i still believe there's a dream oh yes i can still believe. it's like a gold rush is very very similar to a gold rush. there is fresh out of cincinnati in two thousand and twelve after being unemployed for months he hears about the boom happening in williston. at first he works for an oil company but soon his desire for independence takes over and he sets up his own service company. bought the company and we had a sweeper truck and the situation williston went from a manageable situation where i would get like some sleep at night and i could like

keep up with like daily activities like taking showers every day to like an all out sprint trying to like keep up with so much work it was amazing go from one job to the next to the next to the next to the next as it is now i have not right now i have not taken a full day off in over nine months and i'm very thankful i'm here i'm not complaining one bit very thankful for the money an opportunity here was like someone who'd been starving for years for like money like all of a sudden there's like. all you can eat like buff a day and all you have to do is go out there and get the work done and people give you money to do it was amazing this year i'm probably going to be making around two hundred fifty thousand is a lot of work involved a lot of work it's twenty four hours a day seven days a week. well i guess i should get back to work.

here in an inhospitable land full of contrasts before the boom willison was a small conservative agricultural town and in many ways this aspect seems untouched everything has its own place including border emptiness and silence the streets are practically deserted it's a town that has motion this within its history and past. then you have another town the one that needs to welcome this new wave of residence oil company settling down at large numbers the goal of extracting at least a million barrels of oil a day. this is the one we unpacked like a raft gift and a real without so growing up with a kind of uniformity copy and paste prefabricated never cost the. investors are right in that everything based upon a population that should be multiplied by four. the first came up here in the spring of two thousand ford saying i work there are neighbors they did a hydraulic fracturing and i was looking at how much it will not cost me to stay

somewhere you know if i was just going to stay in a wholesale it was like one hundred dollars and i was an ok hundred dollars a day seven days a week seven hundred dollars on a course of a whole week and so i just came to the conclusion you know what i get me a van fix it up so that you know i can be comfortable in it it makes financial sense because i get to keep the majority of my money versus just just on the way on housing and stuff like this. is my first and then. get worse. and that's the biggest. gerri you cannot survive very long in his van where winter temperatures sometimes drop of the minus twenty. for the time being nothing is ready everything has happened so quickly it's very hard to find a place to. make shift housing known as man camps mine up by the hundreds on the edge of town. close to two he said.

these dormitory towns built by necessity an empty lots for reese between one hundred and one hundred fifty dollars a night to meals including. a two thousand and twelve the population living in these men camps was estimated to be over ten thousand guys phone and now to florida nevada chicago cleveland you name it i've seen the license plate. every week you know this is the best thing going for single men you know i mean that's what i mean it's fun wages. to the everything you know the whole country should be this way. because. this place will put like

a stress on you know put away that you'll be carrying around on you and you're really realizing and when i went home i came back i noticed that weight pressure whatever you want to call it builds up over time for me and. you you wouldn't come up here and there some reason for you to come up here you know nobody was moving up here into the two thousand and one i was moving up here in two thousand and one or two thousand and so it wasn't until ok i can gain something financially i can improve my situation i can better my status my situation or on the level that i met in life now and that's that's would all fill up here really brought a lot of people who were smart about it and save their money. because i'm telling you man i was asking a lot of. there's not much help here to. due

to keep you busy focused on something else you know you know cupid time occupied you know is really allowed me to save my money and i'm in a position where you know i can go back home and babbie a house. i just like the sound of it back and go back home about your house they cash for a house not a car now a car but a house. all around with us in the least it's footprints on the landscape the fast as it please your coverage for good by these horses for as far as the eye can see sweeney slowly to extract the black calls from the subtree interrupts. became urgent to build for lane highways all around town in order to accommodate the lines of trucks transporting all kinds of pipes beeves sand and water used to track it. nothing

was planted in advance everything was done in a hurry because of the immediacy of the work and the enormous influx of workers investors and the unemployed rushed in chasing the dream to grab the pieces of pie . german gun austrian gun italian american and my rifles just in case i need to kill someone. most americans have guns in their house. and at the foot of my bed is a bible. most of my adult life was spent in universities doing teaching a research i went to the university of maine and got several degrees there in agricultural engineering information systems then i worked for mit on the human genome project. there came a time when there was a recession there was high unemployment i spent

a lot of time reading the news on the internet and i kept reading about the williston the oil boom the bokken shale. i wasn't doing anything i was going into debt so i decided to go from an area that had almost ten percent unemployment to an area that had less than one percent unemployment so. i came looking for work but i didn't know what kind of work to take. so i fell into wireline it was very difficult at the beginning i had. accidents while pulling a trailer i could have been killed there were explosives in the trailer and it's fun three hundred sixty degrees and the explosives came out the back. but my boss didn't fire me they gave me another chance after the first year i was very pliable i had a marketable skill. it pleases me that i had a hand a small hand but nevertheless i changed my career late in life and involved myself

