Tag Archives: Working in Dickinson

Economy in Dickinson, March 2016

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I will try to give a brief look at the Economy in Dickinson, in March 2016, using people that I know as examples.

I was making very little money working two jobs in Dickinson this winter, so I got a third job working in Watford City.  I was very lucky to get this job, jobs are scarce.

A friend of mine in Dickinson that I have known for two years, this winter was the poorest and most financially desperate he has been in the past eight years.  I got him a job working with me in Watford City.  He was very lucky to get this job, jobs are scarce.

A friend of mine in Dickinson that I have known since 2011, who has a CDL and does construction work, he became completely broke and had to return to Wyoming in November of 2015.  He could not get another job in Dickinson.

A college educated friend of mine who has lived in Dickinson since 2008, he left Dickinson in December of 2015, due to lack of professional work prospects.

An electrician who I have known in Dickinson since 2013, he had been doing well financially in 2014 and 2015, now he is very nearly broke.  Not a lot of work prospects for him.

At the Church that I was going to, there are three truck drivers, each with a wife and kids.  One truck driver had lost his job in October and has not been able to get another one.  A second truck driver has been expecting to lose his job any day now for the past two months, the company he is working for is going out of business.  About 5% of the Church members have left the state since October due to lack of work.

A friend of mine who I have known since 2011, co-founded a trucking company in Dickinson in 2012.  His trucking company went out of business by the end of 2014.  He has been broke since the Spring of 2015.

To date, the only oil field worker that I have ever met, that I know now, who is not broke or nearly broke, is a wireline operator whose wife is a nurse.  He and his wife own moderate vehicles, and they live in an older townhouse.  He has been out of work for nine months, but his wife is still employed as a nurse.

Why I Keep Writing About Dickinson, North Dakota, Part III

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In the states affected by hurricanes, there are laws against price gouging by businesses on supplies when a hurricane is approaching.  Businesses can not double the price of plywood and gasoline, among other things.  There are criminal charges, fines, and publicity in every newspaper about who took advantage of people.

North Dakota has just gone through its third oil boom.  The first one was in the 1950s, the second one was in the late 1970s, and the most recent one started in about 2007.  Note that each of these oil booms lasted about 7 years, and that each of these oil booms were about 30 years apart.  From everything that happened, I wish that the North Dakota State Legislature would enact “The North Dakota Boom Rush Law”.

“The State of North Dakota hereby enacts The North Dakota Boom Rush Law,  whereby the Governor acting alone, or by vote of 2/3 of the State Legislature, a condition of a Boom or Rush is officially recognized as occurring somewhere in the state, and the following protections are taken:

No business, or individual, may increase the price of necessities to more than double what the price was during the year prior to the declaration of the Boom or Rush condition.  Necessities include food, fuel, housing, hotel, transportation, vehicle repair, vehicle towing and recovery.  To do so is a crime, punishable by up to one year in jail, and $5,000 fine.

Further, it shall be unlawful for any business, individual, or government entity to interfere, impede, or delay the construction of housing, for the purpose of creating or causing a scarcity of housing, or for creating or causing high housing prices.  To do so is a crime, punishable by up to one year in jail, and $5,000 fine.

Additionally, the State of North Dakota shall be responsible for actively contacting all national news services with accurate truthful information regarding the Boom or Rush condition, and taking an active role in not allowing misrepresentations in work, working conditions, and rates of pay.

The purpose of this legislation it to prevent the hardship and suffering of both the residents in the affected areas, and the migrating workers.”

I thought that just about covers it.  Then I realized that neither the Governor nor the Legislators would allow this legislation.  The truth is, they are probably greedy also, or they are accountable to a bunch of greedy business people back home.  The real estate agents, property managers, and property investors would scream, “Are you crazy!”

Where did I ever get these ideas about treating people fairly, treating people like you would want to be treated, not taking advantage of people, not harming people, helping people?  There has got to be something wrong with me.

 

Why I Keep Writing About Dickinson, North Dakota, Part I

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Why do I keep writing about Dickinson, North Dakota?  I started writing about Dickinson partly because of how I felt.  I felt angry and frustrated.

