Tag Archives: Moving to Dickinson

Insight into Dickinson, North Dakota, July 2015

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A Brief Partial History of Dickinson, 2009 to 2015:

For those of you who don’t know, Dickinson, Williston, and Minot have just gone through six years of rapid growth, beginning in 2009 when oil drilling began to take off in North Dakota, probably due to new fracturing techniques allowing much more oil to be removed from each well than had been possible before.  The drilling companies like Nabors, Patterson, Cyclone, and HP moved drill rig platforms to North Dakota.  Fracturing companies came to North Dakota, I think Schlumberger was one of them, I think that Haliburton and Baker Hughes are involved in fracturing.  There were wire-line companies, mud-logging companies, work-over rig companies, casing companies, specialty companies that have a role in drilling.  Tanker trucks delivering water for fracturing, tanker trucks removing water after fracturing.  Hot-shot companies delivering equipment and material, roust-about companies handling and installing equipment and material.

So many people were brought to North Dakota, so many people came to North Dakota.  In 2008, the population of Dickinson was about 12,000 people, now it is about 30,000 people.  In 2008, an old one-bedroom apartment cost about $300 per month, by 2010, an old one-bedroom apartment cost about $1,500 per month.  By 2011, the ratio of men to women in Dickinson became about 4 to 1.

I arrived in Dickinson in 2011.  At first, it seemed like an adventure, it was exciting.  I remember going to the Paragon Bowling Alley & Champs Sports Bar in Dickinson in 2011, and there were about 200 people there on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.  It was very easy to get a job.  The first place I went to, I got hired right then on the spot.  With overtime, I was making about $1,400 per week.  I met people from all over the United States, and there was a kind of camaraderie with everyone that was a new worker in town, it was like we were all immigrants, kind of in the same boat.  I remember going to Patterson Lake in the summer of 2011, with all the out-of-state workers, DSU college students, and a few local people, there were about 200 people there at the beach on Saturday and Sunday.

In 2013 when I came back to Dickinson, things were much different than in 2011.  There was no more talk in Dickinson about “man camps”, they were not going to be built in Dickinson or Stark County, it was no longer even being discussed.  In 2013, there were approximately at least 500 new apartment units being constructed, and probably one hundred new homes being constructed.  Out-of-state workers were no longer being allowed to stay at the campground at Patterson Lake, Wal-Mart, or the Tiger Truck Stop.  The Dickinson police were now very strict on stopping people for DUI, especially out-of-state workers.  On Saturday and Sunday night in 2013, now there were only about 30 people in the Paragon Bowling & Champs Sports Bar, not 200.  On Saturday and Sunday afternoon in 2013, now there were only about 20 people at Patterson Lake, not 200.  It was a little harder to get a job, though I got hired at the first company I went to, right there on the spot.

In about November of 2014, the price per barrel of oil world-wide, went down, and the price continued to decline in December 2014.  The price per barrel stayed low and went down further in January and February of 2015.  The oil companies in North Dakota such as Continental Resources, Whiting, Occidental, and Marathon decided at the board-of-director level, to hold back on new oil well drilling and on oil well production, there was no use selling all that oil for a low price, it would be better to wait for the price to go back up, then start producing again.  In about March of 2015, in North Dakota we started to see a lot of oil field jobs go away.  The operating drill rig count went from 280, down to 80.  For each drill rig that shut down, it was estimated that 100 jobs went away, that equals 20,000 jobs that went away.

Even though the high paying oil field jobs went away in the beginning of 2015, the most uneducated and uniformed people in the United States continued to come to North Dakota, people that don’t even read the newspaper or watch television news.  Now in Dickinson, there is not a shortage of workers, there are more than enough workers.  The hourly wages have gone down, and the amount of overtime available has gone down.  Not only have many oil field jobs gone away, there is now an over-supply of workers here in Dickinson, there is now a lot of competition for jobs, and few job openings.

At this time, the property managers and the real estate agents in Dickinson are trying their best to keep housing prices high, but they are losing this battle day by day.  I believe that by the summer of 2016, the housing and real estate prices will have dropped by about 20%.  This price drop will be partly due to more new housing being completed, existing housing becoming vacant, demand decreasing, and local wages decreasing.

It is possible, that by the summer of 2016, there will be no benefit to living in Dickinson, in comparison to anywhere else in the United States.  It will likely be just as difficult to get a job in Dickinson, as Idaho Falls, Billings, Colorado Springs, Prescott, Spokane, so there will not be any good reason to move here to Dickinson, because it is cold about eight months out of the year.  I am trying to tell you, It Is Over.

Housing in Dickinson, July 2015

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Since 2009, homeowners, apartment owners, and property managers in Dickinson have really taken advantage of everyone.  The property owners increased their prices so much, that it was just barely worth it to come to work in North Dakota.  Yes, you could get a higher hourly wage and work overtime, but a one bedroom shitty old apartment would cost you $1,500 per month.  Now it is time for pay back, what goes around comes around.  Prepare to have your head shoved in shit and held there property owners!  Ha ha ha ha ha!  You caused everyone to have money problems, now you can have money problems!

I have explained in my blog posts after January of 2015, that approximately 20,000 oil field related jobs have gone away in western North Dakota.  The highest paying oil field jobs, those on the drill rigs, have gone away.  I would guess, that about 8,000 workers and about 8,000 of their family members have left the state of North Dakota since January of 2015.  However, there has probably been about 8,000 stupid people who moved to North Dakota since January 2015, those that neither read the newspaper nor watch the news on TV.

There are less oil field workers living in Dickinson now.  The oil field workers that remain in Dickinson are not as high paid as the ones who left, and there is much less overtime being worked now.  The demand for housing is not as great as it had been in 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.  Plus, plus, in the past year there have probably been at least 400 new housing units completed in Dickinson.  Ha ha, ha ha, ha ha.

Housing prices are going to go down, and down, and down for the next two years.  I have heard that real estate agents in Dickinson are telling people,”You had better buy now, prices are going to go back up in December.”  First of all you lying bitch, it’s 0 degrees Fahrenheit in December, cold and grey, nobody wants to be in Dickinson in December.  Don’t try to victimize me with your treachery and lying, anyone buying any housing in Dickinson will see its value drop about 5% by December 2015, and an additional 20% percent by December of 2016 after reality has set in.  I probably didn’t really figure the drop high enough, what do you think is going to happen when throughout every neighborhood in Dickinson, out-of-state workers are going to just pack what they can into their car and leave, starting about, now?  If there is no way to make your house payment, no way to get a good job in Dickinson, (like right now), what else are you going to do but leave?

I think that the oil field work will possibly pick up a bit in about two years, because of the amount of time it will take to come to the end of this slow down, and the lag time to start proceeding again with more oil field operations.  Think of it like a train, it takes a long distance to slow down, and it takes a long distance to speed up, it is not instantaneous.

Though I am not making much money at this time, one of the reasons that I stay here, is that I hope to be opportunistic when the housing prices reach bottom.  I think that it will take at least two years to get to a bottom.  I want to see housing prices go down and down, and then I want to buy something.  There is oil here, and in the future, oil field workers will have to come back here to Dickinson to get more oil out of the ground.  I would like to own something here in Dickinson because I see the likelihood, almost the inevitability, of oil field workers coming back to Dickinson in the future, and if I can buy something for a low price, and hold onto it long enough, I believe that I would eventually have something that was worth much more than what I originally paid for it.  However, if that ever occurs, I can chose to be reasonable in what I would charge for rent or for a selling price, I don’t have to take advantage of people in the way that other property owners have done in Dickinson.

July 2015 Update for Dickinson, North Dakota

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Hello everyone.  I have not written any posts for this blog for a little over two months.  I have had many ups and downs here in Dickinson in the past two months, work related, women related, housing related.

Please, if you are considering coming to Dickinson at this time, don’t.  Many, many people here are wanting to leave, including myself, but we can’t because we don’t have enough money to leave.  Even though it is the peak of the work season, this is about the least amount of cash-on-hand that I have had in the past twenty years.  I am almost a pay-check-to-pay-check person now, though I have never been before at any time in my life, thank you Dickinson.

I tried to remain calm here in Dickinson as the work has gone away since about December of 2014, waiting for things to sort themself out.  I remained as manager of a small company because I liked the owner, I liked the company, and I liked the work, but my pay went down and down.  I held off, but finally accepted a job at a competitor company which had much more work, but found out within a couple of days that the company was one of the sleaziest places that I had ever worked.  I soon realized that they had more work because they were slightly lower in price, but were greatly lower, vastly lower in the skill level of their personnel, and their ethics were that of the worst-of-the-worst, bottom-of-the-barrel car salesman.  So back to my previous employer I went, learning that not only do you have to be wary of strangers in Dickinson from out-of-state, who may stab you in a Wal-Mart parking lot, but Jesus, you have got to be even more careful about going to work for some of the companies operating here in Dickinson or you will get mugged, raped, and robbed by them.

People in Dickinson now, there are people like myself and others who would like to leave, but don’t have the money to leave.  But there are other people, maybe even myself, that are too stupid to know to leave.  The top income earners had been the young, able-bodied men who worked on the drill rigs, twelve hours per day, two weeks straight, then one week off.  When the drill rigs shut down, these guys went home, they went someplace else, they left the state right then going about 80 miles per hour.  Maybe I should have too, but I did not know what I would do for a living back in Idaho where I still have a house, I thought I would be better off here in Dickinson, but now I am more stuck than I was back in December, January, February.

As the oil field worker men left town, and it became Spring, then Summer, the women came out of their holes and began to move about.  Women began letting me get close enough to them to talk to them and pet them, though you still have to be careful about what you say, so that they don’t start squealing,”That guy is bothering me!, that guy right there!”, also, don’t try to pet them, I said that they let me get close enough to pet them.  Anyway, they keep asking me,”Do you like Dickinson?”  What they are trying to figure out, is if you are going to stay.  What they are trying to figure out, is if you just want to have fun/sex with a girl/woman while you are here, like it doesn’t really mean anything to you, and then you are just going to leave, maybe when they just start to really like you, maybe when they become pregnant, maybe when they are making plans to marry you, are you going to do that, just leave one day?  I am not handsome enough for women to want to have sex with me just because I am so handsome.  For some women, there are guys that are so handsome, they will have sex with him just to not miss the opportunity.  But that’s not me.  Women will consider having sex with me because I am clean, healthy, polite, and have potential in their minds, in some ways, but they have to have more reason than that.  Getting off the track slightly, a sufficient additional reason might be that they are mad at their boyfriend or they are drunk.  Getting back on track with my point, even if women in Dickinson like you or find you attractive, they don’t want to date you or have sex with you unless you tell them that you like Dickinson, meaning that you are willing to stay here, meaning that you potentially would want to marry them.

