The Lum & Abner Music & Arts Festival

Mena’s signature event, the Annual Lum & Abner Music & Arts Festival is the June 6th & 7th, at Janssen Park, in Mena, Arkansas. This event is presented by the Mena Advertising & Promotion Commission and live entertainment is a huge part of the event, as it runs both days of the festival.

In addition to live entertainment, enjoy wonderful arts and crafts, great food, a beer garden, the awesome Lum & Abner Car, Truck, and Motorcycle Show, Fire Truck Pull, Youth Firefighter Challenge, Kiddie Korner with playground and bounce houses, the Lum & Abner 5K Run/Walk, the Lum & Abner 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament, the RE/MAX Baby Crawlin’ Contest, and more!      

Lum and Abner was an American network radio comedy program created by Chester Lauck and Norris Goff that was aired from 1931 to 1954. Modeled on life in the small town of Waters, Arkansas, near where Lauck and Goff grew up, the show proved immensely popular. In 1936, Waters changed its name to Pine Ridge after the show’s fictional town.

Created by co-stars Chester Lauck (who played Columbus Edwards, albeit he called himself “Lum Eddards”) and Norris Goff (Abner Peabody), Lum and Abner was as low-key as Easy Aces, as cheerfully absurdist as Vic and Sade, and exaggerated The Goldbergs’ ethnic focus by amplifying the protagonists’ regional identities. As co-owners of the Jot ’em Down Store in the fictional town of Pine Ridge, Arkansas, the pair are constantly stumbling upon moneymaking ideas only to find themselves fleeced by nemesis Squire Skimp, before finally finding a way to redeem themselves. Lum and Abner played the hillbilly theme with deceptive cleverness. The hillbillies knew that the slickers would get what was coming to them sooner or later and either didn’t mind or knew more than they let on that the slickers getting theirs was a matter of fortunate circumstance.