PD: Day 53 - Aunt Lois

Yesterday's post is up a little late. My sister e-mailed me early this afternoon to tell me out Aunt Lois (my Dad's sister) had died the night before. She had been battling cancer for a long time. Granted I hadn't seen her in a number of years, at least since the family reunion in 2001. I always remember going to her house with my Dad.

Every summer we would pack up to head out into the field. My father was a verterbate paleontologist and would spend the entire month of July in the field every year. Even he got older and sick - he would take his O2 tank into the field and away we would go. We would drive the 4.5 hours from Missoula to Lewistown. We always stoppen in Lincoln (made famous by the Unabomber) for coffee and pie and Great Falls for lunch. My father would tell me stories about the geology, history, people, and animals that had lived along the way and tell me stories about growing up in Central Montana on a homestead during the 1920s and 1930s. My grandmother died young due to a misscarriage when he was 8 or 9 and all six of his sibling went to live with her parents on a farmstead with her brothers or sisters. My grandfather was an oil wildcat - who never actually made any money and was rarely around. When we got to Lewistown we would always stop and spend the night. I can still drive there to this day in my head - take a right at the church - then the first left and pull into the alley by the redwood privacy fence. I haven't been to Lewistown in almost 20 years but I can still remember my Aunt Lois kitchen. When we arrived she would pour my Dad a cup of coffee and me some juice. She had these little Flinstone glasses made from jelly jars and she always had pie. The best pie in the world. I loved her rhubarb pie and sarvisberry, man that was good. I always stayed in the basement, the bathroom had Sear Catalog Wall paper and the bedroom had a bobcat rug. After we got there my Dad and her would chat for hours while they got caught up on disparate family members from around Montana and the country. She was always so friendly to me as a kid, I remember her kindness and genoristy and I'm sorry to see her go.
My aunt lived near where we would go to collect fossils and her house always served as kind of a base station for our weekly trips into town.