There is no escape from the oil boom. A few days beforeChristmas I drove down to northwestern Kansas and back to fetch mydaughter. Just after New Year’s I took her back down to Kansas.Altogether I drove 3,175 miles-every one of them, because sheapparently misplaced her driver’s license. That sounds grueling butI actually love it. I love to experience the Great Plains in theirbroad and endless sweep.
Before Christmas I drove south on US 83, from Sterling, ND, toMcCook, NE. Normally that is just about as quiet a U.S. highway asone can find anywhere, partly because it is only half-heartedlymaintained. US 83 stretches out like a nearly taught ribbon (orfilament) draped across short-grass plains country so vast that itmakes you gulp involuntarily. The countryside is so empty that itswallows up the human imagination. In short, it’s perfect. But thistime the highway was crowded with traffic and a little dangerous.In the course of a long day I edged past hundreds of wide loadsemis, some so wide they required pace cars with warning beacons.They were all coming north, of course, presumably to the Bakken OilField. I recognized modular homes and doublewide trailers,gargantuan holding tanks that virtually ate the whole road, andflatbeds hauling Caterpillars and other heavy machinery. But therewere also trucks carrying equipment I could not identify-whatappeared to be giant control panels or transformer units. They blewpast me in that way that nearly sweeps you off the road into theborrow ditch. Who would have thought that US 83 would become aservice road to the great North Dakota Oil Rush?
Down on 83, back up on US 385 and 85, from Wray, CO, toBelfield, ND. My daughter slept most of the way-because she hadapparently misplaced her vocal cords. Most people seem to find thatroute b-o-r-i-n-g, but I rank it as one of the top five highways inAmerica for sheer beauty and On the Road possibilities. When I amout there crawling along that long fabulous stretch of nothingness,I feel more like a child of the Great Plains than at any othertime. This time, however, the industrial traffic was unusuallyheavy, even though I was flowing with the Bakken current. It usedto be that you could roll out to pass a slow vehicle on US 85 moreor less at will, but on this trip I had two heart-in-the-throatmoments when the semis were barreling down on me like Mad Max andthere was no semblance of the kind of road courtesy we have allgrown up with out here in the heartland.
We are all going to have to adopt new road habits if we wish tosurvive the boom. The road fatalities that have already occurred inthe Bakken zone are not just unfortunate or unavoidable. We have toregard them as an unacceptable byproduct of rapidindustrialization.
After I returned my daughter to her Kansas village at mid-dayTuesday, I turned right around and drove towards home. At NorthPlatte, NE, I stopped for the night, road-bleary, travel-numb, andawash in sadness. I checked in to a virtually empty motel-thepost-holiday doldrums in the hospitality industry. Then I drove aquarter of a mile to a chain pub, sat at the bar, ordered a saladand a glass of wine, placed a yellow legal pad and pen on my rightand two new books on my left. Geek life. Not Jack Kerouac-more likeNigel Kerouac.
There was a well-lubricated thirty-something man sitting threestools down from me, studying his beer with glassy eyes. A womanabout his age, who was leaving a large table elsewhere in the pub,stopped by to say hello. The following conversation took place.
“Hey, Tyler, what are your plans for the new year?”
“Hey, Karla. Not sure. I was thinkin’ of moving up to NorthDakota to work in the oil fields but it is so @#*!#*!@ cold upthere.”
“My fiancé wants us to head up there, too. He says he can earn$8,000 a month up there.”
I was so tired I had to spend a minute working that out to $96Kper annum.
“They say the problem is finding a place to live.”
“Yeah, Brad says he knows someone who moved up there with hisfather in the fall. They live in this little cabin they have rentedfrom a farmer. It is incredibly tiny and icky. No partitions orrooms, just a double bed and a bunk bed and an old couch. There arefour men living in that little box. The only privacy is a littleclosed off area for a bathroom. It’s like living in a tarpapershack during the homestead era. I don’t think I could live likethat, even if it was just the two of us.”
“I’d like to go drive like a water truck, and save all the moneyso I could maybe come back in a year or two and start a businesshere. But if I do it, first thing I am going to do is buy me a bigFord F-250 pickup.”
“So much for the new business! Think you could really save themoney?”
“Probably not, but wouldn’t it be something to have that kind ofcash for a while? If you guys go up there, what will you do,Karla?”
“Not sure. I suppose I could always waitress.”
“I hear strippers are making $3,000 a week in Williston. Youcould change your name to Angel and make a killing.”
She punched him hard-but playfully-on the shoulder. “Hey, youcan’t talk to me that way.” Stage pause. “Think of how much weightI’d have to lose.”
He finished the conversation. “I’ve been thinking pretty hardabout it. I’d like to go, but who would want to live in NorthDakota. I mean, geez, that’s like living at the end of the earth.And it’s so #@!#@! cold.”
I wanted to interrupt at this point, to say, “Hey, you live inNorth Platte, Nebraska. I don’t think you’re really in a positionto be uppity about American hotspots.” But I shrugged it off. Shewent home to contemplate life as Angel the Bakken ecdysiast. Heordered “one more,” as the refrain goes, and put his dream of lifeon hold.
(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt Center scholar atDickinson State University, as well as Distinguished Scholar of theHumanities at Bismarck State College and director of the DakotaInstitute. Clay can be reached at or through hiswebsite, Jeffersonhour.org.)