Having lived in Dickinson for three years now, and having met more women this summer than ever before, because so many men have moved away, the women will let me talk to them now, I got a lot more insight and have more of an understanding of women in Dickinson now.  Most of the people from Dickinson are Catholic, most of the women in Dickinson are Catholic.  Most of the women in Dickinson have a view of life where they want to be married, have multiple children, and have a husband that takes care of them and their children.  In their view, it would be a good idea to get the best possible husband, one who is tall and handsome, one who has good earning potential.  If they spot a guy like this, they had better try to get him quick before some other girl in Dickinson does, because there is only a limited selection in Dickinson, if you don’t get a good guy right away, just look at what you will have to pick from, guys that none of the other women in Dickinson wanted! For the women in Dickinson, if the guy doesn’t want to marry them, the women have to drop this guy right away and try to hurry up and find some other guy they like, who does want to marry them.

I don’t look at dating this way.  I meet young women who are appealing because they are healthy, in shape, have a lot of energy, and are friendly.  I would like to go ride bikes, hiking, or canoeing with these young women.  I meet women who are older than me, who are knowledgeable about law, business, art, architecture, and history.  I would like to talk with these older women.  My point is this: I don’t demand, require, or expect that any woman meet a list of qualifications for me to like them or date them.  Also, I don’t mind if they want to date for a week, a month, a year.  I couldn’t say if I would want to marry them unless I knew them very, very well, and even then I realize that I could be mistaken about what the woman is really like.  So, in short, I don’t ask women out with the expectation or desire that this will culminate in marriage.  I like women, I like being with women, so it is enough in itself just to have the company of a woman I like.  I don’t have to “own” her and “control” her, shouldn’t she be able to do what she wants, when she wants?  I can kind of see why women want to get married, and I would agree to get married if I could see the marriage working out, but I don’t have the same policy/procedure as women in Dickinson regarding dating, that is to only date people who have the intention of marrying them.

I could be mistaken, but elsewhere I believe that there are women who want to date men because they enjoy their company, they are physically attracted to them, they share common interests and opinions, they enjoy going places and being together, yet the woman does not want someone telling her what to do and when to do it, she wants her own house, her own furniture, her own pets, and her own car without having to compromise or get agreement from someone else.  In Dickinson, women want to make sure up front that you want to get married, have kids, provide for them, and every aspect of your life will be geared to accommodating your wife and children, until you die.  So women in Dickinson will try to find out right away if you plan on staying in Dickinson, if you don’t plan on staying in Dickinson, then you probably don’t have the intention of marrying them, and they don’t want to waste their time dating you.

 

April 2015 Summary of Dickinson, North Dakota

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You do not want to come to Dickinson, North Dakota, at this time.  There have been many, many jobs that have gone away in the past two months, mostly because of the low price of oil.  The price of oil is so low right now, that the oil companies who own the wells do not want to pump the oil out of the ground.  It had cost the oil companies so much to lease land, clear the well sites, drill the wells 5,000 feet deep, fracture the wells, install the pump jacks, install the tanks, that they can’t even break even on the money they spent unless they can sell the oil for more than about $70 per barrel.  The price of oil right now is about $35 per barrel.

The oil companies who own the wells, not only do not want to pump oil out of the ground right now, they don’t want to drill new wells, they don’t want to fracture new wells that have already been drilled, they don’t want to repair wells that have just started to have problems.  The oil companies don’t want to do anything right now, except wait.

As you might imagine, when the oil companies don’t want to do anything, they let people go.  The oil companies, the drill rig companies, the fracturing companies, the oil field service companies have all let people go.  Many oil field workers have already left North Dakota and have gone home or gone elsewhere.  Because of oil field work slowing down, because of oil field workers going home, retail stores, restaurants, and hotels are less busy, and they will let employees go also.

The price of hotels, apartments, trailer parks, and houses is still very high.  The property owners, property managers, real estate developers, real estate investors, and real estate agents are all trying their best to keep the prices high, even though it is inevitable that prices here will eventually come down greatly.  People in Dickinson will begin to lose their homes to the banks soon because they are unable or unwilling to pay their mortgage.  They may be unwilling to pay their mortgage because the house that they bought for $300,000 is now worth about $150,000, they may owe $250,000 for a house that is worth $150,000.  People will abandon the manufactured homes that they bought because they are unable or unwilling to pay.  Real estate investors and real estate developers will have to sell their properties for low, low prices because they have no other choice but to sell or let the bank take possession.

In order to keep the riff-raff out of Dickinson, the police are very eager to pull over motorists in Dickinson.  Once they stop a motorist, they can check for outstanding warrants, non-payment of child support, driving without a license, driving without insurance, driving under the influence, possession of firearms, possession of a controlled substance, and they would love to make an arrest.  If you have an out-of-state license plate, you have an even greater chance of being stopped.  If you have a construction worker’s truck that is more than a couple of years old, you have greater chance of being stopped.  The police in Dickinson are enforcing a local social decision, they do not want out-of-state workers ruining their town.  If you get stopped in Dickinson, and you are an out-of-state worker, the cost of going to jail, hiring an attorney, and possibly losing your job, and losing your housing,  is going to bankrupt you, you will leave Dickinson poorer than when you got here.

The people in Dickinson are unfriendly and not helpful.  There is no homeless shelter.  There is no cheap campground, they have made sure to end that.  You can not sleep in your car in the Wal-Mart parking lot, you can not sleep in your car in the truck stop parking lots.

The women in Dickinson are unattractive and unfriendly.  There is a shortage of women.  The ratio of men to women is probably 3:1.  There is very little to do in Dickinson for recreation or entertainment.  It is cold here for seven to eight months of the year.  The people here do not like out-of-state workers, they are hostile to them.  The people here are not very friendly or social with each other even.

Please do not come to Dickinson, North Dakota.  If you do, you will only find that what I have written is the truth.

Hostility In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In about half of my blog posts, I have written about or mentioned the hostility in Dickinson, North Dakota.  In my previous blog post, I wrote that the unfriendliness and lack of hospitality in Dickinson was partially due to how difficult it had been to survive in this area of North Dakota in the past, people living in 10’x12′ grass sod houses and burning dried buffalo dung for heating.  Life had been so hard, people in North Dakota never reached the point where they could engage in friendliness, hospitality, higher learning, recreation, or leisure.

It is time for me to write about something that I have been thinking about for a couple of years in regards to why people in this area of North Dakota are so hateful.  I think that it is genetic.  Most of the local people in Dickinson have German ancestors.  Have you ever heard of German people being extremely hateful to a group of people before?  Yes, that’s right, the Jews.

I have been reading about the Germans rounding up the Jews in Germany, for about thirty years.  Back in the late 1930s in Germany, there were many Jews who were painters, writers, musicians, professors, scientists, engineers, architects, bankers, doctors, and merchants, and apparently many Germans hated them and were jealous of them.  I believe that the Germans blamed the Jewish bankers for inflation of the currency and bad economic conditions.  O.K., so round up the bankers, we have the same problem with the bankers right now.  Civilization needs painters, writers, musicians, professors, scientists, engineers, architects, and doctors, especially the best and most talented ones, these groups contribute greatly to the advancement and well-being of humans.  It seems obvious to me that the Germans wanted to kill all the Jews just out of hatred and jealousy.

Why did the Germans hate the Jews so much?  Is it because the Jews value education, seek education for themselves and their family members, respect those with higher learning?  I see all these local German people hating people with an education right now here in Dickinson.  Did the Germans hate the Jews because they valued art, architecture, music, and literature?  I see all these local German people here in Dickinson hating these things right now.

In Nazi Germany, the Germans couldn’t stand to see what they considered to be people who didn’t belong, getting ahead and prospering.  This is exactly how local people in Dickinson feel about out-of-state workers.  They can’t stand to see out-of-state workers getting high wage jobs, and getting ahead, especially if they have specialized training or education, because that is something they have no use for.  Just like the Nazis mistreated the Jews, and confiscated the wealth of the Jews, these local people here in Dickinson try to do the same thing to out-of-state workers.

 

What Dickinson, North Dakota, Is Like

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When I was a kid in the 1970s, when my family went on vacations, we visited old houses and museums.  When we went to St. Augustine, Florida, we visited the oldest school house in the United States, which I believe was built in the late 1600s, and also some other old houses that were built in the 1800s.  When we went to Key West, Florida, we visited the house where the writer Ernest Hemingway had lived, I believe this house was built in the 1930s, and we also went to the Naval museum.  In Sarasota, Florida, we went to the Ringling Circus winter residence, I believe this house was built in the 1930s, and we also went to the Ringling Circus museum.  In Savannah, Georgia, I remember when I was about eight years old, it seemed like we went through about a hundred houses that were built in the 1800s.  Outside of Lynchburg, Virginia, I went through a residence of Thomas Jefferson, called Poplar Forest, that was built in about 1790.

In contrast to what I saw when I had visited old houses and museums in other states, in the Dickinson area of North Dakota in the early 1900s, families were living in 10’x12′ grass sod huts, with dirt floors, dirt walls, no furniture, no paintings, no photographs, no children’s toys, no phonographs, no pianos, no indoor water pump, no indoor toilet.  In order to understand what living in Dickinson, North Dakota, is like now, you have got to realize and understand that many people in this area of North Dakota lived in very primitive conditions up until very recently.

When I had travelled to other states and visited old houses, I could see how the people had lived in the past, what types of things they did to prepare food, how they decorated and adorned their homes, what kinds of “modern” conveniences they had, what they did in their spare time:  read books, write letters, draw, play an instrument, play board games, swing on porch or tree swings, ride bicycles, play lawn games.  However, when I visited old houses outside of Dickinson, visited the pioneer museum, looked at old photographs, and talked to Dickinson residents, I found that the people here had had very little, often times they did not even have all of the bare necessities.  The harshness and starkness of life in this area of North Dakota is partially the cause of people in this area being unfriendly, inhospitable, jealous and malicious to people from out-of-state, and behaving in a primitive manner.

There are some psychological theories on human development, that explain human behavior based on what is called a “hierarchy of needs”,  which basically says that humans will try to fulfill their most basic needs first, in this order: 1)oxygen, 2)water, 3)food, 4)clothing, 5)shelter, 6)personal security, 7)mating, 8)security of family, 9)social interaction within family, 10)social interaction within extended family, 11) social interaction within a village,  … and when the basic needs have been fulfilled, later, there comes the expression of religion, creation of laws, passing on of learning,  …. and if a group of people passes out of the primitive stage of development they begin to have higher learning in the areas of science, math, medicine, art, architecture, and philosophy.

In order for a group of people to pass out of the primitive stage of existence, there has to be enough resources available so that the people do not have to spend every minute of every day just trying to survive.  Unfortunately in North Dakota, that didn’t happen.  Resources were so scarce in fact, that people looked and looked for something to build their houses with, and all they could figure to do was to cut the grass sod and stack it, in order to make the walls for their house.  They looked and looked, and all they could find to use to heat their home was dried buffalo dung, so they burned dried buffalo dung for heating and cooking.  Forget about furniture, forget about wall paper, forget about art or photographs on the wall, forget about a piano or a phonograph, this was just bare survival.  This was the early 1900s in North Dakota.  Back East, people were painting, boating, playing tennis, playing golf, riding bicycles, attending concerts, going on picnics.

