Christy Omer Hansen

Special attributes I remember about uncle Omer. Making it work.

-By Freeman Johnson.

I remember Omer as always being an especially kind person. He had the time to talk with us kids, and always had a story to tell. There was a summer that he lived in Richfield. He rented a small room (It seemed like a grainy to me) from a neighbor lady (the grandmother of my friend Chris Nelson) she was my adopted grandmother. We always use to visit her. So it was natural we would go over and spend time with Omer. He was always making things of leather. It was so fascinating to with him work. He explained what he was doing and was so patient to a bunch of inquisitive kids.

I remember the wire rimmed glasses, his short legs, and the Low riding jeans. He walked a lot like Vern. I though the glasses made him look something like Benjamin Franklin. I thought that Omer was just as wise too.

To me Omer was a mechanical wizard, he could fix or make anything (or so I thought). Particularly impressive was the water wheel and all the things he made work from the water power. I would run a grinder ( use to sharpen the hay knife from the mowing machine), it ran a leather sewing machine (I think), it ran the milk separator and I don’t remember what else. It was the first I have ever seen the use of a drive shaft and the use of leather belts to turn machines. I also remember, with awe, the gas light system he put into Grandma’s house. You know “real” gas light just light the big cities of decades before electricity. And all of this in Boulder.

I will never forget his “wild mustang” horse. At lest later on I thought it had been a wild horse he and caught and raised from a colt. There was the day while visiting Grandmother Hansen that I wanted to ride a horse. Richard obliged saying that Omer’s horse was in the pasture just across the road (just east of Annie’s Orchard) and it would be OK with Omer if I rode his horse. Richard got a bridle and out it on the horse, and lead him next to the fence so I could climb up and get on. The next thing I remember was laying flat on my back and Richard standing there next to the fence laughing. I then knew what it is like to be bucked off. Then Richard admitted that the horse was just a little high strung.

Uncle Omer had a really neat little bolt action shotgun (a 410 gauge) that he use to take with him when re rode with the cattle. I don’t know how it happened, but this heirloom got passed down to me. Whenever I used it or looked at it I fondly remembered my uncle Omer.

UNCLE OMER

-By Delores Hansen Bowman

Uncle Christy Omer Hansen and his twin brother, Annell Owen, were born at Greatgrandma Larsen's home on March 17, 1903 in Richfield, Utah. Uncle Owen died when but a wee babe from spinal meningitis. His death date was October 31, 1901, just a few days after Grandpa Hansen had left for his mission to Norway.

There are personality traits I remember about Uncle Omer. He was the only one of Grandma Hansen's children who never married. He was very good to her. He saw that she got an electric refrigerator, replacing the old ice box, an electric stove, the first indoor bathroom in Boulder, a portable dishwasher, etc. He wanted her to be comfortable. These are items that she wouldn't have bought for herself.

He could fix anything. Was he ever good at working with leather! He could braid hackamores, bridles, etc. He had spent sometime in Iowa. I don't remember the details, but I believe that was where he learned to work with leather. 

Uncle Omer seemed so happy to have the little nieces and nephews running around Grandma's place. Anna Lee remembers him throwing her up, catching her and laughing with glee.

He had spells of depression, but we loved him just the same. The family reported that he felt so badly when Grandma Hansen said he couldn't go on a mission that he went and laid in the dry ditchbed and sobbed bitterly for a long time. 

On the 17th of March the Boulder Ward always had a program and dinner. We thought we were celebrating Uncle Omer's birthday instead of the commeration of the founding of the Relief Society organization.

He had a black and white dog or was he brown. Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most. Wish I could remember their names. He also had a horse. Richard or Anna Lee will remember the names.

Uncle Omer spent some time at the sanitarium in Ogden because he had tuberculosis. My mother's brother was in there at the same time. I wrote to him while he was recovering from this awful illness and also when I was living with Aunt Christella and family in Alexandria, Virginia.

He died August 3, 1957 in Boulder, Utah and was buried in Richfield, Utah by his grandparents, parents, brothers and uncles. Aunt Christella was able to come to the funeral, but Helen, Frances, Dorothy Ann and I had to stay and finish working before coming to Utah to attend college.

Remembering Omer

-By Sky (Hansen) Morris

He had a great pride, Uncle Omer seemed a cheerful, bespectacled man with a deep laugh, the few times I met him. He had a great pride in the new Nash four-door car he brought by for us to see on one visit. He showed us how the seats would recline, and how the radio had good quality sound. It's color was light blue and since it was once left at our house once for a couple of weeks, I recall us children circling and peering in the windows in awe at this remarkable vehicle. It was much larger and had ever so much more class than our old standard black 2 door Ford.

