknowledged, or did not disagree that the engineering education and learning was important.

When I got to North Dakota, I found that the people here have disgust and hatred for people with an education.  In about the middle of 2013, there was a national newspaper article, that said North Dakota had the highest percentage of people in the United States with less than an 8th grade education, and, that North Dakota had the highest per capita beer consumption. That explained a lot.

As I explained in my previous post, I have been to the North Dakota pioneer museums, life was very hard in North Dakota, the early pioneers in the late 1800s and early 1900s lived in houses made of grass sod because there were no trees to make lumber.  They had to burn dried animal dung for heating and cooking.  Whole families of six to ten people lived in houses that were less than 300 square feet.  Life was very hard in North Dakota, even into the 1950s and 1960s.  What good would it have done for a man or woman to gain higher learning if they were going to have to fight the land and the cold to survive.  There would not have been a way to spare children from daily labor necessary for survival, for them to have the time to do a great deal of studying.  There would have not been any money to send children away to college.

If a man or woman did start to learn about the world, about what life was like in London, Paris, New York City, or Miami, and were interested in that sort of life, would they remain in North Dakota, and once they were away, and knew what it was like to have a toilet, would they ever want to return to Dickinson?  I imagine that the people who had the aptitude for college and were able to leave Dickinson, might not have wanted to return because there were not any job opportunities for them, suitable marriage opportunities, cultural or social opportunities, just a very hard bleak life of farming with seven months of winter.

So the reason why most of long time residents in Dickinson hate people with an education, is because they do not have an education.  They never saw the need for it, it had nothing to do with their way of life, or they wanted more education, but did not get it, and now they are bitter about it.  The people who got an education probably do not come back,  I know how they feel, it is very frustrating trying to live and work with the highest beer consuming/lowest education level people in the United States who hate people with a college education.

Culture Shock In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I am originally from a small town in a southern state.  One of the elements of culture where I am from is hospitality.  I believe that two reasons why hospitality was important and apparent in the south, was due to the protestant religions such as Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian, and due to readily available resources.  I will try to explain this.

The protestant religions teach foremost the belief in Jesus, God, and doing what Jesus and God have instructed.  Jesus taught about giving and kindness to others.  As a brief example, Jesus was with his apostles and they witnessed church goers as they made offerings,  one man gave a substantial amount, one woman gave only a penny or two.  Jesus asked the apostles who gave the most, they answered that a particular man had given a substantial amount.  Jesus said, no, the woman who gave the few pennies gave the most, because she gave all that she had.  As another example, Jesus was invited to the home of a wealthy man, and upon everyone being seated, the household was embarrassed when a harlot showed up, and began to wash Jesus’ feet, and I believe I remember she dried his feet with her hair.  The house guests thought that this woman was trash and that Jesus should not have had anything to do with her, however Jesus pointed out that no one else had offered him the courtesy of washing his feet when he had entered this home, the woman was showing him reverence and kindness.  So, in the South, where they believe in the Bible, they try to incorporate what the Bible says into their day to day lives.  I will give an example.

I had a friend named Joseph who was from Georgia.  Joseph was 35 years old, he had a wife and a daughter.  He was a self employed tree trimmer, and he was poor.  In the winter of 2009 when the economy started to go bad, he had to go to the food bank, because he did not have enough money to buy food.  In the spring and summer, he got by O.K., but just barely.  I stopped by his house at about 5 p.m. one evening when he had just gotten home from doing a tree job, he had stopped at Dominoes Pizza and bought a large pizza.  He asked me if I would like some pizza,  I said no, thank you, I had already eaten, but the real reason was that I knew that that pizza was just enough for him, his wife, and daughter.  Just then, two young Mormon missionaries stopped at his house, Joseph and I both knew them, and talked to them from time to time.  Joseph said, “Hey you guys are just in time for some pizza, would you like some pizza?”  They said, “Oh yeah, great, thanks.” and they ate half his pizza.  There was just enough left for his wife and daughter after the missionaries left.  The rented house that Joseph lived in was very small and bare.  I had already passed through the kitchen and saw that there was not any food in the house, just maybe an almost empty bag of old bread, maybe a can of beans.  I said to Joseph, “Well, it looks like they ate all your pizza.”  Joseph said, “Oh, it don’t matter, I’ll find something else to eat.”

The second reason why people in the South have hospitality, is that they have been accustomed to having resources available.  In the South, trees are plentiful, so it is not difficult to get wood for furniture, firewood, or housing.  Domestic animals like chickens, cattle, pigs, and goats are not difficult to keep.  Wild animals like rabbits, possums, squirrels, turkeys, alligators, and fish are not that difficult to come by.  So, it was not that difficult to survive, you could afford to be hospitable, even if you were poor, it was not like you were going to die.

In North Dakota, things were different.  I have been to North Dakota pioneer museums, and have read and seen the exhibits.  I have talked to older North Dakotans about how things were growing up around Dickinson.  The pioneers that came to North Dakota in the late 1800s and early 1900s lived in small grass sod houses, the walls were constructed entirely of grass sod.  The houses were small partly because there was not a lot of things to burn to heat them, dried animal dung was collected to burn for heating and cooking.  I have been inside some of these houses on old farms outside of Dickinson, they were very small, very primitive, maybe a 10’x12′ room adjoined to another 10’x12′ room, and whole families lived in them.  I have talked to people who said that even growing up in Dickinson in the 1950s, that many people still had out houses.  It was common for the mom to keep the roll of toilet paper, that children were not given toilet paper, if you wanted toilet paper, you had to go and ask, and that you might be given three sheets.  Apparently life was brutally hard in North Dakota until recently, there had been a scarcity of basic necessities.  If you talk to people about it, you will begin to understand that hospitality was something that was not done, it was so hard for a family to survive, there wasn’t hospitality.

In the eight months that I lived in Dickinson in 2011, and the sixteen months that I have been living in Dickinson currently, it was not until I understood how hard life had been in North Dakota, that I realized this is one of the reasons why the residents in North Dakota are not hospitable and friendly, and why they don’t even know that they are not hospitable and friendly.