Daisy Mae Rosamond

In looking at my Rosamond kinfolk’s names, and the list of books my grandfather, the humorist, authored, I realized I was beholding Al Capp’s Hillbilly people – the Real McCoys. Was Royal aware of the Lil Abner comic strip that was syndicated in newspapers all over America? Then it dawned on me, Rena Christiansen was a real Daisy Mae, and Moonbeam McSwine, driving out from Grand Island Nebraska with her twenty six year old boyfriend to Los Angeles, perhaps to get discovered, or, become a model.

I then went looking for the description of Ravola of Thunder Mountain in Royal’s book dedicated to his second born daughter, Bertha Mae Rosamond

“Yes, she would make a great actress, But we must not think of spoiling her with sham. How sweet she is in just being her, her American Frontier self, let me say. Of the wild flowers I’d call her India…