in american energy independence and in weaning this country of our foreign oil dependency. america would sell its own mother for energy. i live in st george utah. and my family's down there i need to come up here to make some money to pay off debt and stuff we're getting there. i went to school and became an teach school elementary school i could make twenty five thousand dollars as a teacher or i could make fifty thousand dollars a year and drive a truck so i chose to drive truck. and i

were usually twelve to fourteen hours to get my truck around eight o'clock in the morning and i work till eight o'clock at night you know somewhere between me and i . it's mentally. not only my physically fit. but it's a mental fatigue. this is the moment that i like the best. reached down enough to be everything stops vibrating all the noise goes away.

i live in company housing here it's provided by the company i have to share. thirty five foot r.v. trailer with a three hundred fifty pound guy. just . remember. when lawmakers manufactured consent instinctive public will. when the

ruling classes protect themselves. when the final larry go round to be the one. to ignore middle of the room signals. from the real news is really. going to please god cam sat down again for people that can't decide and they're like so tired. this is like a safe house i guess they don't have to talk about what they go through with this because we understand her daughter katie was diagnosed with a very rare sun sensitive condition if i get sunburned i heal she does or she'll patients are going to have problems with the walk to talk to some of the brains of actually shrinking inside the skull gets thicker in the brain still small. the

pain is indescribable it's feels like a really really bad chemical burn but it goes through your skin in your muscles down to the bone. there's no relief. so we're just not sure this is the story. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race. any dramatic development only i'm going to i don't see how that strategy will be successful very chaotic at a time time to sit down and talk. to. us veterans who come back from war often tell the same stories. we're going out

with people who were killing civilians they were not interested in the wellbeing of their own soldiers. they're already several generations of them so i just got this memo. that says we're going to destroy the government in seven countries in five years americans pay for the wars with them money those times if we were willing to go into harm's way and willing to risk being killed for a war surely we can risk some discomfort for an easy. run around trying to find a job and work here or there and it's not a good life for. my children who have had some some problems so i

spent a lot of money helping my children and cumulated debt so. the original plan was to come up here for six months. and get out of debt but as they came up made money off some bills there were other things. after birth. six six stitches. i'm glad you're feeling better celestial. well i mean. i love you to. the t. in the morning. of you. i usually park the truck come back to the trailer here it

a frozen meal. throw in microwave sit down to need it and. if we're not too tired. my roommate nial have a bowl of ice cream and and watch part of a d.v.d. on the laughter. but most of the time it and go to sleep i don't take a shower every night because we don't have a shower well there's a shower in the trailer but there's no running water. and. you don't see the. system has not solely attract unoiled workers. it was an opportunity for people like jeff and constance to change their lives to open a spa business. and before i moved to boston i was in the health care industry and

then a hospital administrator for several years in kansas. my project was going to live and i wanted to be with my family first and i remember talking to some people was talking about wilson and about north dakota and this oil boom there's a lot of oil out here and there's a lot of jobs you know one of opportunity for business willesden seemed to have the best opportunities for us and my family and so we drove up to the local and we realized immediately there was a huge opportunity out here so many people out here there must have been at least thirty thousand people going through here and there were only five restaurants at the time and then we little bit closer and said ok what skill sets do we have that would be a good system and we thought that maybe if you don't shop with. so many other businesses have done here and the old timers they all think that foreigners coming here to take their money and go back home they don't think we're like and i think

that's one of the reasons for that since it's not just. a business for us we are part of the community if we were embraced by the community they supported us to death we do to help the south. we are current of it and will always contribute and . be a good day today. a lot of kids are going to be really excited to have know it's. we came here they didn't have a donut shop they haven't had one for over eight years most of these kids never had a girlfriend or. they come into my shop all its high school board was wow go it's. there are more families that are coming to my list and now i go pick up the land and school and i see other kids you know on the

asian kids african hispanic you know it's a good sign that the community is growing. healthy with you know a little. crack lives in bozeman montana a small town six hundred miles away. he is right out of options in his home town and has decided to settle for willis and he knows he will not see his wife and two kids for several weeks. long hours behind the wheel with the hope that he will find work when he arrives when i leave my family like this i usually feel you know pretty lousy at times there was one incident years ago where my daughter was just in tears as i was leaving and it's like it's hard it's it's not fun it's hard but it's what has to be done. they're getting better at it they're getting used to

