Crude: A Western North Dakota Oilfield Story (part 2)

I was an underemployed roofer working in the iron range of MN around 2009 when I saw on the news that an "oil boom" had just hit a small town called Williston, North Dakota full force. And, as luck would have it, it was predicted to be the warmest winter in the state's history.

I knew if I went out there, I would be homeless, so a warm winter was exciting news. I packed up my vehicle once again. Folded the rear seat down, and covered the bottom with enough insulation to provide a semi comfortable sleeping platform in my rusty, green, late 90s four door Chevrolet Cavalier. I cranked the stereo and drove my "favorite" route to that dumpster of human excrement, highway 2.

I wasn't in town a week, when my vehicle broke down in late December. It would still dip to below zero temperatures at night, leaving me shivering, freezing actually.

I began working for Bakken, Staffing. A subsidiary of Command Center, Inc. Truly excellent people, and a good outfit all around.

Through them I ironically worked in construction, building large man camps, and hotels that I could not afford to live in, even at a starting wage of $18.00 per hour, plus free breakfast.

I contracted bronchitis around that time, and let me tell you, it is no picnic being homeless during a North Dakota winter, and on top of that, to cough up green globs of mucus so thick, you could cement bricks together. The sanitation of the entire city was questionable at best, and nearly every one of my economic refugee friends had also come down with the same problem.

But, there are no sick days in the oil patch. So I pulled sheet rock through a 3rd story window, two at a time, while trying not to pass out anyway.

Hotels and apartments were being built in such magnitude that the city of Williston was forced to halt them, why you ask? Because there was so much human waste generated by such a huge population in such a small place that it had completely overwhelmed the waste water treatment facility.

The city was a disaster. So much so that it was reported that the levels of not only filth of the waste type, but of the human type that crime was at it's highest levels since the wild west, higher actually.

Stories circulated wildly of men being raped by other men, murdered by drug dealers, assassinated by 1% motorcycle clubs. And many of the stories were true!

I watched men get beat with golf clubs, and shrugged while anarchists smashed the windows of every business from the strip clubs near the train tracks, all the way to the movie theater down the city's main street. It was madness.

Bar brawls were not as common as you my imagine, but they weren't that unusual. What few police and city officials that existed were often corrupt.

It was the wild west all over again. Except, the covered wagon was replaced with the RV, and the cowboys all rode Harley Davidson. Beyond that, you wouldn't know the difference.