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DRAWLS AS SLOW AS THEIR NATIVE MULES-HUMOR AS INTOXICATING AS THEIR NATIVE BREW— MEET CHESTER LAUCK AND NORRIS GOFF!
that, he took a job in the bank at Mena so he wouldn't be gone from home so much. But he still played in theatricals with Goff, when Norris wasn't persuading his girl to become engaged, an accomplishment of which he was boasting soon after Chet married.
Then came the chance to broadcast over station KTHS, at Hot Springs. Chet and Norris were allotted thirty minutes of the hour and a half given to the Lion's Club by the station manager. Automatically they knew what their act would be — not their blackface comedy, but an unrehearsed take-off of Arkansas hill people. The names Lum and Abner came naturally. They broadcast without a script. mimicing the sheriffs, the store keepers, and the farmers with whom they had done business. Afterwards the station manager rushed up with a contract for nine weeks or, more literally, wired them the offer a few days later.
With their wives and Chet's daughter they left after those nine weeks for Chicago, bidding farewell to banks and groceries, but taking a rain check on their jobs until they found out how the big city was going to treat them. Having managed an appointment with the Quaker Oats officials, they got their first sponsored series after a single week.
For four years, through changes of sponsors, towns, homes, and incomes, Chet and Norris have stuck together, playing golf and bridge, going to shows and showing off their children. Yet they remain the Mena boys who made good. Chet's daughters — Shirley May, seven, and Nancy, three — have learned all the Arkansas speech their mother will let, Chet teach them. Norris' son, Gary, now aged two, already has developed a twang in his shouts for food.
"You know," Norris explained, "some of our listeners think we exaggerate our characters, but the truth is those characters can't be exaggerated. Chet here, who's a Justice of the Peace as Lum Edwards. (Continued on page 69)
The two families at home — top, Mr. and Mrs. Goff with two-year-old Gary who hated to pose for the picture. Bottom, Mr. and Mrs. Lauck, with Shirley, aged seven, and Nancy, just three.