The Light in the Sun Went Out

It wasn’t long after that in the fall of 1921, that dad, John Alma Peterson, began to get sick. Dad wouldn’t go to a doctor. I don’t believe he had much faith in doctors and referred to them as “pill pushers.” And so he kept working on the farm. In October, the potatoes were ready to harvest and dad employed two men. He also hired about fifteen teenage boys and girls to pick up potatoes behind the potato digger which was pulled by four head of horses driven by one of the men.

Dell and Andy were kept busy, each driving a team of horses pulling a wagon loaded with sacks of spuds the two miles to town to the potato cellar where the other man, with Dell’s and Andy’s help, would unload and carry the sacks into the cellar and dump them into different bins. The spuds couldn’t be bruised or they would spoil.

We kids were kept busy, for we each carried a bucket which we filled with spuds, and then carried it over and dumped it into a gunny sack. Dad and the bigger boys would jiggle the sack up and down so it would be good and full. Then they would leave the sack sitting upright and in a straight row. When the team and wagon got back from town, dad and one or two of the bigger boys would hurry and load the wagon and send it back to town in just a few minutes.

I really wanted to be like Dell and Andy and drive one of the wagons hauling potatoes, and I begged dad to let me, but he said that I wasn’t strong or old enough to handle and carry the sacks of potatoes into the cellar. This short horn always wanted to do whatever my older brothers were doing.

Dad was sick, but he just kept on working, even when the thrashing machine came with its crew. Mama kept after him to go to Price to see a doctor but, again, he refused saying that whatever he had would soon pass over. Finally, he was too sick and had to go to bed.

Unknown to dad, mama went down to Grandpa Golding’s store and asked permission to use the phone. She called Dr. Fisk at Price and asked him to come and see dad. Dr. Fisk sent his assistant, a young Dr. Bosh, just out of school and to whom people were getting more faith in all the time. He was a very good doctor. He wore leather leggings and a cap with dark goggles. He drove a Paige car. In those days, all cars were open. They didn’t have windows like they do now. They carried curtains and if it looked like a storm was brewing, they would stop and button on the curtains.

After Dr. Bosh examined dad, asking mama and dad a lot of questions, he told mama that dad was a mighty sick man and should have had medical attention a long time ago! He told dad to stay in bed. He left some medicine and then left saying he would be back in a couple of days.

One evening we boys and some of our friends were having a watermelon bust. We had a fire out by our pond and were minding our own business when a couple of young men came along on bicycles. They stopped, uninvited, and began to eat our watermelon which was ok since we had plenty. But then they started using bad language and were just plain rough.

Dell asked them to go, which didn’t sit well with them, and they refused and slapped Dell. I had gone to the house more than once to tell dad and mama what was going on. Dad told me to go back out and tell the young men to leave or he would get out of bed and come out. Mama went out to the fire and politely asked the young men to leave. They jeered and said, “What kind of a man is Mr. Peterson to send his wife to do a man’s job?” Mama said, “My husband is a very sick man and I think you know it. Now you go about your business and leave these boys alone.”

She went back into the house but instead of leaving, the young men became more abusive and plain mean. One of them twisted my ear, with me telling them that my dad would come out and beat the socks off them. They just told me to go and get my dad, which I did. First he hollered out the window and told them to leave us alone, but they hollered back and told him to “come and make us.”

Mama tried to keep dad in bed, but no sir. He slipped on his Levies and shoes, not stopping to tie his shoes, and out to the fire he went. Now dad was real sick but sick as he was, he grabbed one fellow in one hand and the other young man in his other hand. He did not hit them with his fists. He did not kick them. He just shook them real hard, and then he bounced them against each other real hard. Dad said, “Are you ready to leave? I better make sure.” He then gave them another good shaking. By then they were ready to leave and kept saying so. Andy and Dell got the bikes, and dad picked up each young man and put them on their bicycles, rough like, and gave them a shove. They each fell, but got up as quick as they could and took off.

Dad didn’t say a word. He just walked back over to the house and got back into his sick bed. Dad was all man. I have had other men tell me about my father. How powerful and strong he was. How he was always willing to go the extra mile to help a person.

After the rumpus with the young men, dad got out of bed just one more time. It must have been around or after the first of November and mama needed some wood cut for the kitchen stove. She asked me to go and try to cut some wood, and I did the best I could, which wasn’t very good being just a nine year old trying to cut fire wood off a big pine or cedar log. Mama could see I was having trouble so she came out to the wood pile, took the axe from me and began to try to chop the wood. Dad could see all this, looking out the window and him lying in his sick bed. It went against dad’s nature, this was a man’s job to cut wood, not a woman. Above all, dad loved mama and he couldn’t stand it, so he got out of bed, slipped on his pants and shoes. Again, his shoes were open and not laced. He came out to the wood pile, as quick as mama saw she said, “Al, what in the world you doing out of bed? Go back into the house this very second and get back into bed.” But father kept coming toward mama. He reached over and took hold of the axe, which mama didn’t want to give up.

Dad was so bad he couldn’t talk. All he could say was ahhhhhhh. Poor mama was crying, but dad took the axe and cut a pile of wood. Then he looked at me and said, “Aahhhh,” pointing at the wood he had cut and motioning for me to carry it into the house and fill the wood box . I said, “I’ll do it daddy, I’ll do it.” Then my daddy, the greatest man that ever lived, drove the axe into a log. He turned, walked back into the house, got back into bed, never to get up again.

