What happens
Lum Edwards buys an adding machine for the Pine Ridge store, and Abner Peabody refuses to work alongside it, complaining that it gives him the creeps. Lum demonstrates the machine's speed and accuracy against Abner's own mental arithmetic, and Abner stalks off in a sulk. Customer Cedric Weehunt arrives to buy pencils and reveals he has gone back to school to take arithmetic from the new teacher, prompting Lum to offer to check his homework with the machine. Lum's Pine Ridge store and the Lum and Abner radio series are the setting, first broadcast on October 7, 1941 on NBC, Mutual, CBS and ABC, with Chester Lauck, Norris Goff and Lurene Tuttle in the lead roles.
The general store in Pine Ridge
Characters: Lum Edwards, Abner Peabody, Cedric Weehunt
Listen for: Abner's reluctance to trust the new adding machine, and Cedric's comical reason for returning to school
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.