Church for Sale
Grassy Butte church for sale
By LAUREN DONOVAN
Bismarck Tribune
Cold winds of November blow winter to the doorstep and rattle the windows of the old white church in Grassy Butte.
Saturday, the church will remain dark and chilled when, for most of 35 years on the same day it had been a lighted beacon, fragrant with roast beef and gravy, where hunters and the community gathered for the annual Hunters' Supper.
More than 200 would come, many still in blaze orange from the day afield for deer, to eat the altar society's good food, bid outrageously for the women's homemade pies and get their souls warmed in a way that only a church basement can warm them.
No more, like too many rural places.
St. Peter Canasius Catholic Church, named for a sainted German Jesuit who helped restore Catholicism to Germany in the late 1500s, had its last Mass on Oct. 13.
The church building will be sold to the highest bidder.
The supper tradition will go on, but over in the Grassy Butte community hall. It was moved there two years ago, because the church has never had running water; instead church men fired up a well and rigged a pump to run the soapy dishwater back outside.
Sentiment has no purchasing power, so instead of staying with those to whom it means the most, it will go to the person willing to pay the most.
Continue reading this article...
www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/11/07/news/local/142248.prt
By LAUREN DONOVAN
Bismarck Tribune
Cold winds of November blow winter to the doorstep and rattle the windows of the old white church in Grassy Butte.
Saturday, the church will remain dark and chilled when, for most of 35 years on the same day it had been a lighted beacon, fragrant with roast beef and gravy, where hunters and the community gathered for the annual Hunters' Supper.
More than 200 would come, many still in blaze orange from the day afield for deer, to eat the altar society's good food, bid outrageously for the women's homemade pies and get their souls warmed in a way that only a church basement can warm them.
No more, like too many rural places.
St. Peter Canasius Catholic Church, named for a sainted German Jesuit who helped restore Catholicism to Germany in the late 1500s, had its last Mass on Oct. 13.
The church building will be sold to the highest bidder.
The supper tradition will go on, but over in the Grassy Butte community hall. It was moved there two years ago, because the church has never had running water; instead church men fired up a well and rigged a pump to run the soapy dishwater back outside.
Sentiment has no purchasing power, so instead of staying with those to whom it means the most, it will go to the person willing to pay the most.
Continue reading this article...
www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/11/07/news/local/142248.prt
posted by Dickinson Museum Center at
10:07 AM
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