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1-13 of 13
- Scattergood meets the new owner of the local newspaper, Dunker Gillson. One of Gillson's first tasks is to interview the wealthy but reclusive Quentin sisters, Lydia and Cynthia, who have stayed in their old musty house for years. The somewhat sinister Mrs. Grimes, the sisters' housekeeper, refuses to let Gillson talk to the sisters. Later, when the sisters' beloved cat takes ill, Mrs. Grimes insists on driving them to town in their horse-and-buggy outfit. An accident occurs on the way to town and the sisters are killed. At the reading of the will, everyone is surprised and shocked at the sisters' stipulations regarding their fortune.
- Small-town store owner Scattergood Baines helps a runaway boy find his father, who has escaped after being unjustly imprisoned, and a young chemist who is trying to invent a color television but is being opposed by his girlfriend's father, who wants the girl to marry a pharmacist like himself instead of some crazy inventor.
- While stranded in the small town of Pine Ridge, M. A. Parker, who purports to be an oil tycoon, visits the general store owned by Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody, and offers them $20,000 in cash for their property. Though Parker stirs the town's interest by using a fake divining rod to prove that there is oil in Pine Ridge, Lum believes that Parker is trying to underbid them, and sends a warning to Pine Ridge land owners not to sell to him. Among those taking heed of Lum's warning is Abigail, who has been in love with Lum for many years and wants to marry him. Leading the effort to exploit the town's supposed oil reserves, Lum organizes the Pine Ridge Oil and Development Co. and holds a town meeting to persuade the residents to begin drilling the oil themselves. Lum succeeds in getting the townspeople to pool their property and mortgage it for money to build the first oil well, and a ceremony is held to commemorate its opening. Attired in raincoats to guard against spewing oil, the entire town anxiously awaits the explosion that promises to bring the oil gush. The explosion, however, results in nothing more than disappointment, as it is quickly determined that there is no oil to be found below the surface. The development company digs deeper and deeper for oil, and eventually goes broke. Hoping to get an investment from the man who started the Pine Ridge oil craze, Lum and Abner go to Chicago to meet with Parker. At Parker's office, Jimmy Benton, an employee of Parker's chief competitor, overhears Lum and Abner discuss the oil at Park Ridge. Intent on beating Parker to the oil boom, Jimmy rushes to get in on the Park Ridge deal. Jimmy makes the Pine Ridge storekeepers a lucrative offer for their land, but his offer is bettered by Mr. Clarke, Parker's partner, who is not aware that the Park Ridge oil boom is a hoax. Returning to Park Ridge with more money than the town invested in the oil scheme, Lum and Abner pay back the residents, and Parker is left holding the deed to worthless land.
- Young Scattergood Baines arrives in the small New England town of Coldriver. Through some shrewd business maneuvering, he manages to open up a hardware store. Twenty years later he has become a prosperous and respected member of the community, a member of the local school board and the owner of a railroad that transports timber to the local sawmill. Problems begin to arise, however, when a young schoolteacher he has hired turns out to be not quite what he expected, and the mill owners pressure Scattergood to sell them his railroad, with the idea of raising the transportation fees paid to them by the local loggers.
- Scattergood Baines, Coldriver's most popular citizen, neighborly counselor and sly old fox, entices a Broadway producer to Coldriver to see the gay musical extravaganza Baines is staging for the benefit of the U.S.O. He is also promoting the singing career of his latest local protégé, Betty Palmer. There are a few problems but the Sage of Coldriver manages to keep pulling the right strings.
- Scattergood finds out that his neighbor, Elly Drew, is going to sell her home to support her son David, an aspiring playwright who is in New York City trying to get his play produced. Scattergood decides to loan Elly the money she needs and then travel to New York to see how David is doing. He finds out that things aren't quite as rosy as David has been telling his mother.
- Squire Skimp has a new plan to swindle the people of Pine Ridge. However, Lum has something more important on his mind. He has to tell a young engaged couple on the verge of breaking up the story of how the Jot 'em Down store first started (through flashbacks). Based on characters from the popular "Lum and Abner" radio program of the time.
- When Martin Knox, a friend of Scattergood's who owns a horse-breeding farm, is killed in a harness race Scattergood tells Martin's son Dan that he will send him to college if he forgets about taking over his father's business, which was heavily mortgaged and has been put up for auction after Knox's death. The boy reluctantly agrees, but when he discovers that his favorite horse Starlight is sick, he decides to bring the animal back to health and then enter him in the Governor's Race, whose $5000 prize would enable Dan to pay off his father's mortgage and keep the business in the family.
