The dregs of winter are gone, leaving hints of spring everywhere. And the pungent aroma of skunk is one we all recognize.

I was restoring an old house back in the 1960s, and one evening in April I saw a skunk hightail it across the driveway and disappear under the ell. I called my son, and he soon arrived with a wire trap. We placed this trap near the foundation, and I baited it with crackers and peanut butter. The bait was put well inside the trap so when the invitee partook of it, a door closed behind it. I covered the trap with an old quilt and went off to bed.

The next day, after breakfast, I gingerly removed the quilt, and there was a skunk looking at me as if to say, “Now what?” I called my accomplice and we put the trap in his pickup and let the skunk loose on the back side of Bridgton’s Pleasant Mountain. I thought, “If it’s coming back, it will have to deal with the mountain and Moose Pond.” Back home I baited the trap again just to be sure.

The next morning I zipped away the quilt and three skunks looked up at me – three! Back to the mountain, re-bait the trap, back to the mountain. All in all we caught and released seven skunks from under that house. I was hopeful the clan would link up in its new territory and head west.

Another sign of spring when we were grammar school kids was marbles. We went home at the end of school on a Friday and not a sign of a marble. Come Monday morning, the schoolyard was covered with kids playing with them. Mostly boys played marbles, while the girls had their jump ropes out and the sing-song cadence of their rhymes was everywhere. Schoolyards were busy places back then.

The Gibbs Avenue yard was dirt, and we kicked our heel into it a few times, made a passable hole and the games began. I wasn’t that good at regular marbles, but I did achieve a level of notoriety one day that I still remember.

I had a large marble called a “biggie” that I truly loved and I practiced dropping it at home, so I was pretty good at the game of bombsies. One morning I was so good that I hit everything put down, and when the bell rang I hurried to my classroom with my pockets bulging.

As I sat down a marble popped out of my pocket and bounced along the hardwood floor. All the kids looked at the teacher in anticipation, as did I. Then, as I sat there, marbles began falling from my pockets and rolling all over the floor. No one moved, and I thought I was a goner.

My teacher, bless her, smiled at me and said, “Shall we all help Peter? It seems he has lost his marbles.”