Because I simply sit down and write these entries, I often forget something or make errors which need correction. (I still need to go back and put Cingular in for the Vonage I cited in the commercial with sound gaps.) I have been learning some strange aspects of memory while putting down what I can for cousins of the family history, given that I'm the oldest grandchild on the Koftan-Peters side and I don't expect to be around that much longer. I need to restart reading my Proust all over again, THE author of memory.
I failed to add that I don't know anything about [Great] Uncle Forrest's wife other than the duplicates of, I presumed, their wedding photo. When I knew him, he was either a widower or a divorcee and had no children. He died 14 April 1952, but I remember nothing about that, nor do I know where he is buried. I tried to look that up on the Internet without subscribing to some genealogical service and saw only an entry in Washington state for a Forrest L. Peters in 1952. I was remiss in not looking up the cemeteries around Deer Lodge when I deliberately stopped there on one of my last trips to Montana, for I made special efforts for other relatives and such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Virgil Thomson. I do know where all the Peters are buried otherwise. Our great grandparents, Ed and Mary, are in the Catholic cemetery at Randolph, Nebraska, right behind [Great] Uncle Glen and his second wife, Paula; [Great] Aunt Myrtle is buried in the Protestant cemetery at Randolph, closer to Highway 20. (The Catholic cemetery is hidden over the hill but down the same road northeast of town.) [Great] Aunt Nellie and Uncle John Feddersen are buried in Bassett and easy to find. Of course, Grandma and Grandpa are in Bloomfield's cemetery next to my parents, also where both sets of my paternal grandparents are buried.
Anyway, Uncle Forrest was solitary and a bit brusque, independent, as I knew him and got along better with Gram, his baby sister, than with the rest of the family. I think he showed us where he worked, but I've already admitted to remembering nothing but his very dark bachelor's house.
From Deer Lodge we circled up over the mountains to Helena merely to see the capitol. On a later trip I was surprised to see its setting, against the foothills on the edge of a large, high plateau like a giant meadow tilting down from the city. I made a special side trip to see the nearby Gates of the Mountains of Lewis & Clark history, a narrow gorge passage on the Missouri between towering grey cliffs, the entrance like a set of giant limestone doors ajar. But I was too stingy with time and money to take the ferry trip through.
Hi Gary,
Oh how I wish you had a scanner so that you could embed these pictures in the narrative.