So This Is Washington

The hayseed humor may have dated, but the time capsule remains. Check out the first 10 minutes in the Jot 'em Down general store. They'll tell you a lot about wartime restrictions and rationing and the kind of small town life that used to be the backbone of the nation. No malls or Walmarts then. Daily business was conducted on a personal level with friends and neighbors, and when a boy got drafted, the board answered to the parents. Lum and Abner amount to humorous versions of that inoffensive small town personality so familiar then to so many.

Sending the pair to Washington suggests two important signs of the time. First, that the high-powered Brain Trust and Dollar-a-Year men of the Roosevelt administration still needed common-sense guidance from small town America. The big boys may have smarts, but do they have the necessary sense to go with it. That was supposed to be the monopoly of Main Street America and I'm sure the point resonated with audiences of the time. The second point was that the war effort required citizen cooperation with a newly strengthened and centralized federal government. To the localism of rural regions, Washington was a distant and not very important factor in their lives. Thus, mobilizing small towns required some re- orientation. That's really why the pair is shown visiting the national monuments (poorly done process shots). The first point may have faded over time, but the second certainly hasn't.

The movie itself is a cheaply made independent production at a time when the public hardly cared as long as the horrors of war could be escaped for a while. I still get a chuckle out of hayseed Abner playing the jive talking hep-cat after a disorienting hit on the head. Yes, the film is now little more than a strange and distant oddity. But for those wanting some insight into a rural America of yesteryear and changing relations with the nation's capital, this is a 60-minute opportunity.