Meador Manor

A Manor for Two Meadors

Posted on April 5, 2016 by Granger Meador

April 5, 2016

The Manor That Is Not

I’ve always referred to my abode in Bartlesville as Meador Manor, but the name is simply alliterative fun, since my property is hardly a manor. A typical English medieval manor estate was 1,500 acres or about two square miles; my quarter-acre lot in Arrowhead Acres is about six thousand times smaller. And my residence is about 1.4% the size of Highclere Castle, the setting for Downton Abbey on PBS. That’s why I’ve been able to manage it on my own for the past 21 years without the 42 servants that Highclere Castle had in its heyday. Mind you, while I run the vacuum cleaner now and then, I certainly don’t dust enough to meet the standards of an Edwardian manor house. The lack of a gardener is also evident in how I’ve only kept one bed of hardy shrubs, Nandinas, and striped grass alive out front, and my typical yardwork consists of little more than 40 minutes of pushing a mulching mower over the fescue and bermuda grass…and picking up after the big messy River Birch in the front yard.

That’s Meador Manor, which would be a gatehouse at a real manor

Yard Plantings

Tulips around the mailbox

But in three months my bachelorhood will come to an end. Wendy has already started improving the back yard, which now has three rose bushes, including one in a raised bed we built. It is a certainty that she will be planting many more in the years to come. Last winter she planted tulips around the mailbox and by the porch, and they’ve been brightening things up around here. Recently she gave me a pot of marigolds to keep by the porch as well, knowing that while I love them, mosquitoes hate them.

New brushed nickel bathroom faucet

Newfangled Faucets

But the yard is not the only part of the manor that is being improved. I’ve added some lights around the mirror and some additional cabinets in what will become her bathroom, and I’ve replaced the faucets for the bathroom and kitchen sinks with brushed nickel ones that don’t leak.

Clearing Closets

We’ve cleared out one closet thus far

Lately we’ve been tackling the issue of clearing space for her clothes and other items. We’ve decluttered a wall of cabinets and drawers in the living room, which had already shed almost 400 CDs and DVDs a few years back in my digital downsizing project. This weekend we cleared out one of the two closets she will be using for her personal items.

Bequeathing Books

The biggest unloading has been the study, which was built as the master bedroom. We’ve decided to keep it as a study, since we both do a lot of work from home and she needs a place for her crafts. But my study was loaded, and I do mean loaded, with books. Years ago I mounted shelves on three of the four walls which held over 1,150 books with another 100 or so stored in a closet. A few years ago I sold off and donated almost 200 books in the digital downsizing project, but there were still far too many old books in there.

So we got a bunch of boxes and went to work. In the end, we packed up over 700 books into a couple dozen boxes that I dropped off today at the public library. I’m down to less than 350 books total, so I’ve culled almost 3/4 of the collection, and now most of it fits into the beautiful wood sectional bookcases my parents gave me a few years back. The shots below compare 2001 to today.

Some of the 33 bookshelves that once lined my study

Sectional bookshelves

Since I prefer to read novels on a Kindle these days, I didn’t mind getting rid of almost all of them, including hundreds of science fiction tomes. A few dozen favorites survive, including all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels. I also rid myself of most of my histories on science, technology, and engineering, as I doubt I would ever feel the need to re-read them. But I kept everything by my heroes Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, and Carl Sagan, along with all of Bill Bryson‘s works, both hilarious and informative.

Part of my science fiction collection in 2001

Empty scifi shelves

Computer desk with big books, Starfleet, and other toys

That Which Survives

My Star Trek book collection survives intact, and I used a couple of remaining shelves to house my fleet of U.S.S. Enterprises and other toys. If Wendy still had her Barbie collection, she says it would compete with my Enterprise fleet. All of the “picture books” with large plates of art and photography were kept, since the Kindle and its like don’t yet do such images justice. I also kept most of my books on music and movies as well as all the hiking and travel books. Some reference volumes, such as those on local history, were also retained.

Vanquished Valances

The color valances of the study when I moved in back in 1994

1981’s hideous valances in the study back in 1994 when I moved in

Years ago a visitor remarked that my home’s decor was “stuck in the 80s”. Meador Manor was built in 1981 at the tail end of an oil boom that went bust. The decor of the home still reflects its origins. It still has wall-to-wall carpet that looks like you blended an orange with some salmon. When I took over in the mid-1990s, every window had metal mini-blinds topped with valances. I like the blinds, and have steadily replaced them as they wore out with identical ones, except for substituting light-filtering cellular blinds in the study for consistent soft daylight. Most of the original valances were vivid floral patterns, which I thankfully replaced years ago with dark solids. But the bay window in the dining room has always sported a country blue balloon valance.