Mother kept two of Omer's ties wrapped carefully in white tissue paper, then covered with a sturdier light blue paper wrap believed to preserve the integrity and color of the material that the ties were made from. Mother would unwrap them, and reminisce about Omer and times they shared in Boulder. They were then carefully re-wrapped and placed in her top dresser drawer. They came into my possession, and I recall the one in particular was the picture of a cowboy roping a calf...a full color print, vibrant from Mother's care of them.

Reflections of Uncle Omer Hansen

-By Richard Hansen

Most of my memories have faded since his passing in 1955, he was only 54 and I was about 20 then. My most vivid recollection is his artistry in working leather. He was a genius when it came to being a self-taught leather worker. He made tack of all kinds for the horses, including three saddles that I remember. He would tan the cowhides and I don’t know what his recipe was for that but I remember seeing those cowhides stretched out on the ditch bank and he would scrape the hair off, then he would soak it in some kind of solution. He would buy the trees, we call them trees, the frame to stretch it out on.

His saddles were as good as any you could buy, they were beautifully fashioned saddles, plus he made saddlebags to carry on the back of the horse, and bridles, they called it tack, the things for riding horses. I don’t think he made any harnesses for work horses, just for saddle horses. He didn’t buy any materials, he made it all from his leather. He made quirts, the cattle prods, braided out of leather, he made six or eight strands braided into these rope-like things to prod the cattle along with. He didn’t sell anything, he just made them for Dad and Vern, everyone at the ranch. They were professionally done. Uncle Mac tells me he remembers seeing a lot of Omer’s braided work and he was just a veritable genius when it came to leatherwork talent.

Omer was always looking for easier ways to get work done. We had no electricity so churning by hand was a major job. So he invented a water-wheel that would hold four two-quart jars of cream, I remember seeing that, he would strap in the four jars and in about an hour he would have four jars of nice butter without doing any work.

Let me make some mention of his poetry. He had a flair for rhyming. His poems were nonsensical and yet they were brilliant for the way they came together, the way they rhymed. He would pay me ten cents a poem to type them. They’re lost now, I wish I’d made a carbon copy. He had some mental problems later in his life, and burned a lot of things from grandmother’s trunk and a lot of papers, so I’m sure they went up in flame.

He had a phobia about rattlesnakes. In the wintertime they’d have to drive the cattle about 15 miles south of Boulder town and Omer had a phobia about rattlesnakes so he hired a man to float lumber down the river about 15 miles and he’d drag it with a horse about a mile up the sand rock and he built a little cabin, about 12 feet square. That was an accomplishment, I don’t know how long it took him to do it. I saw the cabin, about 10 years ago I rode down and it’s still standing, worn and weathered but still totally intact. Before he built the cabin he used to take ropes down, thinking snakes wouldn’t crawl over the ropes, but he still couldn’t sleep, so he built the cabin. 

Dad and Vern and Omer and Reed, the four brothers, would go down several times in the winter to check on the cattle and move them to different ranges. That cabin was built in the late 30’s so it’s at least 70 years now, and it’s amazing they could build it, could get lumber that far down, in the spring when the water was high.

Omer lived with Grandma after he quit tobacco, she wouldn’t let him stay there when he was smoking so he built another little cabin and lived there but then he quit smoking so he moved in with her, he bought a lot of furniture and fixed the place up nice. She thought that was extravagant and never would use it, she sat on her old davenport with a coal stove to keep warm. She did things the old fashioned way, she didn’t use a lot of the things he brought.

He built a pump-house, but that was before my time, he built a pump-house by the stream to pump water into Grandma’s house, and bought a bath-tub. That was before electricity so he installed a carbide tank to provide electric lights in the house. He was a genius when it came to invention. I don’t know where he got his materials or his ideas, but he built a lot of things to make life easier. He wasn’t lazy, he just couldn’t see doing things the old-fashioned, hard way.

He never went to high school but all through grade school he was considered stupid or retarded because he couldn’t write, but after he got out of school somehow they discovered that he couldn’t see, they took him to an eye-doctor and he was virtually blind, so they had to reconsider that he wasn’t retarded at all, his vision was just zero.

He never married, and in the 40’s he went back to Iowa where he spent four or five summers working in the fields with farmers. I remember once he came back, I was about 8 or 9, he had a whole trunk full of pecans that he brought back, I don’t know where he got them.

After the fifth grade, when we moved back to Boulder after the war, I remember getting to know Uncle Omer, he was living in Boulder then. Those are the main memories that I have of  Uncle Omer.