If you looked at a map in the early 1900s, you could see the state of Vermont, Maine, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, …O.K., these are cold states.  On the map you could see the state of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas.  In those states, they have houses, built of wood, with furniture, they had houses there for a couple of hundred years already.  Why did people in North Dakota, stack grass sod to make a 10’x12′ house, and collect buffalo dung to burn, when they could have moved to the southern United States?  I asked a Dickinson resident in his late 50s one time, why people in North Dakota didn’t look at a map, and move south?  Why didn’t people in North Dakota read a book or a newspaper and realize that they didn’t have to live in the cold and the barrenness?  He replied that people just didn’t really think you could do that.

If you come to North Dakota, you will see that there are not very many trees, it is mostly grassland and badlands.  There used to be a lot of buffalo, now there isn’t.  There are some deer, but not a lot.  It is cold October through May, eight months of cold.  If you stay here for a year, and you have to go outside in the winter, you will begin to understand how hard it was to live in North Dakota.  The people in North Dakota had such a hard time trying to survive, that they did not progress to the higher levels on the human development scale, they were stuck at the lower levels, spending all of their time trying to meet basic needs.  As a result, there was no architectural development in this area of North Dakota, all structures are very basic.  The education level is very low due to children having to leave school at an early age to work on the farm, and very few families able or wanting to have their children go to college, which contributes to ignorance and primitive behavior.  Due to it being so hard for people to survive in North Dakota, they do not have any concept of hospitality.

The local people in Dickinson think that they are friendly, but because this area had been isolated in the past, with many people here never traveling outside this area, and the education level being very low, somehow the people here do not realize that they are in fact, unfriendly.  Their sense of friendliness and helpfulness to other human beings is not very civilized.  Just this evening, I was watching the evening news with a Dickinson resident, where it was shown on the news that a Southwest Airlines passenger ran to the bathroom on the airplane, and was heard groaning, about ten minutes prior to landing.  The flight attendants assumed the man was drunk, didn’t check on him, and had everyone de-board the plane at landing, and called the police.  The passenger was found dead in the bathroom, he had had a brain aneurism.  The Dickinson resident stated,”They are not required to do anything, a person is not required to do anything, you might think that someone has to help somebody else, but there is no law requiring people to help somebody else.”

Because the people in Dickinson had had such a hard time trying to survive, and they were not able to progress to the higher levels of human development, there are other manifestations of this in addition to the lack of architectural development and lack of hospitality.  People in Dickinson do not have an appreciation for beauty, recreation, and leisure.

I have written several posts to this blog about women in Dickinson being overweight, out-of-shape, unattractive, poorly dressed, and making no attempt to look attractive.  In architecture, painting, sculpture, dance, music, poetry, and writing there is the pursuit of beauty, but they don’t have that here, they are still primitive here.  I think that the women here would not be so overweight it they had the concept of recreation, where you swim, walk, ride bikes, roller blade, canoe, sail board, play tennis, play golf, but they don’t understand recreation.

If you come to Dickinson, as I have written elsewhere in this blog, there are certain things that will get you into trouble with the local people.  If you have a wife or girl friend that is not overweight, they won’t understand this, and they won’t like this, so I recommend if you have an attractive wife or girl friend, that you keep her out of sight, they don’t appreciate or understand beauty, and they tend to be jealous.  If you have an Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Porsche, or Mercedes, they will not like it, they will not work on it, and they will not like you, they don’t appreciate or understand beauty, and they tend to be jealous.  If you talk about warm weather, the beach, sailing, surfing, running, rock climbing, swimming, bicycling, or travelling, they won’t like this, they won’t understand, and they will just get mad and frustrated, they don’t appreciate or understand recreation and leisure.  As I have stated before, if you want to know what living in Dickinson will be like, you need to watch the movies “Deliverance”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, and “Planet of the Apes”.

Warning, Do Not Come To Dickinson, North Dakota

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Please do not come to Dickinson, North Dakota, at this time.  Right now, and in the coming months, there will be many people let go from their jobs.  There will be many more people looking for jobs, than job openings.  The people that are already here will be competing against each other and fighting each other for the few job openings that will come up.

According to the “Dickinson Press” newspaper, and some oil field industry publications, there were approximately 280 oil well drill rigs in operation at the peak of the oil boom in North Dakota several years ago.  A little over two months ago, the “Dickinson Press” newspaper had an article about two drilling companies parking approximately eighty drill rigs outside of Dickinson because they were not being operated.  About one month ago, the “Dickinson Press” had an article that said the number of drill rigs operating in North Dakota had fallen to 97.  Now, the number of drill rigs operating in North Dakota is about 80.  The number of drill rigs operating in North Dakota went from 280, to 80 the present time.

According to oil industry publications, one drill rig that is operating, has about 100 direct and indirect jobs created when it is operating:  site clearing operators, dump truck drivers, quarry operators, road construction operators, fence installers, equipment transport drivers, rig erection crew, site trailer haulers, trailer set up workers, electricians, tank battery haulers, water truck drivers, drill rig operators, work-over rig operators, drill rod deliverers, casing deliverers, fuel truck drivers, heavy equipment mechanics, welders, pump jack installers, oil tank installers, containment barrier installers, automation & control installers, etcetera.  Because the number of drill rigs operating went from 280, to 80, 200 drill rigs x 100 jobs per drill rig, equals 20,000 jobs lost. 

Some of the oil field workers who have recently lost their job have already left North Dakota and have gone home or gone elsewhere.  The ones who left right away already knew what was going to happen.  How do you expect to get another job in the oil field when there are 20,000 other people who are also losing their job at this time?

In Dickinson, every hotel, every restaurant, every grocery store, every retail store, every hardware store, every bank, will let a couple of employees go, because business has slowed down, and it will slow down even more.  Car dealers and heavy equipment dealers will let sales people and mechanics go.

Though many out-of-state workers have recently left Dickinson, the RV parks, trailer parks, and apartments will not lower their prices for about a year, and housing prices will remain very high.  The people who lost their job, who currently have housing leases with high rents, will be so desperately in need of money to make their rent payment, they will take any job they can get in Dickinson, and it will be an employer’s market, wages will go down.

Please do not come to Dickinson right now.  There are going to be so many people out of work, so many people looking for work, and no job openings.  Housing prices will continue to be very high.  You will not want to be here.  It is cold here for about seven months each year.  There is not a lot to do for recreation and entertainment.  The people are unfriendly, not hospitable, and not helpful.  There is a shortage of women, and the women here have decided that they are going to be overweight, unattractive, and unfriendly.  The police here are determined to cite and arrest out-of-state workers every chance they get in order to try to encourage them to leave.

Women in Watford City, North Dakota

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In this blog post, I will explain that there appears to be a higher percentage of attractive women in Watford City, North Dakota than in Dickinson, due to the amount of women who have come from out-of-state to work in Watford City.  Also, I would like to point out some of the differences between the out-of-state worker women in Watford City and the women in Dickinson.

I have had to work in Watford City, North Dakota for one month now.  I stayed at Teddy’s Hotel in Watford City for the first two weeks, and at Roosevelt’s Hotel in Watford City for the second two weeks.  I look forward to going back to Roosevelt’s Hotel each day when I get done at work, because Roosevelt’s Hotel has about four very attractive women who work at the front desk, and several nice looking women who work elsewhere in the hotel.  When I have to deal with the women at the front desk, like asking them to fax something, extending the length of the reservation, going over a schedule, I can’t think straight, I can’t talk right, I don’t think that I make sense, and it’s because I am distracted by them, in a good way.  I wish I had more reasons to stop at the front desk.

I don’t know if the owner of Roosevelt’s Hotel has a charismatic and charming personality, or if the over-decorated hotel interior attracts very good-looking women, I don’t know how or why, but Roosevelt’s Hotel has somehow managed to hire some women that are very, very hard to find in North Dakota.  The front desk women are feminine, slender, in-shape, healthy, good-looking, poised, have a positive attitude, and are attractively dressed.  Unlike most women from North Dakota, the women at the front desk care about their appearance, they have beautiful healthy long hair, they wear nice modest bits of jewelry that look good on them and match their outfits, they wear tasteful and appropriate dresses, skirts, and slacks.

As I write this, I realize that women in North Dakota make me mad.  I have spent about three years of my life in North Dakota, about two years more than I intended.  I am in my mid-forties.  I feel like my life is concluding in a way that I never would have wanted.  I am living in a place that is unpleasantly cold for about seven months each year.  The rents and property prices are extremely high, especially considering that it is unpleasantly cold for about seven months each year.  There is not a lot to do for recreation or entertainment.  The police will get you right away if you try to drink at a bar.  And the women.

The women in North Dakota are overweight.  They have decided amongst themselves that they are not going to put any effort or care into how they look.  They are not going to exercise, stay in shape, stay fit, or stay healthy.  They are not going to take care of their hair.  They are not going to buy nice clothes.  There is not a chance they are going to shop for shoes, a belt, bracelet, earings, necklace, or a scarf, to put together an outfit to match a skirt.  I could also say that once these women in North Dakota have decided to be unattractive, that this includes being unattractive in their attitudes, intellect, and speech.

What I have previously failed to write about, it just didn’t consciously occur to me, is that the deliberately unattractive attitude of women in North Dakota has carried over into just about every aspect of life in North Dakota.  I have previously written a couple of times about the woman in the Dickinson Department of Motor Vehicles saying to people,”No!, You have to have a North Dakota birth certificate!  We can’t take birth certificates from other states!”  In this case, the deliberately unattractive attitude of women in North Dakota shows up as hostility and ignorance.  I previously wrote about an evening event in Dickinson where about sixty percent of the women were under-dressed.  In this case, the deliberately unattractive attitude of women in North Dakota shows up as “We don’t care how we look, we don’t care if we look bad.”

When I have been in Watford City, and I have met women who are from out-of-state, I have noticed that their attitude is different, it is what I would call more normal.  I guess that I had been perceiving that their attitude was different by observing their actions, their behavior, what they said, and partly by the way that they dressed.  I hadn’t realized until I began writing this post, that when a woman buys and wears nice shoes, nice belt, jewelry, dresses, skirts, and slacks, that it communicates,”I am not ignorant, I care about how I look, I want to be attractive.”

 

 

2nd Post About Women in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have written about women in Dickinson elsewhere in this blog many times.  I think that one of the reasons why I write about women in Dickinson so much is because they are so different from women everywhere else.  Also, the women in Dickinson have a big effect on what Dickinson is like.

I want to again state that I am not trying to make fun of women in Dickinson, or be cruel.  The purpose of this blog is to provide truthful and helpful information to people so that they know what to expect in Dickinson, and perhaps chose not to come.

Recently, I attended an evening event in Dickinson that was primarily a women’s event, with about one hundred women.  I was startled that about sixty percent of the women were under dressed for this event.  I felt like maybe I should offer to let them borrow some of my clothes.  There was not one woman that was over dressed.  I was sad that many of the women were wearing cheap and tacky clothing.  Before I say anything else, I want to say something that I wrote before, apparently women in Dickinson have solidarity amongst themselves that they are not going to buy nice clothes, they are not going to get dressed up, they are not going to put on make up and jewelry, they are not going to stay in shape, and if they all stick with this plan, the men will not notice that there is anything wrong with the way they look.  Just about all of the women at this event were sticking to this plan.