I had to work on that valance once while cleaning it, discovering that parts of it were stuffed with 1981 newspapers. The dining room decor had the most shortcomings of any room to Wendy. She doesn’t care for the wallpaper, hates balloon valances in general, and we agreed that the chandelier needed adjustment. This weekend we took down the old valance and disposed of it, and wired the chandelier up higher to provide more headroom. The narrow pub table will eventually be replaced by a larger round table. The new look is more severe, which the round table will relieve a bit, and there is a lot more north light coming in now.

Original Balloon Valance in Dining Room

Valances removed and chandelier raised

We also took down a Spanish Revival wooden conquistador spoon decoration which gave Wendy the creeps.

The Creepy Conquistador

Redecorating

I don’t feel like I’ve changed the look of the Manor much over the years. When I repainted the exterior, I kept the color scheme the same, and on the interior I still have the original 1981 carpet, paint, and wallpaper. Many wall decorations have been in place for years. So is this place frozen in time? While scouring my computer for old photos for this post, I came across a set of 2001 inventory photos. I was surprised that more furnishings than I would have guessed had changed over the past 15 years; only a few major pieces are unchanged. Neither I nor my wallet were surprised to note that not a single piece of electronic technology is the same. The television, stereo, speakers, computer, monitor, printers, and scanner have all been replaced, and some are a few generations removed from what I used 15 years ago. So the Manor does evolve, and I’m looking forward to hanging on the walls some of Wendy’s art projects, which I admire, and I’m glad we’re clearing out the dust, cobwebs, and junk.

I’m clearly in the mood for change as I sneak up on my 50th birthday: I’ll be getting married and changing my job role in the coming years (more on the latter still to come). So cleaning up, clearing out, and updating the Manor, inside and out, is fine by me. Nothing lasts forever…and I’m very glad I’ll be sharing the Manor with Mrs. Meador in a few months.

Posted in books, gardening, home repair, photos, random | 1 Comment

Told Tales, Part 2: The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Granger Meador

March 5, 2016

Meador Post During our Spring Break in 2015, Wendy and I were snuggled in a cabin in the Ozarks when she read to me “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor.

The title is taken from the road safety signs that once adorned roadside billboards across rural America. Ad man Robert S. Walstrom coined the phrase in 1931, and O’Connor borrowed it for her Southern Gothic tale.

O’Connor’s works examine life through the lens of her Roman Catholic faith and often feature grotesque and freakish characters. She once wrote:

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

Flannery O’Connor

“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” tells of the intersection of desolate older Lucynell Crater and her deaf-mute daughter with the tramp Tom T. Shiftlet. The names hit you over the head: shiftless Shiftlet confronting the empty Craters. The color imagery is strong and clear: Shiftlet’s black suit, Crater’s gray hat, and the daughter’s “long pink‑gold hair and eyes as blue as a peacock’s neck.” Shiftlet paints a car green, but then adds a band of cowardly, sickly yellow.

Flannery once wrote:

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

A particularly strong figure at the start of the tale introduces Shiftlet:

He turned his back and faced the sunset. He swung both his whole and his short arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed a crooked cross.

Shiftlet’s opportunity for grace is heightened by additional Christ imagery, including his occupation as a carpenter. But when he sees a chance to acquire the car, “In the darkness, Mr. Shiftlet’s smile stretched like a weary snake waking up by a fire.” He squanders the offerings and the storm clouds build. He is cut off from the sun, and we know that means from the Son as well. His prayer that the Lord would “Break forth and wash the slime from this Earth!” is answered by raindrops pelting down upon his car as he races towards Mobile.

But this is a story with much more than stark imagery, for it is laced with black humor. There is the daughter following Tom about, babbling “Burrttddt ddbirrrttdt” and clapping her hands. There is the old woman offering a car for Tom to sleep in, and, when he says the monks of old slept in their coffins, her reply, “They wasn’t as advanced as we are.”

Wendy had read to me a story overflowing with symbols of all sorts, an evocative and harrowing tale of bartering, betrayal, and bluster. I responded over time with a few favorite stories by another master of imagery, Ray Bradbury. Those will be the subjects of the next installment of this series of posts on our Told Tales.

