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.

Bids will be taken until Nov. 15.

Dona Tescher Lowman, of rural Grassy Butte, will miss that old church, where she attended Mass for more than 30 years, driving with her husband, Jim, and children down two dozen gravel miles to get there.

Now, she goes 40 miles to Killdeer's church.

"That's part of life," she says.

She loves those Hunters' Suppers, though.

For years, she's sold the raffle tickets for prizes given away at the supper.

Buying a book of raffle tickets was the admission price for anyone who showed up at the Lowman ranch with a hopeful look on his face and a gun in the rack.

"Only one guy ever turned me down," she said, her laugh, even over the telephone, enough to warm the day's temperature a few degrees.

The diocese decided to close the church, which celebrated Mass at 4 p.m. on Saturdays, because only nine or 10 families still belonged. Sometimes, only three or four people could get there, what with basketball or rodeos and such for the kids.

The collections were getting slim, and the Catholics of Lady of Consolation in Alexander, up the road a ways, kicked in some of the revenue they get from a donated oil well, to help pay Grassy Butte's share of the parish house costs in Watford City.

Lowman said the church already has been stripped of its reliquary items and even the pews are gone. She said she and her husband will take out the ornate altar to make sure it's preserved, and Milton and Betty Lou Johnson have asked for the steeple bell, which rang out the news of their wedding day and when their children were baptized.

Bernice Heiser, now in her 80s, remained in Grassy Butte, as long as she could attend the church. Her daughter helped her move away a few weeks ago.

Lowman said the 30- by 48-foot church building has good, 2-by-8 lumber and fairly new shingles, even on the bell steeple, where some squirrels are residing. An electric organ that was in the church when it was moved into Grassy Butte back in 1949 will go with the bid. The windows are poor and the building isn't insulated, she said.

It's hard to say what will happen to it, whether the buyer will want to make a unique residence, or salvage it for the materials, including a vintage tin ceiling, itself probably worth a good deal.

"After we sell it, it's not ours anymore," Lowman said.

For bid information, call the Lowmans at 575-4708 or the parish house at 842-3505.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@westriv.com.)