Jot 'Em Down, Texas, Delta County. (original) (raw)
Jot 'Em Down
by Bob Bowman
Anyone who listened to the radio in the 1930s 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.
Also known as Mohegan, Muddig Prairie and Bagley, Jot 'Em Down was on the James H. Larabee Survey, which was occupied by 1885 when the Bagley school opened.
In 1937, when Lela McDonnold, the wife of pioneer farmer Pleasant T. McDonnold, had a heart attack, the doctor said it was the result of doing the laundry by hand for her eight children down through the years.
One of her sons, blind Dion McDonnold, decided that he would build a washateria and a country store on his property to make it easier for women in the community to do the laundry and, hopefully, extend their lives.
Dion and a brother, Doug, who lived in nearby Pecan Gap, called a meeting of the people in the community to see if they would support a washateria. The prospect of no longer having to fill a wash pot in the yard, boil out clothes, rinse them in several tubs of fresh water, and then wring them out by hand was understandably enthusiastic.
When Doug and Dion asked for suggestions for the store's name, someone suggested "the Jot 'Em Down store," which was the name of Lum and Abner's radio establishment. "And there," said a kibitzer, pointing to Doug and Dion, "are our Lum and Abner."
The McDonnolds had a large pond built to hold water for the washateria, terraced the land so it would funnel rain water to the pond, and started construction of a combination store and laundry. Unfortunately, Lela died before its completion.
The Jot 'Em Down Store was an immediate success. Customers came from early in the morning until late at night. Dion had to set up a lunch counter to accommodate customers.
When the Texas Highway Department started looking for the town's name to put on maps, officials used Jot 'Em Down, and the name stuck.
When Jot 'Em Down's farmers starting talking about a cotton gin since the pond built by the McDonnolds could furnish sufficient water for the gin's needs, the Jot 'Em Down Cooperative Gin Association was born.
During World War II, Jot 'Em Down began to change with other East Texas communities. Most of the community's men marched off to war and its women moved to towns like Dallas and Fort Worth to find jobs in defense industries.
And when rural electrification came along and home washing machines and dryers became readily available, there was no longer a need for the Jot 'Em Down Washateria. The store also found it could not compete with larger grocery stores in neighboring towns like Cooper and farmers carried their cotton to larger towns to be ginned.
Today, there is little left of old Jot 'Em Down on the wide-open blackland praiaries in far western Delta County. The town's highway signs are stolen as quickly as they are placed on the roadside.
The old radio series, The Lum and Abner Show, disappeared from the radio airwaves decades ago. Chet Lauck and Norris Goff are also gone, but there is still a Jot 'Em Store and Lum and Abner Museum at Pine Ridge, a dozen or so miles east of Mena, Arkansas.
October 1, 2006 Column