LIFE OF O. E. HOBACK as told to Edna Greet (Vernon’s grandmother)
A blacksmith by the name of Henry Nettman had a shop in Sheridan, and whenever Oscar was in town he enjoyed hanging around the shop and watching the work. When Nettman offered him a job in the fall of 1896 he quit the ranch work to learn the blacksmith trade.
The next few years were carefree ones for him, learning a trade he liked. He became much interested in a young girl named ——————-. He took the money from the property his father had left him and bought a house and three lots. Then came the war with Spain and he signed up with some friends in the First Wyoming Volunteers, Company G. He was deeply in love with his girl, and she promised to wait for him.
Oscar’s company arrived in Manilla just after Dewey’s victory at the battle of Manilla Bay, and in time for the Insurrection which followed. He was in the service a little less than two years, and his experiences changed him from a reckless boy into a rather grim-faced man. He was on Luzon Island a year, after training at Cheyenne and San Francisco. He arrived back in Sheridan in October of 1899. He had been tempted to make the Army his career, but he decided against it, as he fully expected to marry the girl he had left in Sheridan and settle down to the business of raising a family. When he found that she had lost all interest in him and was going to marry another, he was stunned. It seemed that it couldn’t be true, and when he finally accepted the fact he took to drinking and tried to forget. One day when he was drinking some unscrupulous companions got him to sign over the deed to his property in Sheridan. The next March, 1900, he left the town and went to Casper, then only a small pioneer town. There he took charge of the Lander Transportation Company. The pay was small, so he quit one day and rode to Lander on a bicycle. There he traded the bicycle for a saddle horse. He got a job for a while, cutting corral poles and house logs, then went back to Casper. The trip from Casper to Lander on the bicycle took three days: from Lander to Casper horseback four days.
Back in Casper, Oscar went to work for the Two Jim blacksmith shop, owned by Jim McGrath and Jim Jones. There was a great deal of freighting done with string teams at that time, and the freighters would bring their repair work to the “Two Jim.” Oscar found that he did not know enough about freighting to understand their needs. So he quit the shop and took a job as a teamster for a couple months. He studied the outfit, and went back to the shop he was able to satisfactorily work for the freighters.
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More adventures! He certainly handled the many vicissitudes of life at that time, with determination and ingenuity.