Posted in short stories, Told Tales | 1 Comment

Return to Sparrow Hawk Mountain

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Granger Meador

Hike Date: February 21, 2016 | SLIDESHOW | PHOTO MOSAIC

On a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon in February 2016, Wendy and I decided to return to Sparrow Hawk Mountain near Tahlequah. We’d thoroughly enjoyed a five-mile hike there the previous April, and I was interested in exploring some of the side trail loops we had skipped on that initial outing, while Wendy was looking forward to a workout in the woods. The elevation changes on the trail certainly provided some exercise on what turned out to be a 3.8 mile hike.

Sparrow Hawk Mountain Trail Tracks

Before we had headed out to Tahlequah, Wendy and I checked that our state fishing licenses were in our packs, knowing that one can face a hefty fine for hiking at Sparrow Hawk Mountain without a fishing or hunting license or a wildlife conservation pass. In fact, a woman had run up to our car at the trailhead, having heard about the fines and asking for verification of the issue; she decided her group would forgo a hike since they lacked licenses. As it turned out, Wendy and I hiked on invalid licenses. I had presumed they were good for a year and would last until April 2016. But when I happened to pull out my license at a stop along the hike and actually read it, I was chagrined to discover that the licenses are for the calendar year only and had expired at the end of 2015. Thankfully no game wardens were present to fine us or the other hikers, many of whom may have similarly lacked valid licenses.

We drove 45 miles south to Tulsa for lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse before driving 47 miles east on US Route 412 and then 26 miles southeast on Oklahoma Highway 82 and through Steely Hollow over to Sparrow Hawk Mountain, which lies a few miles northeast of Tahlequah.

There were quite a few cars at the trailhead, and we climbed the initial steep ascent and regularly encountered fellow hikers throughout the hike, except on the side loops and on a bushwhack we made off one of those loops. Many were college students from Northeastern State University, including a very tall male basketball player escorting a rather short girl. I smiled, thinking how she would need to stand on her own shoulders to snatch a kiss from him. I’m grateful Wendy and I are not so mismatched in height.

Above the Illinois River

Binghams Trail

We reached the high spot above the Illinois where the trail heads north along the mountainside for great river views. Soon we reached the south entrance to Binghams Trail, a side loop constructed by Green Country Cyclists. It was a pleasant diversion and included an accurate mile marker sign.

Eventually it looped back to the main trail, not far south of the popular overlooks on the Illinois. Young lovers were out on the slopes down below the trail, enjoying the views and each other. Wendy and I had already descended down the bluffs back in April for the vistas, so we just stopped for a snack up on the main trail.

We headed on north, both of us suffering from strong allergies in the warm winter air. I even saw a fly and some gnats on the hike, unwelcome reminders that our mild winter means the insects will be out in force this spring. We eventually reached the entrance to the other major side trail, this one marked only by a couple of crossed limbs. So I’ve termed that loop the X Trail. Like Binghams Trail, it heads eastward along the top of the mountain before turning north and then returning west to the main trail.

X Trail

Wendy was enjoying hunting for pretty rocks with crystals throughout our hike, so when I spotted a large stony wash down below, we bushwhacked down to it in case some interesting rocks had washed down. While it wasn’t a lode of crystal rocks, the rocky bed of the dry hollow was interesting to traverse.

Down in the wash

Bushwhacking our way back up the hillside, we passed a violently ripped tree. Back on the trail, we came across a ROTC wayfinding marker, and I posed by a large tree trunk gall.

Such gall

The Illinois

It was warm enough and our allergies severe enough that I decided to not continue northward to Sparrow Hawk Village. We turned back along the main trail, I took a final shot of the Illinois, and we made a final diversion along a side route down to the trailhead. It had been great to be out and about, even with our drippy noses. It is a long haul at school between the winter and spring breaks, and Wendy and I are eagerly looking forward to getting away to Sugar Ridge Resort at Beaver Lake in Arkansas in the middle of March.

SLIDESHOW | PHOTO MOSAIC

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Icy Bluffs at Osage Hills

Posted on January 30, 2016 by Granger Meador

Hike Date: January 24, 2016 | SLIDESHOW | MOSAIC

Meador Post We were blessed with two warm weekends in late January 2016, and Wendy and I were determined to do some hiking. A sunny and windy Sunday afternoon found us undulating westward along hilly Highway 60 west of Bartlesville to Osage Hills State Park for a three-mile hike.