it i'm getting used to it but i still like a brother be home. craig is the way he's usually gone anywhere from about four weeks to this last one was eight weeks really. didn't see him for about eight weeks and then hokum home for about a week or so i think it's been hard for the kids because. they were told me that they feel like it's a broken home you know it's almost like we're divorced because we see so little of each other so it's just been really hard for them this is very similar to living on a ship or being on a boat you're gone for months and see you come back and you see the family for a short period of time and then take off on your ship again you're it's a great analogy it's exactly where it's like. we've all talked about this and i think we could do with a little less so that he could spend more time with us and be more of

a family. so i think i would rather have that happy family over here some of the stuff that we he transfer died for us that watching my kids grow up it's difficult until it's almost five years now there's no doubt about it but it's just it's what we have to do. and i'm had just lost his job in the oil business when he met us constance the couple was charged by the courage of a little power of this young man ready to do anything to save his family from misery. since then adam spends all his nights eating donuts. and doing three jobs right now working every day. trying to get some money i want to relocate my family oh. i got two girls two daughters

i want something better form where we lived in southern california is not a very nice place to live so it's a lot of crime. gangsters and so the north dakota a be a better place to raise a family. is a lot of resources here and you've got the salvation army and they feed you here at the methodist church over it lutheran church down there. but i get food from work too at the dawn it's trying to send all my money home for my wife to pay the bills and rent it's enough to get by you know just a the red you know a one hundred a week or no guy me understand i have a family he wanted to say one hundred twenty five but if you drop it down to a hundred a week. the

american dream is that you can always chase i really believe that even during the recession there were still opportunities for each is going to look for you got to be overwhelming or move to change that to get going and go go chase it go do it. now a lot of people don't do that but the ones they do with usually come out ahead in the long run. because our country's never is stable across the whole world it's very rare to have all fifty states doing well it's also rare to have all fifty states do and poorly so we're always moving around that's part of our national character it's always find new opportunities wherever they may be. what i do here pretty much is remodeling homes and handyman work fixing other people's mistakes and other people's problems mostly for homeowners residential it keeps me real busy. i bill out usually about sixty hours

a week i can easily put in a twelve hour day no promise you have to run you know my go to bank post office go see clients check on supplies orders stuff lot of running around to do i love to work how am i am a workaholic there's no doubt about it the money's nice but i like work just the way my family is. these are some of the old cattle pens in corrals here some of the fallen apart completely but this is where they bring in the cattle to brand have the calves have the vats work on them and stuff but now i can see it i don't use it anymore. it was kind of a tough life i mean you lose cattle they die and the winners and so on the hot summers and you know drought is just on i was going to happens gamble every day never made a lot of money doing that most or ranchers and farmers but they really don't have to do that anymore because they've got the pumps down there that they can make

money off of and the oil's put a lot a lot of money into their pockets so now they can do what they want you know take it easy work whatever they want to do so it's not as risky life's not as risky as you used to be. you don't meet many people that are from. when i'm talking to a bunch of people i don't know and they say we're you from i say here they go what . most people have lived here then they were dismayed to see this many people

coming lot of people made a lot of money so i mean they like that of the older folks that lived here on a fixed income renting an apartment they went from three hundred a month two thousand a month and rent so they're gone. i remember the first time i drove out to the snow it's a. thousand miles about and i counted fifty or oil rigs that i could see from the road and that's when it started getting crazy i thought you know the oil companies for the most part they're good until we start thinking that they can power right over here because they're big and powerful. one thing they do do and i asked them when they came out the first time they always found a woman along with the initial group to come joe and i asked him straight out i was sort of that because we will shoot a woman and he said yeah so. we never walk the house now i go take the key out all the time my pickup we walk in

the house we have alarm system in the house it changes just about everything. to get my mail. now are you more and more neighbors. it's not the country anymore like it used to be. a lot of these are people who moved in with the oil. there was no place to buy in town they bought a lot so what here probably three four acres watch the bills out here. i

think that i would want to go fast but inside i'm. a dockside any i think i go down to your neck side you can pool you have. it's on so many then true but i really believe that the bottom that we show on the side is the we and depend. on our condition. nobody could see coming that false confessions would be that in the spot the wish to pull the conviction if you had any interrogation out there what you'll see is threat promise threat promise threat lie a lie

a lie the process of interrogation is designed to put people in just that frame of mind make the most comfortable make them want to get out and don't take no for an answer don't accept their denials she said to forward poor henri send a statement that i would be home by that time the next day there's a culture on accountability and police officers know that they can engage in misconduct that has nothing to do with solving their crime.

subscribed to roughly. twelve euros fifty per month. the u.k. prime minister says her bright. bright future. and uphill battle mag to get a hostile parliament on her. i. mean the stories that shape the week fallen spills on to the streets of france as to gas and water cannon the use against yellow vests protesters simply made.