We started running water in the hole and sure enough the baby skunks popped out. We took them to the house and put them in a rabbit cage and they did very well on puppy food.
But there is more to the story. Father Jack and Mother Hazel went away for the weekend. Not a good thing. There was a party- a sofa fire- skunks in the house to impress the girls. But when Jack got home from their weekend everything was fine. That fall I left for the Army and I think Jack turned the skunks loose to join mother nature. The skunks never shot off their smell. No, not even in the house.
It was back in about 1963 that 5 good old Milford University boys decided to go to Colo over the 4th of July weekend. One of the boys had a girl friend that worked on Pikes Peak. So we There was Wormie, Goosie, Stan, Lord, and Hubam. We decided to take the Old Blue Goose. We all had good cars but we decided it would be more of a challenge to drive Lord's (Loyd) old blue 55 Pontiac. It went pretty well if I remember right. We left at night and the next morning we were at the bottom of Pike Peak.
So we started up. The Old Blue Goose started overheating. Well, 5 young Bucks from Milford weren't going to turn around. No way with a girl up at the top. We would go a ways. It was a good thing it had rained that night. We would find a puddy of water, scoop up the water in our hats and run for the car and dump the water in the radiator. The mountain patrol would stop and say, "You boys better turn around". We told them there was a girl that worked on top. And we had driven 7 or 8 hundred miles so one of us could see her. They said we better keep going. We pushed and pulled the Old Blue Goose and later that day, we made it.
I can't remember much about what was up on top. The guy with the girl friend got the cold shoulder.. Maybe it was his old girlfriend.
So we had a nice trip down. We needed a place to bed down. We drove east of the mountains to kind of a desert. It looked like a big rain coming but we had stopped to eat and asked one of the locals how bad the storm was going to be. He said, "Don't worry about it boys, it's a dry rain. We all learned what a dry rain was. It never rained on us.
The next morning Goosie and Wormie decided to drive into town to get breakfast. When they got back they had ran over a porkiepine, The front tire was full of quills. Something we had never seen before, We pulled them out and luckily they didn't go in far enough to cause a flat tire.
Where to go next. We were all wanting to be cowboys, so we headed for Cheyane, WY. We stopped at a place that sold everything. We saw our first Jackalope. Stuffed. He was a mighty cute little critter. Big long ears and a nice little set of horns. Then we decided it was time to go back to the peacefulness of Milford Twp. I don't even remember the trip home.
Milford Twp was just one big family. We all had names, rather nicknames. And had good clean fun. The 5 boys were Gene Roberts, Arlen Twedt, Dennis Book, Bruce Strother, and Loyd Hughes. Dennis Book `62N
An obituary from probably 1955 involving one of Milford's most long time residents, Charles Alfred.
Charles Alfred, 86, Died Tuesday (no month or day or year given) at the Milford township farm, Route 2, Ames, where he had spent all of his 86 years and which has been in his family since 1854. Burial will be in the McCallsburg Cemetery.
Active in farming throughout his lifetime, Mr. Alfred was born Jan. 20, 1869, the son of Nancy and George Alfred. His parents had purchased the farm from the government at $1.25 per acre in 1854. Charles was born in the original log house built by his father on the land and lived there until he was two years old.
When a boy he attended Curtiss township school. He later played an active role in the formation of the Milford Consolidated School. He was a member of its board of education for a number of years.
Mr Alfred is survived by his wife, Bessie Adams Alfred, and his five sons- Joe, Erwin, Jack, Robert and Easley.
Edit: The Alfred family farmstead mentioned in the article as being Charles's residence was located a mile west and about five-eights mile north of Milford Twp School on the west side of the road in Sec 17. However, it is not known if that farmstead was the location of the log house. His parents would have been there at the time of infamous 1860 prairie fire. The Land Patent sold to George Alfred was for eighty acres and contained the South half of the Northeast quarter of Section 17 and was isssued on 1 Oct 1855. Spectulation is that the log cabin may have been on the west end of this land as that would put them a half mile closer to the river and its timber. Another Alfred, Thornton, assumed to be related to George, on 15 Jan 1858 got a patent on the Southwest quarter of Section 8. Why George bought the land patent in 17 is uncertain when land closer to the River was available for at least a couple more years. If Charles lived in the cabin for two years and then moved to, at the age of two, in 1871, this probably was the time that a new road system, the more familiar square pattern, was put in place and the "farmstead" was relocated to the east end, along the new road, of the property.
The Curtis School (subdistrict number 5) was the one that stood in the SW corner of Sec 15 where the Consolidated School was constructed. It would seem as though the Alfred youngsters who lived at this site, on the west side of the road in Sec 17, would have been candidates to have attended the Milford Sub-district School, number 4, which would have been the same distance, a mile and 5/8 away, and located in the SE corner of Sec 18.
This story of the Alfred family shows that population of the "prairie" portion of Milford Twp was begun much earlier than might be suspected. However, the Alfred farm does contain much land that would not have in the slew or wetlands category.