Judith Darlene Hammer

May 31, 1938 – August 8, 2023

South of Wild Horse

It was about one hundred ten miles east of our home on Squirrel Creek to our new home south of Wild Horse.

Tony would help us load our long stock trailer and we would drive to our new home and unload. The prior owners left three critters here. One was a pet Antelope, one a Billy Goat that would attack us if he could. The other was a pet racoon they couldn’t catch. He had access to the back porch. I don’t remember how many trips it took to get everything.

As our grandchildren got older, I gave them paying jobs. One job was hoeing locoweed. Lauren, Jeremy, and Leah had that job. I told Jeremy that he was doing a better job than the girls so I would pay him more, but he wasn’t to tell the girls. He couldn’t keep his mouth shut so I told him the deal was off.

I even paid my brother-in-law to hoe loco. We do not have any loco at this time. I had the older grandsons work on fence.

We have an alkali water pond close to the house. Whenever it got a little water in it the girls would go wadding. They would come to the house pretty muddy. Judy would have to hose them off before they could come into the house.

Judy kept busy cooking and cleaning when the grandchildren were here.

At the north end of our property there was a water hole the grandchildren like to swim in.

All of our grandchildren learned to ride horses except Joshua. He would rather drive the pickup. One time when Lauren was learning to ride, her horse was going pretty fast toward the house, and she fell off and lost a boot. Over time she and Leah learned to ride pretty good.

They all wanted to learn how to drive the pickup or jeep. One time, Lauren was driving by herself in the yard, and she couldn’t get the vehicle lined out. She kept getting wider and wider and finally ran into the yard fence. I told her that she had to fix the fence herself. Over time, she got it fixed.

Another time Leah was driving the jeep by herself. She couldn’t brake fast enough and ran into the side of the shop. Over time they became good drivers.

We had a blue heeler dog named Buster, and he didn’t put up with any nonsense. One time Jacob was teasing him. It made Buster mad, and he jumped on Jacob and knocked him down. Then Buster grabbed the bottom of Jacob’s pant leg and started dragging him round until he had drug Jacob’s pants clear off.

Our grandkids always told us when they got older that it was easy for them to get a job because we taught them work ethics.

Part 6 was published October 2, 2023, and can be found here.