One of the things that I was angry and frustrated about, was news stories on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News about how all these workers were moving to North Dakota and making over $100,000 per year.  This was not the case.  Yes, working directly on an oil drilling rig, you can make that much, by working 12 hour shifts, 14 days straight, then 7 days off.  Keep in mind, it is also going to be below 0 degrees Fahrenheit for those 14 days straight.  American males between 18 years and 28 years old, I believe that less than 10% are physically and mentally strong enough to do this.  At one drilling company that I went to, there was a one-way glass window overlooking the reception area, the managers could tell with a quick glance which applications to not even consider.

What the drilling companies were looking for, was a male between 18 years and 28 years old, that looked like they did not have any physical defect, no signs of physical weakness, that looked like they were accustomed to labor.  Probably their favorite candidates were young men that grew up on a farm and had to work.  Their second favorite candidates were probably former high school football players that were linemen.

I don’t think the drilling companies wanted to hire anyone over 32 years old to work on a drill rig if they hadn’t worked on a drill rig before.  Those 12 hour shifts, for 14 days straight: any foot problem, ankle problem, knee problem, hip problem, back problem, elbow problem, shoulder problem, in muscle, joint, or tendon, would appear and just become worse and worse, hour by hour, worse and worse every day.  It was just a safer business practice to try to get people 18 years to 28 years old with no physical defects.

In Dickinson, probably more than half of the out-of-state workers that showed up looking for work were over 30 years old.  They all had the expectation that they were going to get a $23 to $30 per hour job, working 60 to 80 hours per week.  This is what they had heard.  The reality was, that at their age, not being able to work on a drill rig, the jobs available to them paid probably $14 to $23 per hour.

The other thing that the out-of-state workers that showed up in Dickinson did not understand, was that if you were an idiot where you came from, you were still going to be an idiot when you arrived in Dickinson.  If you hadn’t ever been able to do any type of work competently, you were not going to be able to obtain or keep a job in Dickinson either.

There should have been a great big American Red Cross tent in the Wal-Mart parking lot for all of the dazed out-of-state workers who suddenly found that there weren’t any $100,000 per year jobs.

Many, many people had heard false information about work in the oil field in North Dakota and traveled across the United States to get here.  They did not know or understand what it would be like in North Dakota.  It would have been better for everyone involved if more accurate, truthful information would have been provided to all the national networks, stations, news services, and publications.  Better for everyone if it had been done, except for the real estate agents, property managers, and property investors.

Is Dickinson A Good Place To Live?

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Is Dickinson a good place to live?  Almost, Dickinson is almost a good place to live.

Dickinson is a town that has most of the things that people want and need.  It is easy to drive around town, the town is not ugly, it is not overdeveloped, it is not underdeveloped, it is surrounded by thousands of acres of attractive farm land, and there is not a lot of crime.

Dickinson has a new $75 million hospital, with ER, critical care unit, maternity unit, surgery unit, and outpatient treatment offices.  Medical helicopter stationed 100 feet from ER.  Very large approx. $15 million Sanford Health facility across the street from hospital.

Dickinson has a nice commercial airport.  A fifty passenger jet will take you to Denver or Minneapolis, to take a larger plane to anywhere you want.  It is a very safe airport, not a lot of air traffic, nothing for planes to hit, no big problem landing too short or too long, maybe hit a wire fence and a cow.

For shopping, the Prairie Hills Mall is O.K., Menards, Runnings, and WalMart.  Hardware stores Macs and Ace Hardware.  Enough tire stores.  Good Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet, and Toyota dealerships in Dickinson.

In the Winter, you can go to one of the best indoor recreation centers in the U.S.:  hockey rink, competition pool, leisure pool, basketball courts, volleyball courts, tennis courts, racquetball courts, weight room, cardio equipment, climb wall, and track.  In the summer you can swim, fish, canoe, ski, cook out at Patterson Lake.  Small University in Dickinson.

The only problem, is the people.  The people in Dickinson are not friendly, not cooperative, not helpful, and not hospitable.  They do not like people from out of state, and they do not even like each other.

