Tag Archives: People in Dickinson

Note To Farmers In Dickinson About Getting Raped

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I hereby grant permission to the Chamber of Commerce in Dickinson, to reprint the following information contained in “Note To Farmers In Dickinson About Getting Raped”.

Farmers in Dickinson:  You are no more likely to get raped by having given permission for someone to park trucks and trailers on your property, than if you had not given permission.  Let’s look at the facts.

There are many people in Dickinson who live in apartments, and perhaps twenty people pass within ten feet of their front door each day. Twenty People!, Ten Feet!, that sounds like pretty slim odds, but the apartment dwellers are not raped.  Let’s take another look.

In Dickinson, there are people who live on City blocks.  At the opposite corner of the block, people park and get in and out of their cars, day and night.  Day and Night!, Day and Night!, yes day and night.  And they don’t rape people.

Consider this, if your house is 200 feet from a public road, there are probably people that you don’t know, who drive down that road every day.  If you grant permission for someone to park their truck or trailer 500 feet from your house, they are no more likely to rape you than the people who drive 200 feet from your house every day on the public  road.

The fact that you give someone permission to park a truck or trailer on your property does not increase your chances of being raped.  People that want to rape you, will try to rape you whether they have permission to be on your property or not.

As a farmer, you are much more likely to be raped coming out of a bar in Watford City, than you are on your own farm.  Here are a few tips:  Don’t wear tight jeans.  Don’t let people buy you drinks and get you drunk at the bar.  Always check you tractor cab before you get in.

Also coming soon for farmers in Dickinson, “The Do’s and Don’ts of Animal Husbandry”, and “Don’t Stick Your Finger In That Socket!”

Christianity In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have written a great deal about people being hostile, unfriendly, uncooperative, and not helpful in Dickinson.  I have been upset about it.  I tried to understand it, discuss it, find reasons for it, explain it.

About one year ago, I began attending a small Christian Church in Dickinson.  I wanted to see if there were any good people in Dickinson.

I have tried to help more than several people in Dickinson, but hardly ever did I just give anyone money.  At the Church that I began going to, I did give some people money, people who seemed to legitimately need money: a visiting pastor and his wife, an out-of-state worker who was homeless, an out-of-state young person who was almost homeless, and to the pastor of the church whose family was having difficulties.  Some of the people in the Church were looking for work, I offered some work that I had available to three people.

I tried to give, what I could afford to give, in an instance when I thought that a person really needed help, in order to try to help some, and hoping that others in the Church would also try to help that individual.  Please remember, I stated a few months ago, that my first job was not that busy, my second job was not that busy, so I had to get a third job, I don’t have a lot of extra money to spare.

I became aware, that though this was a small church, this Church had a great deal of money.  I thought that this was both good and bad.  Announcements were made each month, about some very large donations that this Church had made to other churches, and I thought that this was both good and bad.  The very large amount of money that was in the bank, the very large money donations that were made to other churches outside this area from this Church, I thought, “Hold on, what about all of these individuals right here in Dickinson who need help?  Why can’t we help these people right here in Dickinson?  Why can’t we help these people first?”

There are several people in Dickinson, that I have helped again and again.  One of them, I really don’t want to be friends with him anymore because I kind of feel exhausted from helping him after many many self-inflicted vehicle breakdowns.  Another person that I know, who needed money very much, I got him a job working with me.  Shortly, after I got him hired to work with me, he became difficult and pig-like, partly because he was tired, and I regretted hiring him.  In a second job that I have, I have hired this same person to help me on about eight different projects, he usually gets tired and cranky and has to go sit down, and I swear to myself that I will never hire him again.  About the same time that I had to get a third job, this person was having severe financial problems.  I got him hired to work with me.  I re-did his resume and helped him through the application process, which was difficult.  I did some pre-interview coaching with him, and did some practice interview questioning.  Because I had more experience, was overqualified, and would be there to help him, my friend who was less experienced and less qualified, was hired to work with me.

The first week on this new job, my friend really let me down one day when he was working by himself, he could have cost both of us our jobs.  He apologized the next day, and said that he realized he was totally wrong.  About two weeks later, he did the same thing again when he was working by himself, and it could have cost both of us our jobs.  The next day, this time he did not apologize, instead he threatened to quit because I had yelled at him, and he started to imply that he was going to attempt to get me fired for being verbally abusive to him, under the “hostile work place employment laws”.

I couldn’t believe it.  I had gotten this guy hired to work with me through a lot of effort.  He would not have gotten this job without me, he had not even known that this job existed, and he was not a very good candidate for this job.  Now, it looked like he was going to try to get me fired, which would have resulted in him being fired too, when it became known why I had reprimanded him.  Besides losing this job, I had more to worry about, I had two extra trucks, and two work trailers on property that this person owned.  I was paying him rent, but not high rent.  It appeared that I had better start looking for some place else to park four things.

I called the pastor of the Church that I had been going to, to ask him if he knew anywhere that I could park my two extra trucks and trailers.  I explained the situation to him, that I was really upset that my friend was trying to get me fired from my job because I had reprimanded him for twice doing something that could have caused us both to lose our jobs, and now I needed to get my trucks and trailers off of his property.  I knew that the pastor’s sons had farms outside of Dickinson.  I knew that one of the church members had 3,000 acres outside of Dickinson.