I previously wrote in this blog that I think one of the reasons why women don’t get dressed up and don’t take care of themselves in Dickinson is because they don’t want to attract males.  They don’t want men noticing them, they don’t want men admiring them, they don’t want men asking them out, or trying to pick them up.  There are way more men than women in Dickinson, the women don’t want any more attention.

At this event, there were about ten women who were moderately attractive.  The one that I thought would be the best one for me to mate with, was about one inch taller than me, she had shoulder length brown hair, very pale unblemished skin, narrow set eyes, was slightly hunched over at the shoulders, wearing a tacky leopard spot blouse, she was about thirty years old, not thin, very slightly overweight by about ten pounds.  I thought that she had a kind of dignity to her, though she was not hot, she was not trashy either.  I thought that she probably had not been asked out a lot in her life, and had had time to develop her mind, intellect, interests, coping skills.  I thought she could be a good girlfriend.  Like some kind of prey animal, she must have sensed that I was interested in her, because when I happened to be in her area, she turned her head the opposite direction and held her hair up with her hand in order to hide behind it, so that I couldn’t possibly say something to her like,”Hello.”  I thought that she was going a bit too far, but for her, it was better to be safe than sorry.

Another woman that I was interested in was about forty-eight years old, she was about two inches taller than me, she was probably the best dressed woman at the event, she had very long beautiful legs, was tan, had a sun aged face, and had nice jewelry.  I did not really think that I could get her.  She was much more polished and outgoing than me.  When she and her friend came over to where I was, her friend was asking about her husband, to which she was saying that he works late, he doesn’t get home until about 1 a.m.  At the time, I thought that they were trying to make sure to let me know that she was married, and to forget it.  Now that I am writing this, I am wondering why she was saying in front of me that her husband works late and doesn’t get home until 1 a.m., I don’t think that she meant that as a hint, did she?

The third woman that I was noticing at the event, I at first supposed her to be about twenty-five.  She had pretty long brown hair, she was young and healthy, with a pretty face and a pretty body, she was wearing nice blue jeans and a nice plain white blouse.  I noticed that she wasn’t drinking alcohol, or anything else, or eating anything.  I wanted to ask her why she wasn’t drinking or eating, but thought I had better not, she might be pregnant or sick.  What if I had bought her and brought her a drink, and it turned out that she was eighteen years old, I am sure that her parents and the other women would have liked that, not.  She knew that I liked her, and she spoke to me and was nice to me towards the end of the event.  She left with her boyfriend.

At the very end of the event, I turned and almost walked into a very interesting young lady, well, interesting to me.  She was about 5′-2″, one hundred ten pounds, very long platinum blond hair down to her waist line, white skin, pretty face.  When I almost ran into her, I got the impression that she was kind of like a fairy tale princess, or a fairy tale mouse.  She almost ran into me at the same time, and if I thought she looked like a startled mouse, she didn’t quite react like I was a cat, more like I was a startled rat.  I said excuse me, and kept going.  Later, I talked to her for a while, she was the daughter of one of the people at the event.  I don’t know if she was seventeen, or twenty-one, I didn’t ask.

It is strange, weird, and unfortunate, that the women my age at this event didn’t want to have anything to do with me or speak to me, but some of the older women did, and some of the younger women did.  The two younger women that I spoke with were very attractive, they did not think that they were too good-looking to talk to me, and they were not too scared to talk to me.  There were about sixty women at this event that were my age, most of them were not very attractive, a few of them were moderately attractive, none of them had any interest in me whatsoever, which is even more strange because they had all been drinking alcohol.  I will sum up by saying again that women in Dickinson are not interested in getting the attention of men.

UFOs in Dickinson, North Dakota

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Because it is winter, and there is not a lot to do, I will tell you about UFOs in Dickinson.  If you are from out-of-state, and you ask a local person about this, they will not know what you are talking about.  If you were to find a local person that was living in Dickinson back in 1970, and if they are still mentally sharp, they may know exactly what you are talking about, but there is about a 95% chance that they will tell you they don’t know what you are talking about.

If you are from out-of-state, you may or may not know that in Montana and North Dakota there are Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles with nuclear war-heads, in underground launch facilities, spread out across these states.  If you do some searching on the internet, you can get a general idea of where the launch sites are in North Dakota.  Minot Air Force Base acts as a central command and control location for the ICBMs in North Dakota.  The missiles are below ground level, sitting in a vertical position.  Adjacent to a missile or group of missiles, is an underground command and control center that is manned 24 hours each day, every day of the year, ready to initiate a launch.  You can drive by these launch sites in the northern part of the state, and all you will see above ground is a chain link fence surrounding a small ventilation structure and a small entrance structure.

In the late 1950s, Dickinson Air Force Station was constructed on a butte four miles northeast of Dickinson, and it became active in 1959.  For years and years, the Air Force told the people of Dickinson that the station was a weather radar base, and people in Dickinson believe that to this day.  The truth is that the Dickinson Air Force station was equipped with search and height finding radar that was used to detect unidentified objects and provide range, direction, altitude, and speed to guide interceptor aircraft to reach the object before it reached the missile launch sites.  The Dickinson Air Force Station was designated as a Ground Control Intercept and Warning Station.  The site contained barracks for housing, administrative buildings, control buildings, operations buildings, radar towers, generator plant, club and gymnasium building.  You can look this up on Wikipedia, and there is a satellite photo of this site on Wikimaps from 2015, and you can zoom-in on the satellite photo to get a better view.

According to what I could find, the Dickinson Air Force Station was closed in 1965.  I believe that there is much more to this facility below ground, and I have spoken to some local people who also believe this.  In approximately 1980, more or less, I don’t have an exact date right now, the site was sold at public auction in Dickinson.  I have been told that it was purchased by Mr. Fisher, owner of Fisher Industries in Dickinson, for approximately $45,000.  Fisher Industries is a local company that is a sand and gravel business, that has grown into other industries and other states and is now estimated to be worth $100 million.  Mr. Fisher is said to have sold all of the industrial equipment that remained on site for $45,000, and then he re-sold the property.  The owner of the site, according to some local residents, had to agree to the condition from the government, that people would never be permitted to live in any of the structures on the property.  I do not know if this was because of lead paint, asbestos, or some other reason, but this appears to be the case to this day.

In the 1970s, perhaps earlier, farmers in the New England area about twenty-five miles south of Dickinson, were sighting UFOs at close range, and in some cases UFOs landing.  Farmers in the New England area were also experiencing cattle mutilations, where cattle were killed in an unknown manner, by unknown perpetrators, and organs had been surgically removed from the cattle.  The farmers discussed these events locally with each other and with their neighbors, the town of New England had less than five-hundred residents.  The person that was explaining all of this to me, was living in New England at that time, and he heard these events directly from the farmers themselves who experienced this.  It came to the point where the sightings and mutilations were so numerous, that the Air Force came to New England.  The first thing that the Air Force did was to find out every farmer who had seen something, then the Air Force went to speak to each and every farmer who had seen something.  Then, the farmers no longer wanted to talk about anything that they had seen.  When the farmers were asked by local residents about their UFO sightings, they would say from then on, that they did not want to talk about it, or that it never happened.  The Air Force then built some kind of installation in New England, and had personnel stationed in New England for at least several years, then the Air Force went away.  I have spent several hours searching on the internet for any record of the Air Force installation or activities in New England, but have not found any mention of it.  I can not find on the internet any report of the UFO sightings or cattle mutilations in New England in the 1970s.  This is kind of surprising, and it kind of isn’t.  The person that explained this to me, that had lived in New England at that time, asked another person with us if they had remembered all of this going on in the New England area, and they replied that they did, but this other person did not want to talk about it.

The Air Force activity in Dickinson and New England in the 1960s and 1970s, is not talked about, it is probably forgotten by most people.  The size of the Dickinson Air Force Station makes me believe that much more was going on at that location, because the number of personnel on site was much more than that at a missile launch site.  The barracks, the off-site family housing, the equipment and infrastructure at the site appears to be much greater than would be needed if the only function of the site was to operate the radar.

Prostitution in Dickinson, North Dakota

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When I first came to Dickinson, North Dakota in May of 2011, I became bored and lonely.  There was not a lot to do, and I did not know very many people.  I did not see very many pretty women anywhere that I went in Dickinson, and most of the women were not friendly to me.  It became apparent that there was a shortage of women in Dickinson.  I had never wanted to look at an internet dating site until I came to Dickinson, but at this point, I thought that I would try it. 

At first, I set up a free user profile on “Match.com”.  On “Match.com” I found that there were very few women within 100 miles of Dickinson, and about 9 out of 10 of them were unattractive.  I then set up free user profiles on “Mingle.com”, “PlentyOfFish.com”, “DateHookup.com”, and “SeniorPeopleMeet.com”.  Using these four additional dating sites, I found that there were still very few women within 100 miles of Dickinson.  One of the reasons why there were so few women from Dickinson on the dating websites, was because there was a shortage of women in Dickinson, the ratio of men to women was probably 3:1, women here did not have a hard time getting offers for dates.

In the evening after work, I would look at the five different dating sites to see if any nice looking women from Dickinson or the surrounding area had joined, but they hadn’t.  For entertainment, I began looking at the profiles of women in other states.  Very soon I began to see some things in the profiles of women that upset me.  At first I thought that I had just come across some bad, shallow women.  But after several weeks of reading women’s profiles, and reading about two hundred profiles, I found that I hadn’t understood women at all, and this was very upsetting to me because I was forty years old.

What had started out as me trying to meet some women in Dickinson by looking at internet dating sites, really changed my life and opened my eyes.  I thought that I had understood women, but I hadn’t understood them very well at all.  In person, in magazines, in books, in movies, and on television, women talk about romance, true love, a spark, a connection, chemistry, finding their soul-mate, commitment.  But apparently what they say and what they want are entirely different things.  The internet dating sites, prompted the women to select the specific things that they were looking for, which revealed what women were really looking for.

Most women were looking for a guy with a high income, a high paying profession, a higher education level, who was good-looking, athletic, in-shape, liked to travel, and above all, most important, was tall.  I thought, “What the fuck?  Yea, there are guys like that, but they get to date models, they don’t date 40-year-old, short, plump women with four kids at home, like you.  No wonder you are divorced, you’re crazy.”

Me, I don’t care if a woman is 5′-0″ or 6′-0″, if she is 18 years old or 50 years old, if she is a hotel maid or a medical doctor, if she didn’t graduate from high school or has a PhD, if she is poor or if she is wealthy, I don’t care.  When I saw that most women have an income, occupation, and education requirement for men, I realize that most women want someone to pay for everything they want.  When most women have a height requirement for men, I guess that most women must be scared that something or someone is going to get them, and they need to be protected.  Does that sound like a child to you, someone that has never grown up, wanting someone else to pay for everything and protect them?  Now, I never had less interest in dating or getting married.  Maybe I should just hire a prostitute?  That would save me a lot of time, energy, effort, and trouble.

