Page 441 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

When Howard bought the Diamond D in 1980, a large collection of local Native American artifacts came with it. Ralph Davies had been an avid col- lector. Dan Dennis recalls a story from his youth that his dad told many times. “Dad went to San Francisco one time to pick up two carved wooden Indian statues for Mr. Davies, which he placed at the entrance to the ranch house. Later, I remember riding with my dad up to the main house, at four or five years old, and feeling dread seeing those carved Indians. I wondered if there could be any real Indians up on the hillsides.” Today, those two cigar-store Indian chiefs belong to Howard’s old- est daughter, Jeannie Doyle, and continue to startle new generations of kids in the Doyle family.
COMING FULL CIRCLE
Looking back, who could have guessed the sig- nificance of that phone call back in 1994, when Hazen Jr. called to see if Peterson would want his father’s old RD4 back? No one had gone searching for that tractor. No one even knew it still existed.
Parts drawing from RD4 operators manual
RD4 & EARLY D4 SERIAL NUMBERS
1936 RD4 1937 RD4 1937 *D4 1938 D4 1939 D4
4G1 – 4G3662 4G3663 – 4G (N/A) 4G (N/A) – 4G8857 4G8858 – 4G9999 7J series begins
*Cat dropped the ‘R’ mid-year to become the D4
EARLY DIESEL TRACTOR TIMELINE
1931 IntroductionofCatSixty–firstdieselpowered tractor
1934 RseriesgasolinetractorsreleasedastheR2, R3, and R5
1935 Introductionofdiesel-poweredRD6,RD7,RD8
1936 RD4released
1937 ‘R’isdroppedfromtheRDdesignation – tractors become the D4, D6, D7, D8
1938 D2released–thereneverwasanRD2
1938 R4released–gasolineengine–basedonthe Cat Thirty
Hazen Dennis Sr. showing off his sugar beets in 1941
CHAPTER 27 | 439