I’ve hiked at the park over 30 times since July 2009, with many of those treks documented on Flickr. I had fun creating a trail map over the years, which is still featured on the state’s tourism website. For this outing, I opted to park at the old stone pump house [2012 photo] built by the CCC. While the three mountain bike trails originate there and are a welcome alternate hiking system, I was hoping we might find the nearby off-trail bluffs interesting. So we headed southwest around the field to the big metal shed, where a side trail (a dotted line on my trail map) leads over to the Lake/Tower Loop.

Wendy and I were surprised at how muddy and wet the trail was; we hadn’t experienced this much moisture over in Bartlesville. Thankfully that meant that when we clambered down into a gully between this side trail and the main lake loop trail, we found a frozen side stream. There was a nice frozen puddle below some lovely icicles.

Farther upstream there were layers of icicles clinging to the bluff, and Wendy posed amidst this winter wonderland to provide scale. At the head of the gully I shot a panorama of the icy bluff, frozen waterfall, and its pool from beneath a large overhang.

Wendy had fun ducking behind an icicle curtain, and plucked an ice sword for herself.

Then we hiked past the park office to the campground for a pit stop at the bath house that is kept open through the winter. Ascending the hillside on the lake trail, we passed the CCC observation tower [2011 photo] and climbed past the old amphitheater [2009 photo] to the remains of the CCC camp. Recently I found some great photos of the camp online at Kyle Thoreson’s Crosstimber Naturalist website. That told me the old stone chimney at the camp [2011 photo] was once on the north wall of the officer’s quarters, as shown in a nice schematic and a historical photo. The display board at the camp site, which has been blank for years, ought to be refitted with blow-ups of these photos and diagrams and protective transparent covers.

Wendy got a nice shot of a fractured smoking mushroom along the trail. When we reached Lake Lookout, she spotted a frozen sheet of water flowing down a rock slab. She clambered down to search for more icicles and found them, snapping a photo of me atop the water feature.

We took the side trail down to the dam and visited the spillway, but there was too much flow from the lake for icicle formations. We walked along the Lake Lookout access road to complete our three mile hike at the old pump house. Wendy and I are both grateful to have the trails of Osage Hills only 30 minutes west of home, and the following weekend would find us journeying an hour north to revisit the trails at Elk City Lake up in Kansas.

Slideshow | Photo Mosaic

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Told Tales, Part 1: De Profundis

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Granger Meador

A tradition Wendy and I have followed when we are on the road, particularly at Christmastime, is reading short stories to each other. It all began a few years ago with me reading to her the final paragraphs of Oscar Wilde‘s De Profundis, even though it is actually not at all a short story.

De Profundis (From the Depths)

In 1897 Oscar Wilde was completing the final months of a two-year imprisonment for homosexual acts. He composed a 50,000 word letter to his dissolute lover, an epistle which may never have been delivered. It was partially published in 1905 but not completely and correctly published until 1962. Max Nelson in The Paris Review describes the piece as, “…petulant, vindictive, bathetic, indulgent, excessive, florid, massively arrogant, self-pitying, repetitive, showy, sentimental, and shrill, particularly in its first half…It’s also one of the glories of English prose.”

The title refers to the penitential Psalm 130, which begins with, “From the depths, I have cried out to you, O Lord” or “De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine” in the traditional Latin translation. The final part of the letter is the most touching, in which Wilde longs for nature after spending two years in harsh conditions, including months of hard labor. A fall he suffered in the jail chapel, caused by illness and hunger, had ruptured his ear drum, an injury that would contribute to his death three years after his release, at age 46.

I have a strange longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the sea, to me no less of a mother than the Earth. It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men.

We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is of the sun and deals directly with things. I feel sure that in elemental forces there is purification, and I want to go back to them and live in their presence.

I strongly identify with Oscar’s longing to escape into Nature. I wear too many hats at work, and my varied responsibilities tax and sometimes overwhelm me. Day hiking is my escape, allowing me to shift my focus from the endless to-do list at work to the serenity and beauty of the natural world. Oscar’s suffering far exceeds my own, however, and the final paragraph of De Profundis shatters me:

All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

Sharing that profound prose triggered a series of shared stories between Wendy and me, with Wendy eventually responding by reading to me “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery O’Connor, which will be the subject of the next installment of this series of posts on our Told Tales.