Some older out-of-state workers in Dickinson told me to look on a website called “Back Page”, and look under “escorts”.  I did look.  There were some nasty looking women, but also some hot looking women.  I said to the older workers that were around,”Some of these women are good-looking, but how many men do you think they are with each day?  Do they take showers after every guy?  This is kind of gross.”  An older guy answered, “These women are professionals, they know what they are doing.  You are much more likely to get a venereal disease from some easy girl that you meet in a bar, than you are from an escort.”

I started doing research on prostitutes, and I found a website titled “The Honest Courtesan, by Maggie McNeill”.  This is a very informative website, Maggie McNeill is one of the best writers that I have ever read.  I am sorry to take the mystery out of it for you, but Maggie McNeill is not her real name, she grew up in New Orleans, she went to Catholic School, she went to a University in New Orleans, and I believe that she graduated with a degree in English.  She was a librarian I believe.  When she got to be about 30 years old, she began stripping because her ex-husband had left her with a lot of debt, then she found out that she could make a lot more money as a prostitute.  She admits that she had always liked having sex, even from a young age, and that she had had sex for money for the first time when she was in college.  If you ever wanted to know anything about prostitutes, read her website, because that is all she writes about, you can ask her questions.

I asked Maggie McNeill some questions, she was very nice.  When I went to work in other states, and when I came back to North Dakota, I would look at the website “Back Page” because I was tempted.  I was tempted because I don’t like women wasting my time, I don’t mind being nice to women, but I don’t feel like playing stupid games with stupid women, I don’t feel like tricking young women, I don’t want to lie to older women who want promises, and I don’t feel like misrepresenting myself to women who expect to gain something.  I also don’t want to get any woman pregnant accidentally.  It would be easier for me just to pay an escort $250.  You could get a nice looking woman without all the frustration and stress, and then be left alone.  There are two reasons why I never did, one was that it is just so unappealing to be with a woman that has already been with four guys that day.  The second reason is getting arrested.

I read some of Maggie McNeill’s website posts that have some information on how to not get arrested.  Some of the commenters to her posts have been in the military and they have some good advice on how to not get arrested.  If you read Maggie McNeill’s website, and you read other newspaper articles on the internet, you will see that very often the police will put their own ad for an escort on “Back Page”, when you show up to meet your escort, you are arrested.  This is what happened in the beginning of February in Bismarck, North Dakota.

I am so tired of Dickinson, I am so tired of there being a shortage of women in Dickinson.  I don’t want to have sex with some local guy’s wife because she is trying to get back at him, or she is tired of him.  I have considered going over to Bismarck to meet an escort so that I am not going to have difficulties here in Dickinson.  But I was watching the local television news in early February, and the asshole police in Bismarck were so proud that they had sixty-five callers in response to their “Back Page” ad for an escort.  The asshole police in Bismarck were saying, “Obviously, there is a greater demand than there is a supply, we were not even able to arrest all of the callers, we were so swamped with calls.”  No Shit you stupid asshole cops!  What do you think you have accomplished?

There are way more men in Dickinson than women.  Most all of the truck drivers, construction workers, and oil field workers have realized that the women working as cashiers, waitresses, and bartenders are tired of being hit-on all the time.  The men have realized that the housewives in Dickinson don’t want to be bothered when they have to go to the grocery store.  So, the men look at the ads for escorts on-line, they call to make an appointment, they want to meet an escort at a hotel in Bismarck so that they don’t get into trouble here in Dickinson, and the brilliant police in Bismarck arrest them. 

The truck drivers, construction workers, and oil field workers are trying not to bother or accost women in Dickinson when they decide to spend $250 on an escort and make an appointment with an escort.  If the police are going to arrest men in this area for making an appointment with an escort, I hope that men in Dickinson will begin to proposition women at work and housewives like never before, unceasingly and inappropriately, including the police wives. Since the police don’t want there to be prostitutes, I hope that men start bothering the women in Dickinson all day long, every day, everywhere they go, so that the women and the police wives will start screaming at the police,”Let them have their prostitutes you stupid fucking assholes!”

A Few Things To Do This Winter In Dickinson, North Dakota

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There is not a lot to do in the winter in Dickinson, North Dakota.  I will give a few things that I think you will like.  There are not very many good restaurants in Dickinson, and if you have read some of my previous posts, you will already have heard some of my complaints, especially about poor service, and even no service.  I want to recommend a restaurant that always has excellent service, and excellent food.  Don Pedros Mexican Restaurant is just to the west of Ace Hardware.  The wait staff is the most professional of any that I have seen in Dickinson.  Before you place your order, you are served tortilla chips, salsa, and bean dip, which is very good.  Everything that I have ever ordered has been very good.  Every time that I have eaten at Don Pedros, I have had to take the rest of my food with me in a to-go box, there has been more food than I could eat at one time, and it is too good to let it go to waste.

Sometimes after I get done eating in Dickinson at night, I am not ready to go home yet, especially if half the purpose of me going out to eat was to get away from the other people back at my house.  The movie theater in the Prairie Hills Mall usually has movies that start after 9:00 p.m.  I saw several good movies there including “American Sniper” and “The Judge”, and I even saw some movies that I did not want to see, just to have something to do.  It is a nice, clean, seemingly new movie theater, and after 9:00 p.m. there are mostly only adults.

In a previous post, “Surprise Sighting of Attractive Women in Dickinson”, I wrote about going to the Chili Cook-Off at the Astoria Hotel back in January, and that there was an enormous amount of good-looking women there.  On February 14, I went to a fundraiser for an animal rescue shelter at the Astoria Hotel, there were a lot less people, but the catered food was very good, there were very good-looking bartender women, and there were some nice looking women in the Astoria Hotel bar and at the event.  So now, in the winter, I recommend going to the events that are hosted inside the hotels in Dickinson, the large events attract a lot of good-looking women, and even the small events are worth going to.  On February 21, there is a Gumbo Cook-Off at the Quality Inn, I recommend going to that.

Lastly, I am again recommending that everybody go to the West River Community Center.  They have the indoor hot tub right next to the indoor water park pool.  They have the indoor lap pool, two indoor tennis courts, four indoor basketball courts, indoor volleyball court, three indoor racquetball courts, weight training area, rock climbing wall, and indoor track.  If you are wearing jeans and a jacket, you can still walk the indoor track, five laps equals a mile.

If You and Your Family Move to Dickinson, North Dakota

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I received a comment on my blog from a reader whose family is going to relocate to Dickinson, North Dakota.  I would like to answer some of the reader’s questions, and offer my sincerest advice.  In this blog, I have mostly written about what it is like to be a man in Dickinson, but in this post, I want to write about what it will be like for a wife, and for a teenage son or daughter.

I believe that it is probably difficult for a teenage son or daughter to leave their friends and familiar high school behind, and relocate to some place that is new, and have to start over again.  One of my friends who lives in Williston had to do this many times during his childhood because his father was in the military.  He did not have a very good time in school, he felt that he was picked on because he was an easy target, he was always the new kid in class.

In general, lately, about 30% of the time in Dickinson, I feel that I am not treated very nicely by the local people, because I am not from here.  I want to caution parents that if your son or daughter enters school in Dickinson, they may experience some negativity from school administrators, teachers, and students.  School administrators and teachers are probably tired of new students from elsewhere, having to review and incorporate each new student’s academic records, having to determine what classes to enroll them in, and evaluate where they are in comparison to other students.  Even though adults in the education system should be above directing negativity towards students, it may happen.  Students may be negative towards a new classmates because they may copy the attitudes of their parents, or they may take out their anger on someone who is an “easy target”, because they are from somewhere else, are not settled in yet, and don’t have any friends.  It might be inappropriate to be as blunt as I am putting it, with your son or daughter.  I would try to say something like,”It can be difficult to start over at a new school.  It is difficult when you are not familiar with the town, with the people, and you don’t have any friends yet.  The first days may be hard, but things will get better.”  Please advise your son or daughter, if they are confronted with an administrator, teacher, or classmate that is picking on them, try to not say,”Dickinson sucks!, I wish that I never moved here!”  This is a normal thought, but don’t say it out loud.  Some days in Dickinson, it feels like everyone is against you, but if you make it through the day, you may find that tomorrow you have a better day.  In Dickinson you sometimes run across more than several people in a row that are unfriendly towards you because you are from somewhere else, but eventually you meet some people that are more friendly.

In order for your son or daughter to not be depressed, to have something to look forward to doing, to meet people, or to keep to themselves if they wish, I highly recommend having them go to the West River Community Center every day.  The West River Community Center has an indoor rock climbing wall with safety lines, three indoor racquetball courts, two indoor tennis courts, four indoor basketball courts, an indoor track, two indoor swimming pools, indoor volleyball court, and weight rooms.  If they don’t feel like talking to anyone, they can swim, lift weights, walk the track, practice racquetball, or practice basketball.  It is a very good place to get exercise in the winter, and it is safe for kids and adults.  There are a lot of housewives and moms that use the West River Community Center throughout the day, and these women seem to have an above average positive attitude and they seem to be more outgoing and happier.

Because there a lot of new kids enrolled in school in Dickinson, and because these kids come from all over the United States, I would be very watchful about what kinds of kids my son or daughter was becoming friends with.  I would watch out for kids that appear to be too street-smart for their age, or kids that seem to be too mature for their age.  I would be concerned that if my son or daughter was raised in a well supervised, caring environment, is their street-smart, and more mature friend, going to take advantage of my more naive son or daughter, going to get them involved in things inappropriate for their age, smoking, drugs, sex.  It is probably necessary to try to meet the parents of the kids that your son or daughter is spending time with.  Is your son or daughter going over to their friend’s home where the parents are routinely absent for several hours?  Does anyone in the household appear to have a drug or alcohol problem?  Do the parents appear to be reckless or have an unsafe environment for your son or daughter to be in?  Because there are so many new people that have moved to Dickinson recently, you have to be more careful about your safety and your child’s safety.

There are three small Family Value grocery stores in Dickinson, their prices are higher than the Wal-Mart in Dickinson.  If you have patience to wait in line, and it is daylight, you can shop at Wal-Mart if you want to.  If it is dark or nearing dark, I would not want my wife or girlfriend to go to Wal-Mart, the parking lot walk is too far and too dangerous at night.  If it is dark, you are much safer going to the smaller Family Value grocery stores, the parking lot walk is short and safe.  In Dickinson at night, a warning for both men and women, you don’t want to be way out in the Wal-Mart parking lot at night, or be at a gas station late at night where you will be approached by what appears to be a pan-handler or beggar.  What appears to be a pan-handler or beggar, is actually probably a drug addict and a criminal, who has spotted you before you ever noticed them.  They approach you when you are not able to ignore them, such as when you have a long walk to the store, or when you are pumping gas.  If they thought that they could get away with it, they would probably take your money by theft or by force, they only ask you for money because they feel they would get caught in a theft or a mugging, but if you are far enough out in a dark parking lot, their odds improve for getting away with a theft, mugging, or abduction.