I never heard back from this pastor.  I didn’t ask for money, I asked if he knew of a place for me to park my two trucks and two trailers, knowing that he did know several places belonging to Church members.  I said that I was worried about losing this job, I needed this job right now.  I didn’t hear back from him.

As I stated earlier in this blog post, I have given money to the pastor of this Church, I have given money to several of the Church members, I have offered to give work to several Church members.  As I have already stated, this Church has a very large amount of money in the bank, and they make announcements each month about having donated large amounts of money to churches outside of this area.  I didn’t ask for money, I just asked for help.  Why can’t anyone help me?

My friend realized that he would more likely lose his job than me, for complaining that I yelled at him for what he did.  I don’t have to get my trucks and trailers off of his property at the moment.  I did see again, that there is something wrong with people in North Dakota.  Why was my friend trying to cause me to lose my job, after I have helped him so many times?  Why was the Church that I was going to, refusing to help me, when I had given money and had helped people in the Church?

 

German Catholics In North Dakota Part III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

German Catholics In North Dakota Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

German Catholics In North Dakota, Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facebook in Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School Assignment, Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Dickinson mayor Dennis Johnson resigning at the end of October 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unfriendliness In Dickinson, North Dakota

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Several months ago, I loaned my truck to a neighbor for a couple of days because his truck had broken down.  I hate to let people borrow my truck because they think it is an old truck, and they can abuse it.  Even though their vehicle has broken down, mine is somehow running.  My truck is running because I have replaced the radiator, power steering pump, water pump, timing chain and gear, fuel pump, drive shaft universal joint, front drive universal joints and seals on each side, installed overload rear leaf springs, and bought four new tires.  All this cost me about $4,000 over the years that I have owned this truck, so it is not just my good luck that my old truck is running.

About two months ago, I asked the neighbor who I had loaned my truck to, if I could shoot my 9mm pistol on his vacant thirty acres, if I placed my target against the vacant one hundred acres behind it.  I explained that I had to take and pass a qualifying exam.  My neighbor said no, and that he did not want to allow me to shoot on his other 160 acre piece of property either.  I then had to drive seventy miles one way to get to a piece of public land that I knew that I could shoot on.  There are two shooting ranges that are about thirty miles away, but you have to go to the shooting club once a month meeting, apply for membership, and pay a $40 membership fee, which is what I eventually did.

About one month ago, I thought that I might have to move to an apartment in town.  I have an extra truck and a utility trailer that I don’t think that I could park in town if I were renting an apartment.  I drove to someone’s property that I have met before, his property is about 1/2 mile wide by 1/2 mile long.  He has several vehicles, several trailers, farm equipment, and other things on his property.  I asked him if I could pay him $75 per month to park my extra truck and utility trailer on his property.  He said no.

I then went to one of my neighbors who is about thirty-five years old, who has an older house on about one acre, with about eight cars, and four trailers on his property.  I told him that I might have to move in to town, that I didn’t think that I would have a place to put my extra truck and utility trailer, could I pay him $75 per month to park them on his property?  He said no.

I kind of understand, and I kind of don’t understand.  I own a house on five acres in a different state.  If one of my neighbors asked to park a vehicle and a utility trailer on my property because they had to move to an apartment in town, I would ask them for how long did they need to park it.  I would say that if it was just for a month or two, go park it way down on the north end, just off the dirt road.  I believe that if you do not collect any money from an individual, and that if they step in a hole on your property and break their leg, your homeowner’s insurance will cover their injury.  This type of thing can happen when anyone walks onto your property to go knock on your front door, this risk is always there.  If you receive payment from someone to use your property, you should probably talk to your insurance company about commercial or renter’s insurance or something.  If someone was offering me $75 per month to park a vehicle and a utility trailer on my property for more than a couple of months, I would find out what additional insurance I needed, because $75 per month is $900 per year.

Outside of Dickinson, there is more vacant land than I have seen just about anywhere else.  There is no shortage of vacant land, there is an abundance of vacant land.  There are farms where people once lived, but no longer live there.  I asked neighbors adjacent to the abandoned farms who owned the abandoned farms, I would like to find out about renting it, the neighbors replied,”Oh, that is so and so, they live down the road there, people have asked them before to rent it, they won’t rent it out.”

Up until about 1980, there were very few people who wanted to visit or move to North Dakota.  It is very cold and barren.  There isn’t a lot to do for recreation or entertainment, there hadn’t been very many things to do for employment.  The first oil boom in this area came in about 1980 and then went away.  During the first oil boom, property prices rapidly went up to a high peak, then went back down to a low price after the oil boom.  I don’t know if there is still some anger over this in and around Dickinson, I think that there is.  Some people sold their land at the right time, got rich, then were able to buy back equal or better land after the prices went back down.  Some people didn’t sell their land, remained poor, and later wished they would have sold their land. 

I think that there is a lot of anger, resentment, hatred, jealousy, and greed stirred up in these local people.  They have a hard time dealing with the amount of people that have moved here.  They have resentment and jealousy that some of their neighbors have sold their land and made money, or that some of their neighbors are getting oil revenue money.  They have resentment, jealousy, and anger that these people from out-of-state can come here and get jobs making anywhere from $15 per hour to $30 per hour, when they have lived here their whole lives and never made that kind of money, that aint right, that aint fair.  I think that this hatred shows up in the local people’s refusal to allow out-of-state people to rent or use the huge amount of vacant land outside of Dickinson.

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.

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.

More Culture Shock In Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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

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

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

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