The school plays an important role in the community. Lum is usually president of the school board and is generally in love with the female teachers. Cedric returns as a student year after year, at least for a few weeks, to attempt to make progress through the Third Reader. Here are a few tidbits about the Pine Ridge School:
- Colors: Pink & Green
- Mascot: Possums
- Pine Ridge School House from Lum & Abner’s 1937 Family Almanac
- Things for Young Folks by Evalina Schultz from Lum & Abner’s 1936 Family Almanac and Helpful Hints
Onward, Pine Ridge! Onward, Pine Ridge!
Pine Ridge School Song
Hail to the pink and green!
We will fight and fight and fight!
Oh, hail to the pink and green!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
School Teachers at Various Times
- Miss Mary Evalena Schultz
- Miss Katherine Colvert
- Professor Webster (once boarded with Peabodys)
- Professor Harrison
- Miss Fredericks
- Professor Marion Sloane
- Miss Emaline Platt
Cedric Describes the School
Episode from September 15, 1943. Listen online.
Mary: What’s the Pine Ridge School like? Is is nice?
Abner: Why, sure, it’s a nice place. I never went to it myself, of course, but Cedric here has. Facts is, Cedric went there for quite awhile.
Mary: Did you, Cedric?
Cedric: Yes, ma’am.
Mary: You did? Tell me about it.
Abner: Yeah, go ahead, Cedric. Tell her all about the school.
Cedric: Oh, ain’t much hardly to tell. Hardly. Much. Well, it’s a nice place. It’s over in that di-rection. Over yonder, I think.
Mary: Well, I know that. But I mean, what did you do there? How do you act?
Cedric: Well, uh… you get learned stuff there, I know. And mark on the blackboard. Draw pictures on it. I can’t re-collect what it is you learn there, right now. Something, I think.
Mary: Well, what kind of dresses do they wear mostly?
Cedric: I don’t know. I just always wore overhalls.
Abner: Well, she don’t mean you, Cedric. She means the little girls.
Cedric: What girls?
Abner: The girls that’s goin’ to school.
Cedric: Oh. What about ’em?
Abner: What kind of dresses do they wear mostly?
Cedric: I don’t know. Reg’lar girls dresses, I reckon.
Abner: Does that answer your question, Sis?
Mary: Well, not hardly. Cedric, which is the best grade to be in? The seventh or the eighth?
Cedric: Ma’am?
Mary: Which did you like best? The seventh or the eighth?
Cedric: Seventh or eighth reader, you mean? I never knowed they went that high.
Mary: Which is best, Cedric?
Cedric: Miss Mary, ain’t they some questions you want to know about the third reader? I can answer them good.
Abner: Yeah. Ya see, Sis, Cedric never got past the third reader.
Mary: You mean you never graduated, Cedric?
Cedric: No, ma’am. I don’t think I did. ‘Cept into the third reader. Graduated into that from the second reader.
Abner: Well, that ain’t ‘xactly graduating, though, Cedric.
Cedric: Well, I done it, though. And I must’ve graduated from the first reader into the second. Or second into… no, first into the second. That’s the way I went.
Abner: Yeah, that’s right, Cedric.
Cedric: I don’t re-collect it, though. I might’ve just skipped the first reader, I don’t know.
Abner: No, you was in it, Cedric. The reason you don’t re-collect it is ’cause you was in it such a short time.
Cedric: Was I just in there a short time?
Abner: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you made it quicker’n Charlie Warren did, I b’lieve. You was just in there two and a half years.
Cedric: Well, good for me!
Mary: Gee, Cedric, you oughta go back to school and graduate.
Cedric: I’m pretty smart, ain’t I?
Mary: Yeah. But you won’t ever get in to college if you don’t go back to school. will he, Uncle Abner?
Abner: Well, no, Sis, but I’m feared Cedric ain’t ‘xactly cut out for school and book learnin’ and all that. He sorta takes after his pa. See, he tried goin’ back to school but it just didn’t work out good. Well, for one thing, there ain’t no desks big enough for him.
Cedric: That’s the reason I had to give up school. The chairs got too little for me.
Abner: You mean you got too big for them.
Cedric: Well, somethin’ happened. When I went back to school one summer I couldn’t fit in ’em. Couldn’t get my knees under ’em. Don’t fit no more. I know that. Then, of course, I had that other problem.
Mary: What other problem, Cedric?
Cedric: Oh, ever’ year the young’uns all passed into the fourth reader and I had to get ‘quainted with a new batch of young’uns the next year. Happened ever’ time.
Mary: Well, just the same, Cedric, you oughta go back to school.