If you are looking for good warm winter clothing, Runnings Farm & Ranch store has a very good selection of winter jackets, overalls, hats, gloves, work boots, and snow boots.  Carhart jackets are very warm and durable, Berne jackets are maybe as good and less expensive.  The hardware stores like Ace, Macs, and Menards also have good warm winter jackets.  The Prairie Hills Mall has Herbergers Department Store.  Herbergers Department Store has nice clothes for men, women, and children.  If you have a job interview, a date, or a wedding, you will be able to find shoes, pants, belts. shirts, ties, suit jackets, and winter jackets that are nice and appropriate.  The only movie theater in Dickinson is also in the Prairie Hills Mall, and it usually has about four different movies at any one time.

If you have car problems in Dickinson, I recommend that you take your car to the dealer.  I have taken vehicles to the Dodge dealer and the Toyota dealer in Dickinson, and both of these dealers have done good work and they have a good reputation.  I believe that the Ford dealer and the Chevy dealer also have a good reputation.  There are at least several good independent mechanic shops in Dickinson, but the good mechanic shops have a waiting time of about four weeks before they can work on your vehicle.  If you have an Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Range Rover, Saab, Subaru, Volvo, or Volkswagen, you may not be able to find anyone in Dickinson who wants to work on your vehicle.  I have heard that Dan Porter Toyota may try to work on some foreign vehicles, and that Sax Chevrolet may try to work on some foreign vehicles, but they may not want to work on your foreign vehicle if it is a complicated repair.

When you begin work with an employer in Dickinson, try to be polite, positive, moderate in your behavior, moderate in what you say, and be careful and mindful of certain things.  It has been my experience in Dickinson, that your co-workers will try to cause problems for you.  Keep in mind that your co-workers may dislike you because you are from someplace else, or because they believe you have more education or experience than them, or because they wanted their relative to get the job that you have.  Keep in mind that they would like for you to make a mistake or for you to say something that they could try to damage you with.  Be careful not to say anything sarcastic or jokingly, because your coworkers will repeat what you said without adding that you had been joking.  Be careful not to give any opinions about work or workers, because you may have assumed that what you said was not going to be repeated, however your coworkers will go tell everyone what you said.  Your co-workers will ask you what you think of Dickinson, try to say something positive like, “The West River Community Center is very nice.”  The longer you remain positive, moderate in your behavior, moderate in what you say, and refrain from saying anything that could offend anyone, and refrain from giving your opinion on anything, the longer you can keep your job.

And to answer the last question of the reader, I do not think that there has been a recent drop in rental rates or home prices, but this could/should start to occur any day now because there has been a reduction in the number of oil field jobs and the price of oil is still currently low.

Surprise Sighting of Attractive Women in Dickinson, North Dakota

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On January 24, 2015, I went to the Chili Cook-Off at the Astoria Hotel in Dickinson, North Dakota.  There were about twenty companies that served their home-made chili at this event, which was a fundraiser for rural fire departments.  There were about four bars that served alcohol.  The band “Outlaw Sippin” played from about 9 p.m. to midnight.  There were about four hundred to five hundred people at this event.

I have spent about two and a half years in Dickinson, and I have never seen more attractive women in Dickinson than I saw at this event.  In fact, the last time I saw that many attractive women in one place, was twenty years ago when I was at a school with over 30,000 students.  At the Chili Cook-Off, there were all different kinds of attractive women:  tall skinny ones, tiny petite ones, friendly volunteer women of all ages, cow-girls, hot housewives, pretty geeks, off-duty bartenders, on-duty bartenders, out-of-town girls, local girls, college girls, other kinds too.

I have thought about it and thought about it, why did pretty women come out to this event?  What made this event different?  Three things: large clean bathrooms, tile, and clean, warm, safe environment.  I tried to understand why women decided to come to this event, and imagine what their thought process must have been.  Here is what they must have been thinking, “I would like to go to this event at the Astoria Hotel, they have nice big bathrooms that are clean, and have tile work, and I can drink and have someplace safe to go to the bathroom.  I like tile work.  It will be clean, and warm, and dry, and safe, and not nasty.  I can eat some chili.”

I have done a lot of complaining about the lack of attractive women in Dickinson.  It turns out, that if you have a nice, clean, warm, dry, safe environment, with tile, they will come out.  Also, the women at this event were nice to me, which was unusual, I guess they must have been in a good mood and felt safe.

A Business Fails In Dickinson, North Dakota

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In the blog post below I write about a business in Dickinson that I worked for.  The owners were not particularly evil or malevolent, but they were kind of mixed-up in their thinking.  It was frustrating to see them do things that most business owners elsewhere in the United States would not do, avoiding these mistakes by using normal business sense.  I also explain that it was difficult for this business to work in Dickinson, due to Dickinson being so hostile to out-of-state workers.

In 2013, when I returned to Dickinson, after having been gone for a year, I got a job at a construction company, as a foreman.  I was glad that I got the foreman position because I would have a better chance of protecting my safety and well-being, than if I were a crew worker.  The pay was not high, though it was O.K. with me.  On my first day of work, I came to find out that the foreman I was replacing had given his two-weeks notice of quitting, during his first week.  On this first day of work, both of the company owners came to the work sites, they were very hyped-up, and I could see why the foreman that I was replacing, was quitting.

Both of the construction company owners had a degree in engineering, both of them were in their late forties, early fifties.  This was a specialty type of construction company.  The workers and technicians had come from Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, Idaho, Florida, and Missouri.  Two workers had a degree in engineering, a third worker was about two years away from his degree in engineering.  Some of the workers had received technical training in the military regarding this type of work, other workers had gained knowledge and experience regarding this type of work in other states.  The construction company had accumulated these workers over three years of being in business.

In the beginning, when I first met everyone, all the employees seemed to have above average intelligence, everyone was upbeat, and positive, about forty percent of the workers were very sharp and quick-witted.  One of the very first problems that I became aware of at this construction company, was that all of the out-of-state employees were having housing problems.  My housing situation was very, very bad, and I didn’t want anyone to find out where I was living, I was embarrassed about it.  Two of the workers had paid a lot of money for a basement apartment, they had moved everything they owned from Oregon and Washington, to Dickinson, the basement apartment flooded in May and ruined all of their belongings.  They complained about this to the company owners, explaining their expenses in relocating to Dickinson, having to pay extremely high rent just to share a basement apartment, then having all of their belongings destroyed in a flooded basement.  These two employees explained to the company owners that they needed to be paid enough money to afford a decent place to live in Dickinson, or that the company needed to subsidize their housing, otherwise it would not be worth it to them to remain in North Dakota.  When I first came to work at this company, these two workers were intelligent, funny, energetic, and good at their jobs.  Due to their housing problems, they soon became sarcastic, bitter, and complaining, they hurt company morale, especially when they decided to quit the company and leave North Dakota in June, then they really ranted  about how much North Dakota sucks.

Of the remaining workers, one, then another, and then another had housing problems in Dickinson or other problems in Dickinson.  Due to the cost of housing in Dickinson, one of the married out-of-state workers, never brought his wife to live with him in North Dakota during the two years that he was here.  He had a single bedroom in a house that was shared with some of the other workers. He went straight home, never went out to eat, never went out to bars, never went to Patterson Lake.  I felt sorry for him.  He didn’t have much of a life, all he did was work and go home. He didn’t have any friends.  He was invited to go out by two of his out-of-state co-workers who had lived in the rental house with him, but he declined.  Unlike him, these two out-of-state co-workers tried to make the best of living in Dickinson, they went out to restaurants and bars every night in Dickinson.  In early June, these two out-of-state workers both got a DUI in Dickinson.  I liked these two guys, the corporation that we did work for liked these two guys, they were fun, positive, intelligent, and good at their jobs.  After they got their DUIs, they were not happy about being in Dickinson anymore, their attitudes were not good, they didn’t seem to care about their work very much.  The company had to let them go by the end of August, but they had been two of the best employees before they got their DUIs.

Due to the construction company getting into a position where all of their work was coming from one client corporation, and due to pressure from that client, the two owners of the company that I worked for under-bid the remainder of the work for the year.  Some of the work that I did with my two crews, was taking three times as long as what had been budgeted.  Rather than the jobs being straight forward, most of the jobs had several special conditions that had not been accounted for, which would require additional time and work.  I was frustrated with not being able to make money on jobs, but losing money on jobs.  In discussions with the company owners regarding the amount of time each job was taking, and the additional work required due to complicating conditions, the two company owners acknowledged that they had been led to believe that the work they were to provide fixed pricing on was nothing out of the ordinary, but the work that the company was given, was problem work.  The two company owners did not want to protest that the work they were given was problem work with special conditions, not ordinary work, and that additional work requires additional charges.  Instead, they thought that they would be “rewarded” at a later date for their perseverance by the corporation we were working for.

I was frustrated additionally, by a couple of hires that the two owners had made to do someone a favor.  One hire was made to give their niece a job.  A second hire was made to give the daughter of a friend a job.  At this point, two months in, we had lost four key employees, who were intelligent, funny, upbeat, who had knowledge and years of work experience in this specialized area.  They were replaced with two young ladies, who had no construction experience or skills, who were hired as a favor to someone.

To try to make a long story short, one of the young ladies who was hired as a favor to her father, was a problem.  She was not accustomed to doing physical labor, she was not good at performing physical labor, she did not want to perform physical labor, she did not want to follow instructions, instead she would question me when I would ask her to do something.  The other laborers would do their work, and then go and help her do her work, instead of getting a break from their work, the other laborers would complete their work, and go and do her work.  After a couple of weeks on the job, she wore a pair of jeans with the entire crotch missing.  Neither me, nor any crew member said a word.  At the end of the day I went to the company owners to speak about the problems I was having with this young lady, the company owners said that they had already received a complaint from the corporation we were working for, either through a site supervisor or through a member of the public reporting it.  The company owners asked this young lady why she was wearing pants with the entire crotch missing, and why she was questioning me when I asked her to do something.  She just acted innocent, and like she wanted to work just like everybody else.

In late August, I was tired of how things were going at work.  I felt pressured to try to complete jobs more quickly, though there was not much I could do to speed things up, there were no short cuts to be taken, the jobs had been under-bid, it had not been known that each of the jobs we were given would be unusually difficult due to special conditions.  I was additionally frustrated that keeping in mind that we needed to complete jobs more quickly, instead of getting a strong and experienced construction worker, I got a young lady crew worker who did not want to perform physical labor, would question what I asked her to do, and it looked like she tried to set us up for a claim of sexual harassment.  I quit in late August, and went to work for another company that did similar work.

An out-of-state worker from a southern state was made foreman for my two work crews at the company that I left.  He had arrived in Dickinson in July.  He had a wife and a couple of children back home in the state he had come from.  In August he had been able to lease a house about twenty-five miles south of Dickinson, and he brought his wife and children to North Dakota.  He was a little unhappy about the drive to and from work each day, but he could only afford a house that was outside of Dickinson.  I saw him a few times around town, and I saw him a couple of times on the job.  In about October, he and his family went back home to the state he had come from.  I guess that he was frustrated like I was about having to do nothing but problem jobs that had been under-bid.  He had seen enough of Dickinson to come to the conclusion that even though you can get a job here, the way Dickinson is and the cost of housing makes it not worth it to be here.