I don’t know where Dell and Andy were. They must have been working on the farm getting a load of hay or some other chore. Dell was only twelve and those logs would have been extremely hard even for Dell to cut. I have wondered since, where our neighbors were, etc. Someone certainly was asleep.

My Uncle Earl Stevensen, married to mama’s sister Aunt Chasty, spent as much time as he could at dad's bedside. However, he worked in the mine in Sunnyside and had to make a living. Dr. Bosh had brought Dr Frisk with him a couple times to see dad and they tried to find out what was the matter. I don’t believe they knew what dad’s trouble really was. Andy has often said to me, "If we boys had only had the presence of mind to tell the doctors about the eagle sinking its claws into dad’s arm, maybe it would have helped and maybe it wouldn’t." Who knows? Perhaps dad had told them before he lost his voice and couldn’t talk.

Dad’s condition worsened. His brothers: Uncle Marinues, Uncle Andrew, Uncle Dave came to be with dad. I remember going to dad’s bedside, getting on my knees, and praying to our Heavenly Father to please let our daddy live. I did this not just once but many times. I know Dell, Andy, mama, our small sisters did the same thing. I remember dad putting his hand on my head as I knelt in prayer for him. I said, “You’re going to be ok Daddy.” He nodded his head yes. While dad was so sick and our uncles were there, some of us kids were staying with our neighbors. I was staying with the Bill Jones family.

Bill Jones and his family had proven their friendship to us many times. They had a phone in their house and on the morning of November 21, 1921, I had just eaten breakfast and had left the house and was walking down to the corral to get my horse to go to school, when someone called me to come back to the house for a minute. I somehow had an idea what was the matter. I walked back and into the house. The Joneses had a large family, everything was quiet. Mr. Jones said, “We just received word, your father has passed away.”

The light in the sun went out! Mrs. Jones put her arms around me. She and Mr. Jones said,
"We're so sorry, Cotton." I thanked them all and walked out the door. I went to the corral and got my horse. I rode west toward Price. I had a cousin, Glen Olsen, driving a little bunch of cows. He had driven them clear from Mountain Home, Utah, and I knew Dell and Andy had gone to meet Glen, so I rode up the road to give the message to them. It was not until I was alone that I let the tears flow. This nine year old boy sobbed and shook convulsively. Dad had been sick a long time. We all knew he was deathly sick. And, yet, his death was such a shock! It was as though the light had gone out of the sun!

Our neighbor, John Rich, made dad’s coffin. Uncle Marinus Peterson took charge, I’m sure, at Castle Dale. He saw dad’s grave was dug. He had a big box made to put the coffin in. The funeral was held in Wellington. And then John Pinegar hauled dad, in his coffin, in the back of his truck, I suppose a Model T, to Castle Dale where dad had a plot of ground of his own and where he was laid to rest.

Mama and six children under twelve years of age, a lump in each of our throats, tears rolling down our cheeks, each of us, eyes red from crying, and each wondering what it was all about. Why did God permit our dad to die?

Dad died Nov 21 of this year, 1921. Andrew always believed and still believes at the time of this writing, that the eagle caused father’s death. Dad had a horrible fever at the time of his death. They didn’t have hospitals in those days. Dr. Bosh and Dr. Fisk came to the house a couple of times a week. Dad begged for ice, he would chew it up as if he were starving for something cold because of his high fever. Andy feels the mother and father eagle in feeding their young, mostly wild rabbits which they tore to pieces with their claws or talons, and by the same method, when the young eagle sank it’s claws into dad’s arm it possibly gave him rabbit fever or some other kind of disease not known to doctors in 1921. If it happened today, Dad would have never died.

Our hope is centered not in the ashes of what once was but in the majestic grandeur of what is to be, and, being sixty five years old at the time of this writing and having passed through the streams of time, I am as Job of old when he said, “I know that my redeemer lives.” My love for my dad has never diminished. Of all the men I have ever known, there never was another so wonderful, so great, as good as my dad.

My great ambition and the strength I pray for are to again to see him. And to present my children, his grandchildren to him, his great grandchildren, etc. and to have dad say, as he holds out his arms to all of us, “ Welcome home my children!”

Then the light in the sun will come over the horizon.

The following is dedicated to my dad, John Alma Peterson. If only my children could have known him. I found myself with tears rolling down my face as I wrote “The Light in the Sun Went out” as if it happened yesterday. I am sixty-five years old as I write this, and I still ask," Why did God take him home?”



I follow a famous father
His honor is mine to wear
He gave me a name
That was free from shame
A name he was proud to bear
He lived in the morning sunlight
He marched in the ranks of right
He was always true to the best that he knew
And the shield that he wore was bright

I follow a famous father
And never a day goes by
But I feel that he looks down on me
To carry his character high
He lived through the sorest trials
As only a brave man can
And though his form be gone
I must never wrong
The name of so good a man

I follow a famous father
Not known to the printed page
Nor written down In the world’s renown
As a prince of his little age
But never a stain attached to him
And never did he stoop to shame
He was bold and brave
And to me he gave
The pride of an honest name

I follow a famous father
It is him I must keep in mind
And though his form be gone
I must never wrong
The name that he left behind
It was mine on the day that he gave it
And it shows on a Monarch Crown
And as fair to see as it came to me
So it must be when I lay it down