Probably some of you are not a bit interested in learning a thing more than you already know about this old time radio show. So, this is for those of us who are die-hard "Lum and Abner" fans, and also for the ones who are only mildly interested!

"Lum and Abner" was a radio show that aired from 1931 to 1953. It was a daily comedy serial featuring Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody, (played by Chet Lauck and Norris Goff) partners who owned a general store in the little town of Pine Ridge, Arkansas. That much you know!

What you may not know is how the show started. Lauck and Goff had grown up together. (Chet/Lum was 9 and Tuffy/Abner was 5 when they met.) When they were in elementary school, they used to sit around the fire and pretend they were chewing tobacco and spitting, and they would talk in different dialects, just for fun.

As young men in the 1920s they were living and working in Mena, Arkansas. Lauck worked at a bank. Goff worked for his father who owned a grocery wholesale business. His job was to travel around to all the little country stores in the area to take orders for their merchandise. In the little town of Waters, the country store was owned by a man named Dick Huddleston. A lot of the characters for their future radio show were based on real people who lived around Waters.

About that time Lauck and Goff put on a "black-face" skit for the local Lions Club. As a result of that, they were invited to put on their act for a radio station out of Hot Springs. When they got there, they discovered that there had been two other black-face programs, so they changed theirs to hillbilly right there in the studio. They started talking about Pine Ridge ("Waters" sound too swampy, so they just made up the name "Pine Ridge") and the Jot 'Em Down Store.

Then, of course, they went on to become a nationally-known radio program. Five years after the show started, Dick Huddleston petitioned the US Post Office for permission to change the name of Waters to Pine Ridge-- so now there really is a Pine Ridge, Arkansas! And even a Jot 'Em Down Store! (I've visited there twice.)

Lauck & Goff carried the show mostly by themselves, doing different characters. Occasionally there would be other actors playing guest roles, but the regular characters were played by Lauck & Goff. Chet Lauck played Lum Edwards, Cedric Weehunt & Grandpappy Spears. Norris Goff played Abner Peabody, Squire Skimp, Dick Huddleston, Mousey Gray & Ulysses S. Quincy.

"Lum and Abner" has long been a favorite of many in my family. Early memories of the show date back to 1937 when Grandmother & Grandaddy were newlyweds and did not own a radio. They would walk a mile across the pasture every evening to listen in "on the goings-on in Pine Ridge" at her parents' house. Many years later, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when the younger uncles were teen-agers, one of them was tuning across the radio late one evening and happened across the old hillbilly dialect... "Wait! Stop! That's Lum and Abner!" Granddaddy told him. The uncles had never heard of Lum and Abner before, but after that night they became regular listeners to the series being rebroadcast long after the originals had gone off the air. I was too little then to understand much about the story, other than these two old hillbillies had a store with a screen door that kept slamming. I was twelve in 1978 the summer I got hooked on the series by listening to a handful of tapes that belonged to my uncles.

Today some of us still enjoy visits to Pine Ridge, via audio tape or digital MP3 format. I have also transcribed a few of my favorite episodes for your reading enjoyment. Hope you enjoy this look at a favorite radio program from out of the past.