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Dale Meador is an author and radio personality in Macon County. Dale is the morning DeeJay on WLCT-FM 102.1 and WEEN-AM 1460.
About Dale Dale Meador was born in 1943 on a farm in Macon County, Tennessee. His first two years of school were at the Highland one room school. Outmoded farming methods and several years of summertime drought forced the family to sell the farm and move to Lafayette. The author is a U.S. Navy veteran, serving in the earlier period of the Viet Nam War. He has worked with advertising agencies and in television and radio. His jobs have included disc jockey, talk show host, sales, and management. Meador is a people person; he has a very quick wit and a great sense of humor. He is a published songwriter and enjoys some success in that area. At the time of writing Along Dusty Roads, Meador was employed by the Southern Belle Riverboat in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as Master of Ceremonies, and as a singer and guitarist with the staff band. Dale Meador and his wife Sandra reside in Lafayette, Tennessee. When he isn’t writing, he teaches guitar, banjo, and mandolin at the local music store.
About Dale's Book Along Dusty Roads is autobiographical fiction. However some of the characters and stories are based on real people and actual events. Some are filtered hearsay and some totally contrived. The fact that the story takes place between the overlap of two eras makes it a story for all ages. Our cousins would visit from the cities and be thrilled with a ride on an open buckboard wagon and amazed how water was toted from a spring and milk was kept cool there. The biggest problem for a youngster was staying clear of snakes, ticks, and chiggers when pickin’ blackberries. To have been a boy in the pre-television era was indeed a wonderful and memorable part of my life. The sorting out and putting the stories on paper was surely a labor of love. I hope your memories are just as lovely.
Excerpts for Dale's Book Four miles west of Red Boiling Springs, and atop a hogback ridge with a grand overlook of the upper Cumberland foothills, was the Pleasant Family Home. A visitor from a flat country once stood on the front porch of the two story clapboard farm house, his gaze slowly panning the surrounding countryside, and surmised The Creator’s plans hadn’t called for enough space to accommodate the extra measure of dust and clay. But with precise design, The Molding Hands had stirred and mixed and lifted the ridges high and fingered the hollows long and deep and winding. And the Highland Rim country appealing with defined seasons and diverse colors; and with temperate winds blowing the challenge to the inherent nature of able men and women to come and subdue the earth. The surmising visitor saw the hill country as jostled and cramped and closing in; but his host, a casual fellow, reckoned The Almighty had put it together just about right. By the Pleasant House a dirt road swayed and sloped a little upgrade; and the brown tracks against green roadside grasses were easy to follow with eye or wheel. Iron rimmed wheels of farm wagons and hard rubber tires of automobiles had milled the tracks to a dusty powder; the fine dust sifted pleasurably between children's toes. Weeds and grasses scattered between the rutted tracks were hardly disturbed at all by hoof and wheel. Courteous but wary, long stemmed weeds and hardy bunch grasses politely bowed and waved and nodded dusty heads to the straddling vehicles and to the summer breezes. When rainbows chased tattered storm clouds, rivulets of water pooled in the low sways and deep ruts of the road. Hence the stern admonitions from Sir Muddy Pool to Miss Shiny Slipper and Mr. Dry Shoe were crystal clear: "Tread lightly! Tarry not for treachery abides here!" But to Skipping Barefoot there was a standing invitation: "Come, linger, roll up thy trousers. Step into the water and feel the mud ooze between wriggling toes. But careful child lest thy foot slips and thy fall headlong into the deep abyss and raise the ire of yonder laundering mother and cause mayhaps a delaying of tomorrow’s visit." A quarter mile distant from the Pleasant House, the dirt road intersected a county road that rose up from the adjacent deep hollows and crossed the hogback ridge. The road juncture formed a giant letter T; and with a turn of either east or west, the traveler was soon winding his way down a long steep grade. ****** The newspaper headlines screamed; the radio broadcasts boomed dramatically, and the subdued conversations between adults all spoke of the same thing: "THE BIG BOMB!" It had only been a short time since Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Doolittle, and Hiroshima. Now it’s Korea. We have the bomb; they have the bomb, and everyday the bombs get larger and more powerful! "Awesome destruction!" warned the concerned voice on the radio. Country folk were building storm cellars; or so they said. Tornadoes can be devastating; the widely disguised excuse offered up by those going down. Preachers and religious elders took advantage of the impending doom. Church Revivals and Brush Arbor meetings were suddenly filled to capacity with the rush of rebirth going on around the country. Lou, Bill, and Scott Pleasant, caught up in the religious wave, made their private peace with the Lord and came away enlightened. Shortly thereafter a meditative Scott asked Lou. "Do you believe that God is everywhere?" She replied. "I do!" Parents oftentimes were complicated with their grownup answers, but Scott knew he could get an understandable explanation from his big sister with the brown merry eyes. Softly Lou went on. "Let’s figure it out. God’s Spirit is life. An’ the earth is a livin’ thing too. When a person plants a seed the earth makes it come alive. When you walk on the ground, could be you’re touchin’ God’s Face. I’ve heard it said ‘that’s why it feels so good to go barefoot.’ So don’t stomp the ground in anger. In biology class we looked at a smear of just plain ol’ dirt under a microscope; it was teemin’ with tiny life. An’ the Bible says: ‘An’ the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, an’ breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; an’ man became a livin’ soul.’" Lou’s merry eyes were deep but her voice remained soft. "It would be impossible for a person to live without water an’ air an’ soil." Scott’s eyes wandered along the ground and then settled thoughtfully on the horizon. Lou continued. "Remember when Uncle Mark died? Uncle Mark’s body was still here but his spirit had gone away; it had returned to the Creator who had placed it there. But the good earth is alive, an’ we’re alive! Feel the wind! See the flowers! Just listen to the birds sing! God is here! God is everywhere! God is the Love I feel for you!" Lou, becoming animated with her explanation, scooped up her little brother and gave him a big hug. When she turned him loose her merry eyes were glistening. She said. "We’ll talk again sometime." Scott muffled, "I’d like that." He turned away; his eyes were glistening too.
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