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JOT 'EM DOWN,
TEXAS
AKA Bagley, Mohegan, or Muddig PrairieDelta County, East Texas
9 miles W of Cooper on FM 1532
4 miles S of Pecan Gap on FM 904
Population 10 (1990)
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History
in a Pecan Shell
The area was already settled by 1885 when the Bagley School was in
operation. By 1905 the one-teacher school had an enrollment of 46.
The community appeared on highway maps as Bagley in the 30s.
In 1936 Dion McDonald built a store naming his business the "Jot 'Em
Down Gin Corporation" after a fictional business on the Lum and Abner
Radio Program.
The state highway department (in a rare display of humor) added the
name to their official maps. During the school consolidations of the
40s and 50s, Bagley school merged with the Pecan Gap schools. The
community was still shown on TXDoT's detailed county map in 2001.
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Anyone who
listened to the radio in the l930s and 1940s remembers Lum and
Abner, the mythical storekeepers invented by Chet Lauck and Norris
Goff.
From their Jot 'Em Down Store in Pine Ridge, Arkansas, Lum and Abner
evolved into one of the nation's most popular radio series.
But if you ask old timers in Delta County, Texas, they'll tell you
with pride that they remember when the Jot 'Em Down Store was in East
Texas.... more |
Jot 'em
Down, Texas Forum
I was reading your
story about Jot 'Em Down, Texas. I thought you would like to know
that the radio program was called "Lum and Abner" instead of the other
way around. The characters were Lum Ed'ards as he called himself and
Abner Peabody. I used a voice on radio inspired by Abner. Many other
Disk Jockeys did too. Our whole family listened to the show every
day. The program was second only to "Amos 'N Andy". People told me
that if your radio happened to go dead all you had to do was sit on
your front porch and you could hear the program all up and down the
block. We couldn't do that in Spunky
Flat. Our nearest neighbor was a quarter mile away and nobody
else had a radio anyway. - George Lester, May 02, 2005
Anyone wishing to share history or photos of Jot 'em Down, Texas,
please contact
us.
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