I think that I have finally figured out why the people in Dickinson are so hostile:  For one hundred years Dickinson had been very poor, education was not valued because there was nothing to do with it, and no way to get ahead.  All of the great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents of the people living in Dickinson now, felt that they were never going to be anything or get ahead, they weren’t going to, but in order to feel O.K. about their position in life, they were going to make sure that nobody else got ahead either, and the only way that they were going to “get ahead”, was to let other people fail.  Therefore, if anyone needed any help in Dickinson, the way to “get ahead” was to let other people fail.

I never could understand why the people in Dickinson were so unhelpful, until I realized that the only way these people here had to feel successful, was when somebody here failed.  One of the many things that led me to this belief, was that I saw people in Dickinson did not celebrate financial success by building a nice large home, or buying a Jaguar, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, or Porsche, they appeared to not be interested in having anything nice for themselves, but instead were intensely interested in what the lower middle class and low class people were doing.  Some of the successful people in Dickinson appear to delight in the paycheck-to-paycheck existence of many people on Dickinson.  The successful, the middle class, the lower middle class, and the low class in Dickinson, for the most part all agree about not having a homeless shelter in Dickinson, because somebody has got to be failing in order for them to feel good about themselves.

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.

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.

A Different Side of Dickinson, North Dakota

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Throughout this blog, I have mostly been negative about Dickinson:  property owners and managers had been excessively greedy and had taken advantage of everyone from out-of-state, local people and co-workers had been hostile and unfriendly, there is shortage of attractive women, the Dickinson police’s over aggressive pursuit of DUIs cause people to be unable to go out and enjoy drinks at bars and restaurants.  Living in Dickinson, I felt like an illegal immigrant migrant worker, because I was treated like one.  Even though I had a bachelor of science in engineering, and had worked as an engineer, estimator, superintendent, and project manager in several different states, owned a home and business in another state, I was treated like shit by the local ignorant, uneducated, never-been-anywhere people here in Dickinson, because I was from some place else, and they could get away with it, and their natural primitive instinct is to treat people badly.  I explained these things already in this blog.

I currently still recommend that people do not come to Dickinson, North Dakota, at this time.  I came here to make money, and it was easier to make money here, than it was in the state where my home was.  But now, about 60% of the oil field jobs have gone away due to the low price of oil, which has caused other jobs to go away throughout the western North Dakota economy.  I recommend that you do not come to Dickinson at this time not because the people are hostile and unfriendly, but because you would probably have a difficult time getting a job, and housing prices are still very high.

Because of a reduction of in work at my job, and because I did not want to be solely dependent on my employer for income, I brought some of my equipment over to Dickinson, to begin doing some self-employment work.  At first, the Dickinson residents that I offered to do work for, they were negative.  After about one month, I got one project.  I did a good job, three people saw that project, and I got three more projects.  Without doing any advertising, I got about ten more projects, and continue to get phone calls every week.

In my self-employment work, I saw a different side of Dickinson.  All of the people who called me and asked me to come and give them an estimate, they were successful people.  About one-third of these customers were business owners, about one-third were white-collar professionals, and about one-third were blue-collar workers, but they were all successful.  They were intelligent, polite, professional, fair, and often times paid me more than what I charged.

I tried to keep quiet and quickly do my self-employment work, but about one-third of my customers at some point would ask me what I thought of Dickinson and the people here.  I would try to not say anything negative and say very little, but the customers would come out and say to me, “I moved here twenty years ago, the people here have never been friendly to me and my husband, it has been difficult, I don’t have hardly any friends, I had so many friends back where we came from.”  So even though I tried to say very little in order to keep my opinions to myself to be non offensive to customers and potential customers, many of my customers just came out and said that they had had a difficult time in Dickinson because the people were unfriendly.  This was the first time that I heard people that were successful, long time residents, come out and say it.  It made me feel a lot better.  Also, this was the first time after having lived in Dickinson for almost three years, that I wasn’t treated like shit.  In all of the self-employment projects that I have done in Dickinson so far, about fifteen of them, the customers have been very nice to me, they acted like they were happy to see me, happy that I was there, complimented me on my work, thanked me, and most them paid me more than I asked for.  This was a side of Dickinson that I had never seen.

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.

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.

 

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.”

 

 

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.

Oil Field Speculation in Dickinson, Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you are poor and come to Dickinson, North Dakota

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

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

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

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