In 2014, the out-of-state co-worker who always went straight home after work, who never went out to eat or out to bars, whose wife lived in a different state, he finally went home.  The out-of-state construction manager who had brought his wife to North Dakota about six months previously and had leased a house about thirty miles to the east of Dickinson, he quit and went back to the state he had come from.  The local women who worked in the construction company office quit.  Then the young lady that had been hired as a favor to her father, she quit. Then the client corporation no longer wanted or needed this construction company, and there was no reward for the company’s “perseverance” through difficult work that had been underbid.  And the two owners, and their niece, were the last ones, and they went home.

Women in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I stated that the purpose of this blog was to try to provide truthful information to people about what living in Dickinson, North Dakota, is like.  Women in Dickinson, North Dakota, are significantly different from women elsewhere.  I feel the need to explain this, not so that I can say cruel things about women in Dickinson, but to let people from out of state know what to expect.

As I have said elsewhere in this blog, there are way more men in Dickinson than women.  If you come to Dickinson, you will see that there is a shortage of women.  For most people, this is an additional unpleasant thing about Dickinson, in addition to seven months of cold grey weather, lack of places to shop, lack of entertainment, lack of things to do, over zealous DUI citations, and the fact that Dickinson residents and your co-workers from Dickinson do not like people from out of state.

Day after day after day in Dickinson, I go to the gas station, to work, to the grocery store, to the hardware store, to other stores, and I don’t see any pretty women.  It gets depressing.  I wonder to myself,”What has happened to the Earth?”  It is like I am stuck in some apocalyptic movie, living in some dreary, barren land, after some kind of devastating disaster.  It’s like I’m on some kind of prison planet.  I might as well be in prison, there are mostly men here, not any women.  The hardships in Dickinson, make me feel like I am living through the Great Depression, like I’m a refugee during a war, or that I have been put in prison for some kind of crime.  Like I said before, if you want to know what living in Dickinson will be like, you need to watch the movies “The Grapes of Wrath”, “Deliverance”, and “Planet of the Apes”.

One of the reasons why you don’t see many pretty women in Dickinson, is because, there aren’t very many.  When I lived in warm states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona, women were very concerned with how they looked, they were even competitive about it.  In states with warm climates, there are so many more opportunities to go out, for recreation, socializing, entertainment, business.  In warm states, people ride bikes, walk, jog, play tennis, play golf, surf, water ski, roller blade, swim, sun bathe.  In warm states, people go to movies, plays, concerts, cook outs, cruises, dinner parties, drinks after work.  In all of the aforementioned recreational and social activities in the warm states, the women are concerned with how they look.  They want to look good in their bathing suit, their golf outfit, their dinner dress, their party dress.  The women look forward to shopping for clothes and planning what they will wear.

Without trying to go too deep into the psychology of why women do what they do, in warm states, women want to look good, they try to look good.  The women enjoy getting attention from men, they enjoy getting noticed.  The women enjoy getting admired for their jewelry and clothing.  Women in warm states read “Vogue”, “Vanity Fair”, “Cosmopolitan”, and “People”, in order to see what clothes other women are wearing, what accessories they have, how they are wearing their hair.  In warm states, women go to the gym, exercise, diet, pay attention to what they are eating, in order to maintain and improve their appearance.

One of the reasons why women are competitive about how they look in the warm states, is because there are about equal numbers of men and women.  The women would like to be able to get the boyfriend or the husband that they want, but there is competition for the better males.  In order to be able to get one of the better males, each woman has to try to be more attractive than the other women who are seeking his attention.

In Dickinson, most of the women do not ride bikes, jog, play tennis, play golf, roller blade, swim, or water ski.  It is too cold to do outdoor activities for seven months of the year.  In Dickinson, most of the women do not go to plays, dinner parties, or drinks after work.  What I am saying is, most of the women in Dickinson do not exercise, they do not go out, they do not have any place to go, therefore, they do not care how they look, they do not care very much about what they wear, and rather than being competitive about looking good, I actually think that they are competitive about looking bad.

In Dickinson, I think that the women that are from here, try to look bad.  One possible reason why women from Dickinson try to look bad, is so that they will be left alone by the men.  There is nothing to do in Dickinson, and nowhere to go, what is the use in a woman looking good in Dickinson, it’s not like she’s looking forward to getting asked out on a date, there is nowhere to go.  Why would they want to look attractive?  They are not really looking forward to some guy in Dickinson trying to mount them.  As far as women being in competition with other women for the better males, I can just hear some woman from Dickinson in her North Dakota accent saying, “I don’t want him, you can have him,…no you can have him,….no, you can have him.”

A second reason why women in Dickinson try to look bad, is to get along with other women and to have solidarity with other women.  All of the women have decided that they are going to be anywhere from thirty pounds to one hundred pounds over weight.  If all the women do this, the men won’t really know the difference.  So when the men in Dickinson see big overweight women, with baggy loose clothing, and unkempt hair, the men think nothing of it, because that is what they are used to seeing.  The buffalo are big, the cows are big, the women are big.

Profiles In White Trash, Dickinson, North Dakota

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In western North Dakota, historically, I don’t think that there were white trash people.  Yes, there were poor people.  Yes, there were uneducated people.  However, due to the difficulty of life in North Dakota, with its very cold and long winters, its lack of trees, its lack of wild animals for food, and its lack of industry, conditions were not right for the creation of white trash people.  In order to survive in North Dakota, you had to be hard working, you had to plan ahead, and you had to think of the consequences of your actions, or inaction.

In a cold, barren state, where survival requires hard work, self-sufficiency, accountability, and reaping what you sew, white trash people can not survive.

Unfortunately, there are white trash people in North Dakota now.  Unfortunately, I have to admit, that they are from the South.  I don’t think that there is anyone that hates white trash more than I do.  There are two things about white trash people that go hand in hand, which are the primary ingredients of white trash, one is ignorance, the second is bad conduct.

Ignorance is not so bad, if a person would just keep their mouth shut, stay home, and not have children.  In the case of white trash people, they are out and about, and they have the Midas touch in being offensive.

At about 6:30 a.m. one morning not long ago, I went to have breakfast at the Perkins restaurant in Dickinson.  Within about a minute of being seated at a booth, I could hear someone with a strong southern accent, speaking overly loudly to a group of people seated in an adjacent, enclosed room.  This man, was using language that was not appropriate for a public restaurant, speaking about a subject that was not appropriate for a public restaurant, and was speaking too loudly.  He appeared to think, like all white trash seem to think, that he was being witty and entertaining, rather than realizing he was being inappropriate and offensive.   The waitress went back to the group after a few minutes to take their orders, she was a pleasant lady, in her sixties.  The man began to speak to her inappropriately, asking her if she was married, making a couple of suggestive comments.  Even though the waitress did not act offended, I am pretty sure that she was, because she is married, and she is from North Dakota, and is not accustomed to being spoken to like this.  As I already said, historically, there were not white trash people in North Dakota.

The adjacent enclosed room, was being occupied by approximately ten workers from an oil field service company.  I could tell from their accents, that just about all of these workers were from the south.  Though I continued to hear this particular man, speaking overly loud, throughout the time I was eating,  I never heard about five or six of the group say anything, one way or the other.  Before the boasting speakers had finished eating and talking, about five of the workers excused themselves to go to work.  Three of these workers who left early, were black men.  I looked at these men as they left, their faces visible to me, but not to those remaining seated at the table they left, their faces had a pained and disapproving look, almost a grimace.

I could tell that just as I was disgusted by the white trash, so were these men.  Both they and I grew up in the South, and we knew that this behavior was inappropriate, and we were sorry for it.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, a hostess brought a well dressed man in his late fifties, towards the back of the restaurant, closer to the white trash oil field workers than I was seated, he quickly assessed that group with one look that took less than a second, and said, “No.”, and he immediately turned, and walked to the furthest table in the opposite direction.

Trying To Get By In Dickinson, North Dakota, Part II

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In my very first post to this blog, I explained why I was writing this blog.  I said that I wanted to describe what it was like living in Dickinson, North Dakota.  I wanted people to have the truth.  If you have read at least several of my posts, you will probably have thought to yourself the following three things:  that I am pessimistic, that I am negative, and that I am exaggerating.  The last point, that I am exaggerating, no, you will find out sooner or later if you come here, that I am not exaggerating.  That I am pessimistic and negative, yes, but this is necessary for survival here.

As  far as people who have come to Dickinson, I have fared a little bit better than average.  I have been able to make enough money to pay my bills, to keep my home in a different state, to buy an additional vehicle, to buy more tools, clothes, guns, etcetera.  I have not been arrested and taken to jail, although I have come close about five times.  I have not gotten any women pregnant or gotten any venereal diseases.  I got injured badly enough to where I couldn’t work for five months, no workers compensation from North Dakota, but I have recovered about 90% after a couple of years.  Currently I have an O.K. place to live here in Dickinson.  So all in all, I feel like I am doing a little bit better than average.

Why, you might ask, do I think that I am doing a little bit better than average?  Well, I will tell you.  Among the people who I know that have come to Dickinson in the last seven years, who I will refer to as: “ES”, “MR”, and “SA”, these three people have been arrested and taken to jail in Dickinson a combined total of five times.  “ES” and “MR” have college degrees.  Among the people who I know who are from Dickinson, who I will refer to as: “MK”, “CL”, and “DS”, these three people have been arrested and taken to jail in Dickinson at least once each.  “MK” and “CL” have college degrees.

Some of you people who are reading this are thinking, “So what about being arrested.”  So what?  Do you know how much harder it is to get a job after you have been arrested for something?  You can either tell the truth, and not be hired, or you can lie, get hired, and then get fired when your background check gets completed.  I worked for the government once, and was questioned for five hours by an investigator during the background check, and I didn’t have any arrests, I never would have been hired if I had.  It sucks to get arrested, and have that on your record.  In the past six months in Dickinson, I have been stopped by the police three times, and been asked for my I.D. and current address.

Regarding being stopped by the police three times in the past six months, do you think this leads to a negative and pessimistic outlook?  Yes, it does.  The Dickinson Police are just hoping that you have an outstanding warrant, an expired driver’s license, expired insurance, that you have been drinking, that they can spot drugs, or a weapon in your vehicle.  That way, you can get arrested, be taken to jail, miss work, lose your job, be unable to make your car payments, your apartment/house payments, and lose everything you own.  You see, this is Dickinson, and everything was nice here, before you got here.  As far as Dickinson is concerned, you are a piece of shit, oil field trash, out of state worker.  As I wrote in a previous post, if you want to know what living in Dickinson will be like, you need to watch the movies “Deliverance”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, and “Planet of the Apes”.

