Mark D. Meadows

I was born in 1943 in Aurora, Missouri, the fourth of six children. I grew up in a family that valued education. Our parents stressed the importance of reading and writing. Before rural electrification reached our hilly farm in 1949, we had a battery-powered console radio on which we listened to a few important programs such as “The Lone Ranger” and “The Fat Man,” but the big “B” batteries were expensive, so our main entertainment was my mother reading novels to the family. She sometimes played the piano and sang, my two older sisters accompanying her. I attended my first seven grades in the Leann one-room school, a long mile from our home. We Meadows children normally walked to and from school in good weather. We even got to cross a swinging bridge over Jenkins Creek—that kind of bridge you see aborigines chasing the hero across in old jungle movies. I graduated from Aurora High School in 1961 and then attended the University of Missouri at Columbia. I received a BA in English Literature in 1966 and an MA in Library Science in 1967. I met Judy Carter at Wesley Foundation. Her father was a professor at MU. Judy and I were married in June 1966. We had three children, Christopher (now deceased), Aaron, and Alexander. We have eleven grandchildren. While attending college, Judy and I became friends with the great poet, John G. Neihardt, who had a positive influence in our lives. Dr. Neihardt taught me that poetry is an oral art. Poems should be read aloud and should flow as smoothly as prose. A poem should not use tortured syntax or convoluted word order to tease out a rhyme. During the years 1968 to 1983, I was a librarian successively at University of Missouri Medical Library, Park College Library, and Arkansas State University Library. In 1983, I resigned from my library job. Judy and I bought a mail order business which used silk-screen printing to make dials and painted glass for antique clocks. We shipped to every state and some foreign countries. That year we also bought an eighty-five acre farm in the Ozark hills where we still live. We sold the mail order business in 1991. From 1991 to 2017, I was semi-retired, repairing clocks. I now turn down most clock repair jobs, so that I can repair our own neglected timepieces. I am an enthusiastic and inventive cook and do most of the cooking for the household. Another great love is reading and writing. My favorite authors are Anthony Trollope and Aaron Elkins. I enjoy woodworking. Judy and I love to ride our horses on the rough trails of the mountainous Mark Twain National Forest. Everyone encounters certain eccentric individuals and is involved now and then in funny situations. When this happens to me, I rush to the computer to write about it. In my files, I have over 150 tales describing my experiences, approximately half of which appear in my book, Echoes from the Ozarks: Memories of the Missouri Hills. I am on the rotation at Elm Branch Christian Church to deliver communion meditations. My files include over 100 communion meditations, which I have written.