Tuesday 10/20/2026
This is the alternate Tuesday when I do my laundry. I got it all done by 10:30. While the washer was running, I met with Lou in the auditorium to show him how to put his computer screen on the projector. This so he can show slides to the Car Free group on Thursday.
Then I wanted to write something for the writers group, to the cue “Family Stories”. I couldn’t come up with anything so I talked to Dennis and then to Laurel and Laurel came up with a skunk story. Looking to check it in my mother’s autbiography I found another skunk story from the old ranch, and some confirmation for Laurel’s story. I combined the two stories. See below.
This evening the Movie committee showed The Talented Mr. Ripley and I went down and watched it. I had heard a lot about this movie, and a couple of people said they had liked it. I stayed through the whole thing but didn’t like it. Although, you got Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett in the same movie, something has to be good, right? Anyway, I agreed with Joanne that the ending was disappointing.
Second-hand family stories
I consulted with my (slightly) younger relatives because I couldn’t come up with any family lore. Both remembered skunk lore. I followed up by searching for “skunk” in my mother’s autobiography which I digitized 15 years ago and sits conveniently on my hard drive. Combining all three sources, there are two stories.
First is the tale of the Momma Skunk with three babies, who made a practice of feeding from the cat bowls on the back porch. Mamma Skunk would come down a twilight from the tree-lined ridge behind the house, around the barn, up to the back porch. The cats would move away, pretending that they didn’t care about that old food anyway.
Mamma Skunk always ate first, then supervised the baby skunks as they fed, one at a time, at the cat bowls. Then the family would walk away in line, back toward the woods.
Skunk tale number two happened after I had gone off to college, but a younger relative who lived with my parents for a few years more remembers this tale. One weekend their Pentecostal church held a weekend prayer service and family day at a local lake resort. During the prayer service, the kids were allowed to play outside around the lakeside facility. Exploring, they found a family of baby skunks sheltering in a culvert under a road. Determined to save these “lost” baby critters, they worked hard with sticks and coat-hanger wire to extract the babies. And they got thoroughly anointed with skunk smell, causing consternation when the kids rejoined the congregation after the prayer service was over. Legend has it that the pastor’s kids kept at least some of the baby skunks, had their odor glands removed and kept them as pets for a year or so after.