To get back on track with the theme of this post, “Trying To Get By In Dickinson, North Dakota, Part II”, and to stick by my assertion that you need to be pessimistic and negative to survive in Dickinson, I will elaborate with an example.  Every  time I get in my vehicle, before I leave the driveway, I remind myself that this is Dickinson, and be prepared for some f___ed up shit.  This past Sunday morning I was driving to work at 7 a.m., I get to the intersection of State Avenue and 21st Street, which used to be a three way stop up until about a week ago, the north bound lane did not have to stop.  About a week ago they installed a stop sign for the north bound lane, and now all four stop signs have a sign that says “all way”.  I was going west, and came to a complete stop at the stop sign, here comes a new four door, four wheel drive, black dodge truck going north,  I said to myself, “No way am I going”, sure enough, the illiterate, ignorant piece of shit went through the intersection going 30 miles per hour.  The oil field truck behind it, came to a complete stop at the stop sign and waved for me to go ahead, the two guys in the front seat were laughing, they saw what happened.  About two months ago, the same thing happened to me at the intersection of 23rd Avenue and Fairway, Fairway has no stop sign, 23rd Ave has a stop sign that says “cross street does not stop”, but a lady on 23rd Avenue pulled out right in front of me.  I was ready, because I know how stupid, ignorant, and illiterate the people in Dickinson are, they can’t figure out “STOP” and “cross street does not stop”.  By the way, if I had gotten into an accident when that lady at the stop sign pulled out in front of me, do you know who would have gotten cited for the accident when the Dickinson Police arrived?  That’s right, me, because I am a worthless piece of shit out of state worker, and Dickinson was nice before I got here.

Before you get here, and once you are here, you need to plan on things going bad.  As I mentioned in a previous post, you need to be prepared for not getting served in a restaurant, (try looking at the restaurant review site “Yelp”, for restaurant reviews in Dickinson, and you will see that I am not making this up.)  If you need to make a bunch of copies on a Friday, and SBM closes at 5:00 p.m., don’t be surprised when both locations are closed at 4:00 p.m., (the only other place to get copies is the UPS store.)  If you need to park your car at the Dickinson airport, you may need four wheel drive to get out, (a fifty seater airline aircraft got stuck in the mud at the Dickinson airport in the spring of 2014.)  You may not be able to get a hotel room, or your hotel room reservations may not be found, (I know business owners and construction crews that have had to sleep in their vehicles at oil field locations and construction sites.)  If you get injured working or get laid off, expect not to get workers compensation or unemployment from North Dakota, ( Happened to me, happened to three people I know: “CL” ,”JK”, “CC”.)  Do not drink even one beer, and then drive in Dickinson, you will likely get a DUI.  If you have company provided housing, or any housing for that matter, you need to have a back up plan “B”, and a back up plan “C”, (I have seen many, many people, including me, get up shit creek in Dickinson when they lost their housing, it is not easy to find a place, and housing is extremely expensive.  For instance, if you get injured and can’t work, you will lose your company housing.)  I have met several people who came to Dickinson, could not find a place stay, ran out of money, and then begged the police to take them to jail so that they could have a warm place to stay and something to eat, there is no homeless shelter in Dickinson.

In summary, and I am not joking, I mean it, you have a better chance of surviving in Dickinson if you plan on things not going well.  If you come from the south like I do, don’t expect people to be nice to you, you can’t expect that, you had better expect them to be mean to you, because they will be.  Don’t you be friendly either, anything you say will be used against you, the people here are just looking for some specific things to dislike you for, they already don’t like you in general.  The longer you keep your mouth shut, the longer you can keep your job.  Even telling your landlord or neighbor where you are starting work, will result in your landlord or neighbor immediately telling their aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandkids, that, “They’re hiring at the college!, they’re hiring at the college!, get down there!”, even though you might have a master’s degree or doctorate, and their relatives didn’t graduate from high school.

What does that leave?  Well, you pretty much have to keep your mouth shut, do your job, keep a close eye on your coworkers trying to get you injured or in trouble, don’t go to bars, be extra careful driving, go straight home, and quickly come up with a back up plan “B”, and plan “C” for a different place to live, and a different place to work.

Trying To Get By In Dickinson, North Dakota, Part I

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Please read my previous blog, “Like Crabs In A Bucket”, that describes how people in Dickinson will possibly try to impede your life.

Below are some preliminary guidelines on how to get by in Dickinson, North Dakota:

Don’t Say Anything!  For reasons that will be explained below, do not say anything!  If people in Dickinson learn that you have an education, that you have a foreign car, that you have a pretty wife or girlfriend, that you have a house, that you are from a different state, you will have difficulties!

Try Not To Let It Be Discovered That You Have An Education!  North Dakota has the largest number of people with less than an 8th grade education, and the highest per capita beer consumption.  So if you hear someone talking about something that is factually not correct, or absurdly incorrect, try not to say anything, so that you are neither agreeing nor disagreeing.  It helps to go and do something else, if you feel tempted to say something.  Remember, people in North Dakota would rather you had done four years in prison than four years in college!

Do Not Let It Be Known That You Have A Foreign Car!  You had better not have a foreign car!  What, do you think you are better than us?  What, are you too good to drive an American car?  Get that piece of shit out of here!

Do Not Let It Be Known That You Have A Pretty Wife Or A Pretty Girlfriend!  If you have a pretty wife, or a pretty girlfriend, do not be seen with her.  If you are seen with her, this will cause bewilderment, confusion, anger, hatred, jealousy, and malevolence.  Most men in Dickinson do not have a pretty wife.  Most men in Dickinson have a wife that is overweight.  I don’t think that they know their wife is not pretty and overweight, they only have the other wives in Dickinson to compare them to.  This is what they are used to.  Don’t rock the boat, keep your pretty wife or girlfriend out of sight.

Do Not Let It Be Known That You Have A House, Or Anything!  If they think that you have anything, anything!, they will be jealous of you.  You must think that you are better than them if you have a: hot tub, drum set, aquarium, etcetera.  That ain’t right if you have a: house, pool, pool table, trampoline, etcetera.

You may think, “So what, I don’t care.”  Do Not Make This Mistake!  You have driven here from a different state and have relocated.  Do you want to lose that job that you just got because your wife came by to drop off your lunch?  Now everybody is mad, and nobody can get any work done becuase you have a pretty wife. How did you get a pretty wife?  Do you have money?  Hey!, how much is this new guy getting paid!  Yeah, how much is this new guy getting paid that he can have a pretty wife?!  That aint right!

Another example:  “Hey, I heard this new guy say that he had a pool.”  Reply, “Well we don’t need any of that shit around here! These people coming from some other state, bragging about how they had a pool!  If their state is so good, then how come they came out here, they probably need to go back there then!”  Yeah!!!

Example:  “I heard this guy say he used to be an engineer, well we don’t need any engineers around here.  I’m gonna drop this board on his head when he walks by.  Look here he comes…”  “Heh, heh, that’ll teach him.”

Remember, Dickinson used to be nice before you got here!  You ruined everything!  We don’t need that (meaning anything you have, anything you have done, anything you are) shit around here!

Like Crabs In A Bucket, Dickinson, North Dakota

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When I grew up in the South, I used to catch blue crabs in the Indian River.  While you were crabbing, you dropped the crabs that you caught into a half-filled bucket of water.  If you would look in the bucket after you had caught about five crabs, one of the crabs would very nearly have the tip of one of his claws on the top rim of the bucket.  But he never got out, because the other four crabs had a hold of him and were pulling him back down.  Dickinson is like that.

When I first got to Dickinson in 2011, I went to work for an oil field service company that was short handed.  They hired me, and two other out of state workers.  One of the workers never showed up.  They hired me because I had a camper on the back of my truck, I had a clean driving record, no criminal record, and had construction experience.  In order to encourage me and the other guy to stay, the company management said that they would provide housing for me and the other guy, that is, until the other workers heard that.  The other workers, which were from Dickinson, said, “That aint right, why should the company pay for them to have a place to live, they don’t pay for us to have a place to live.”  The result, the company withdrew the offer to provide a place for me and the other guy to live.  Did that benefit the current employees from Dickinson?  No, it only caused me and the other guy to have to live in campers on the company property, it had no benefit to the current employees.

After the offer of company subsidized housing was withdrawn, the current Dickinson employees started to say, “That ain’t right, you get to stay in your camper on the company property and not pay rent.  We have to pay rent for where we live.”  I explained that I had a house, I had to pay for that house, property tax, homeowners insurance, utilities.  My house was in a different state, I did not need or want another house, I just came here to work.  I wondered to myself, “WTF, why are these people so intent on making sure that you don’t get anything, when it doesn’t affect them, they just want to see that you aren’t getting anything.”

The second company that I went to work for in Dickinson, I stayed in my camper on the company property.  So did a friend of mine who I will call “SA”.  “SA” went to the Dickinson DMV to change his driver’s license to a North Dakota license.  The DMV lady asked for his current address, and “SA” gave her the construction company address.  The DMV lady argued with him that this was not his address, until she did not want to argue any more, and she telephoned the police.  “SA” was arrested for providing false information to the DMV.  The charges were dropped when the prosecutor realized the address that “SA” gave, was actually where he was living, oops!  What benefit did the DMV get from refusing to give “SA” a North Dakota driver’s license?  “SA” had a job, he lived at the construction company yard, and he continued to live there for another two years, working for the company.  He did not earn enough money to afford $1,500 per month for a one bedroom apartment, plus utilities.

I will give a couple of examples of the experiences of local people, who have lived here their whole lives.  A friend of mine, who I will call “DS”, owned thirty acres of vacant land outside of Dickinson.  “DS” did not make much money, but due to a circumstance that came up, he had the opportunity to buy a used manufactured home for roughly $3,000, about ten years ago, but he had to get it moved to his property.  He checked with Stark County to find out what the rules and requirements were, he wanted to place the manufactured home on his property.  He was informed by the county that he could not move the manufactured home onto his property and live in it like he wanted.  He accepted their reason.  It was not until someone moved a manufactured home onto an adjacent property several years later, that he found out that he had been lied to.  He told me that he felt like some people at the county had disliked him, and they just didn’t want to see him get ahead.

A life long resident of Dickinson, who I will call “CL”, who has a degree in business, has told me many stories of trying to start businesses, trying to gain employment, and opportunities in Dickinson.  When he was young, thirty years ago, a house or a property would become available, ones in which he figured he made enough money to be able to buy if he really lived frugally, but he could manage.  He asked older business people in the community what they thought about him buying that land, if they thought it was a good idea or not.  They told him oh no, no, no, bad idea.  Sometimes he had an idea to start a business, he would use his money, and borrow some additional money from family members, and he was told, oh no, no, no, bad idea, from business people who had a say in it, like a bank, or a supplier.  As he got older, and he saw other people start the businesses that he had wanted to start, and their businesses grew, he said he thought, “WTF, why did everybody try to talk me out of, or try to stop me, from starting that business, or buying that house?  Why did I listen to those people?  It turns out they just didn’t want me to succeed, they were jealous or something!”

You may or may not have experienced this before, where you live in a town, or work for a company, where people try to block you from something.  You may want to buy a property, start a business, get a job, get a promotion, and people try to prevent this from happening, not because they want what it is that you want, they just can’t stand to see someone else get ahead.  I used to think of it this way, “They don’t want to put in the time and energy to start a business or get a promotion in order to advance themselves, but, by God, if they can help it, you’re not going to get ahead either!”  Just like crabs in a bucket, pulling each other back.