Rural Missouri - April 2023 - 37

slower or just needs a good chuckle to get through the day.
Take the tale of the Meadows family's humble upbringing
titled " It isn't the Cough. " In the once-thriving community
of Leann in Barry County where Mark grew up, actual
doctoring was scarce. Dr. Mom took care of most problems
like the common cold using nostrums that were heavy on
grease and coal oil.
Mark's brother reminded him of an over-the-counter
treatment called Dr. Drake's Glessco Cough Relief " which
is known by all who ever imbibed it as the nastiest, vilest
and most vomitous taste ever invented by man. The first
taste triggered a loss of innocence, and the fight was on
ever to dose the child again, " Mark wrote.
Those who survived such treatment and lived to Mark's
nearly 80 years of age might remember the joys of using
an outhouse. Mark shares the trials and tribulations of
the days when " Outhouses were In " through another of his
stories.
The Meadowses became a " two
outhouse family " when Grandpa
came to live in the farm's original
log cabin but needed a facility
closer to the back door. Newcomers
to outhouses will learn through
the story about the function of
corn cobs, a bucket of lime and the
Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog.
Not all of the stories are from
that bygone era. Some were
spawned by more recent travels by
Mark and his beloved wife, Judy.
One of the best is called " Check
in Cheap. " In this story the writer
tells how they saved $20 by staying
at " The Really Reasonable Inn "
instead of their normal abode while
visiting friends in Columbia.
The adventure includes a bathroom
door that stuck shut, the tag
end of a toilet paper roll and no
spare, questionable plumbing, a
fan that went " tick, tick, tick, tick "
all night long and missing light
bulbs. It ends with a man from a
neighboring room spitting lustily off
the balustrade as they beat a path home.
The couple, who are members of Barry Electric Cooperative,
returned to the Ozarks in 1983. Mark left a job as the
head catalog librarian at Arkansas State University. The
plan was for Judy to teach school while Mark established a
mail-order clock parts company.
Their adventures on the rocky 85-acre farm atop Bennett
Ridge and encounters with interesting characters
provided much fodder for the eventual book. " It had the
worst house in the United States, a terrible old home, "
Mark says. " It was built in the '30s and it was very poorly
built in the first place. It didn't have running water, didn't
have a bathroom. It had an outhouse.
" Judy said we gave our kids something that none of our
grandkids have, something valuable. And that's poverty.
We were poverty-stricken. They learned to handle their
money and so forth. But it was really good for them. "
Eventually Mark " retired " by selling the clock company.
But then he took up repairing and collecting clocks, which
provided more humorous stories that ended up in the
book. Visitors to Mark and Judy's new home will find the
subjects of many of these clock stories counting out the
hours in their home.
One of their clocks has a case that was made in a Maine
prison by a mass murderer. Another is a French clock that
strikes out the hour, then does it again two minutes later
in case the owner needs a reminder.
Judy says that early in the week when Mark winds the
30-plus clocks in the house they all chime at the same
time. " But by the end of the week, they get off a little
bit. It's horrible if you want to make an important phone
call and you forget and it's 11 o'clock and you get on the
phone, and all the clocks start striking, " she says.
After waiting for the final gong from the big grandfather
clock, the subject of " Forget us our
Debts, " Mark chimes in: " There's
an old saying that the man with
one clock always knows the time,
but the man with two clocks is
never sure. "
Mark credits his mom with
planting the writing bug in him. " I
left home in '61. Mama was a great
letter writer. She would write like a
six-page, single-spaced letter every
week. And I would write back, of
course on the old Underwood. I
had this habit of writing up our
stories in those letters. And I've got
probably two bushels of letters out
there in the barn. "
The letters - along with a
remarkable memory and the
occasional email from a friend -
provided all the fodder he needed
for his book, which has been well
received by those who have read it.
" Several people have told me
they hadn't laughed so much in
years as they have when they read
my book, " Mark says. " One lady
said she was sitting reading my
book in a doctor's waiting room. And finally she realized
she was sitting there just laughing and laughing. She
looked up and everyone was staring at her like she was
crazy. "
Like a modern-day Mark Twain, Mark sees humor in
everyday happenings. " I feel obliged to write them down, "
he says. " Other people lose their keys and find them or get
copies, but I write a story. Other people ruin the pizza and
order out, but I write a story. Some people
snorkel or skydive, but I write. It's just
the way I amuse myself. "
Cassville
You can contact Mark at author@
ozarkmark.com. His book is available
from Amazon.com, at the
Barry County Museum in Cassville
and at the Crane Chronicle.
APRIL 2023 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP 37
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Rural Missouri - April 2023

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