I was getting ready to write another blog post about excessive greed in Dickinson, North Dakota, and describe how it hurts the greedy individual’s own family.  I was planning on showing a comparison between wealthy individuals who are hated, and individuals who are not hated.  I decided to just go ahead and write about the individuals who are not hated, for the time being, who have hatched a scheme that I actually agree with.

In the mid-1900s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed a dam on the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota.  This is the third largest man made lake in the U.S., it is about 178 miles in length.  Most of the land along the shore of the lake is federal, tribal, state, county, or city owned and controlled.  However, in some locations, the government granted land leases, where individuals could park privately owned trailers or manufactured homes, non permanent structures.  One of these locations was Charging Eagle Bay, also known as Mosset Bay.

Who knows, in the 1960s and 1970s, the successful business owners and successful farmers in Dickinson started parking trailers and manufactured homes on Mosset Bay so that their families would have a place to go for recreation in the Summer.  My belief is, that many business owners would send their wives and children up to Mosset Bay for a couple of weeks at a time so that they could “have fun”, meanwhile the business owner would “suffer” alone in the house back in Dickinson.

At first, these business owners could teach their squabling young children how to swim and how to fish.  As they got a little older, how to ski, how to sail, and how to operate a boat.  The parents had time to talk to their children.  It was a good, safe, fun environment, because the only people there were people who had a land lease and could afford to install a trailer.  There were no hoodlum, rif-raf, drug people at Mosset Bay.

As the children became adults, they tended to not want to visit mom and dad, unless they were at Mosset Bay.  At Mosset Bay they could go boating, jet skiing, get drunk, socialize, and not have to pay for anything.  The moms and dads that kept their trailers, boats, jet skis, and fishing poles at Mosset Bay had a way to get all of their married children, adult children, teenage children, and grandchildren together in place where they liked being and were happy.

Over time, the trailers have had decks built on, extra rooms built on, sheds constructed for golf carts and ATVs.  The interiors have been remodeled and are nicely furnished.  A lot of money has been spent on the trailers and the toys by the successful business owners and the successful farmers, but I totally agree with it.  It is something that the children, grand children, and great grandchildren look forward to, have fun for many days every summer, and will have very happy memories that they might not have had unless the grandparents made this possible by getting the land lease forty years ago.