In the Bud of Life

My first recollection of life began at Sunnyside, Utah, a coal mining town, Carbon County, located in the mouth of Whitmore Canyon. A canyon about ten or twelve miles long running into the Wasatch Mountains. A beautiful range for livestock, deer, etc.

My great love for horses: As a boy, four and five years old, I used to watch cowboys and cattlemen going up into the mountains and also coming out of the mountains into town after supplies, pack horses, pack mules, cowboys riding beautiful horses, wearing chaps, boots and spurs. Boy howdy, how this young bucko longed to be one of them.

I used to see them coming either up or down the canyon, I would run over to the roadside and watched as they passed. The cowboys with their batwing bull hide chaps, big hats, spurs, expert horsemen. They looked so neat as though they were a part of the horse they rode. After they had passed, I would move to the center of the road and watch them as far as I could and they passed from my sight. I would say to myself, “When I grow up, I’m a gonna be a cowboy and a good one.” Some of these cowboys got to know me. Frank Liddell, now living in Wellington, Utah, He is 84 years old and still rides a horse and still runs a little bunch of cattle in Whitmore Canyon. He is as fine a man as I have ever known. His brother, Jim Liddell, now dead, and others, the Burdicks all ran cattle in Whitmore Canyon.

These men got to know me and if they were riding a gentle horse, they would lift me up and set me on behind them on their horse and let me ride a mile or two! Boy howdy! I wanna tell ya this was really something. I could feel the wonderful action of the horse under me. Every once in a while, the cowboy would bust his horse out in a dash of speed to turn a pack animal back into the road. To me this was indeed a great thrill. After I had ridden a mile or two, Frank Liddell or whoever I was riding with, would say, “Cotton boy, your getting a long ways from home. I better let you off.” I always thanked them and home I would go as fast as my legs could take me and into the house to tell mom and dad and especially my brothers, Dell and Andy, I had just ridden a long ways behind a cowboy on a horse.

My father, John Alma Peterson, Uncle Jim and Uncle Dave Peterson worked in the coal mine. My grandfather, James Marinus Peterson, owned a farm below Sunnyside about four and a half miles. His boys, Jim, Dave, and dad each owned eighty acres and grandpa had a hundred and sixty acres of land.

We spent a lot of time at the ranch. I loved this. They had several teams of horses. In those days, no one so much as even dreamed of a tractor. Everything had to be done with horses and young as I was, always at noon and at quitting time in the evening, I would be down in the field where they were either plowing, cutting hay, or maybe breaking up new ground - grubbing sage brush off the land, hauling rocks, etc. I would be there to ride one of the work horses to the feed yard. It was so much fun. We would ride them to the pond to get a drink of water. Sometimes the horses would walk out into the water ten or twelve feet then put their heads down to the water and drink. I thought this was great. Each time the horse would swallow, they would make the water run up hill. The horses’ names were old Bell, old Daisy, old Tony, old Dick, old Bess, and others. They were gentle and this is one of the ways I and my two brothers, Dell and Andrew, in our very young springtime of life, were learning to ride.

I remember one time, Uncle Johnny Richards came to our place. He was riding a beautiful white horse. He was employed as Range Rider for Utah Fuel Co. to keep cattle off the Range Creek where Sunnyside’s drinking water came from. Well, anyway, us kids want to ride Uncle Johnny’s horse. Uncle said to me, “Cotton, you’re just a button, you’re still wet behind the ears. You are way too young to ride that horse. You’ll get hurt!” Boy howdy, I hated this. I wanted to ride that beautiful white horse so bad my teeth ached.

Uncle Johnny did let Dell and I think Andy ride him. Anyway, Dell done something to the horse and he ran under the clothes line. The clothes line caught Dell under the chin, lifting him out of the saddle and dropping him on the ground. Dell got back up on the horse. He rode over to me and lifted his head up and said, “Look, I think I cut my throat! Boy howdy, he had a hole about the size of a quarter. It wasn’t bleeding too much. Oh, there was blood down the front of his shirt. Dell said, “Don’t tell mom and dad because they won’t let me ride uncle’s horse anymore.” Well, we did tell mom and dad and they rushed Dell down to Doctor Dowd’s office and, of course, Dr. Dowd took care of Dell.It’s laughable now when I think about it. Dell wasn’t so much concerned about his throat as he was about dad and mama not letting him ride uncle’s horse again.