I just found this! This fighter was first named after Princess Elizabeth before she became Queen. How ironic is this! This was a hands across the water gesture that was promoted by Sir Ian Easton who flew a Fairey Fulmer.
http://www.mistralwarbirds.com/?page=P51D%20MOONBEAM%20McSWINE
Rena was a big girl at 5ft. 11. She wore cut-offs and a halter-top when we came down from our mountain sometimes covered in camp-dirt. We were both good-looken. We intimidated folks. We didn’t belong. We were homeless rebels. Our ancestors came west in covered wagons. We were great campers. The Nazis hadn’t counted on that. The Ozark Mountain Boys helped return all that European Art Hitler had stolen, to the rightful owners, then, they came home. The only pictures they owned were found in their Bible.
In her letter, Rena told me she and her husband were Yokels. She did not use that word. Those Ozark Veterans didn’t fight for NASCAR and neo-Confederate drunks. They took their version of cultural warfare to the real enemy – of all Americans! If the hadn’t done that, then – there go the artwork of Thomas Hart Benton to rich Herman Goering’s estate.
Jon Presco
History / Previous Identities
1944: Oct – Manufactured at Inglewood, Los Angeles California as serial #44-73656
1945: Mar 29 – Accepted by USAAF, via Newark NJ shipping dock to 8th USAAF depot in Great Britain. Not assigned
1945: July – returned to USAAF depot, Newark NJ
1947: Mar 31 – to TX ANG, 182nd FS, Brooks AFB, San Antonio
1950: Nov 16 – to 136th FG, CONAC, Langley AFB, VA 1950: Dec 26 – reassigned to TAC
1951: May 03 – to CO ANG, 120th FS, Buckley Field, Denver CO
1953: Mar 31 – to MN ANG, 109th FS, St. Paul MN 1956: Dec 10 – storage at McClellan AFB, Sacramento CA
1958: Aug 17 – N5073K, sold surplus at McClellan to Delta A&E Parts Inc of N. Carolina for $1,307.50
1958: Nov – N5073K (Mike Coutches) Hayward CA 1958: Dec – David Lindsay Jr. – Trans Florida Aviation, Sarasota FL
1963: sold, North Carolina 1963: Howard Olsen, Midland TX, racer #1 1963: reworked by Cavalier Aircraft in Florida
1968: Lefty Gardner, Galveston TX 1968: Salvadorena FAS 406 (El Salvador Air Force)
1974: Oct – N32FF Jack Flaherty, Monterey CA, adopted #44-12473
1975: Gordon Plaskett, King City CA. Restored as “Moonbeam McSwine”
1975: N2151D, won Grand Champion Warbird in Fresno CA
1981: Mar – Chris Williams, Ellensburg WA1988: Apr – Vlado Lenoch, LaGrange IL
1997: Reno – finished 5th in Bronze at 362 mph
1999: Reno – finished 1st in Bronze at 369 mph.
2000: Reno – qualified 27th at 298 mph. Flies in the USAF Heritage Flights. Seen regularly at shows around the USA until 2012
2012 : Dec .? sold to Frédéric Akary France
2013 : May registered F-AZXS .? first flight at Avignon south of France. Seen regularly at shows around Europe since June 20
Why called “Moonbeam McSwine” ?
Who is “Moonbeam McSwine” ?
Li’l Abner Yokum: Abner was 6′ 3″ and perpetually 19 “y’ars” old. A naïve, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly, he lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his pint-sized parents. Capp derived the family name “Yokum” as a combination of yokel and hokum. In Capp’s satirical and often complex plots, Abner was a country bumpkin Candide — a paragon of innocence in a sardonically dark and cynical world.[3] Abner typically had no visible means of support, but sometimes earned his livelihood as a “crescent cutter” for the Little Wonder privy company, later changed to “mattress tester” for the Stunned Ox mattress company. During World War II, Abner was “drafted” into becoming the mascot emblem of the Patrol Boat Squadron 29. In one Post World War II storyline Abner became a US Air Force bodyguard of Steve Cantor (a parody of Steve Canyon) against the evil bald female spy Jewell Brynner (a parody of actor Yul Brynner)[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%27l_Abner
Yokel is one of several derogatory terms referring to the stereotype of unsophisticated country people. The term is of uncertain etymology and is only attributed from the early 19th century.[1][2]
In the United States, the term is used to describe someone living in rural areas. Synonyms for yokel include bubba, country bumpkin, hayseed, chawbacon, rube, redneck, hillbilly, and hick.
In the UK, yokels are traditionally depicted as wearing the old West Country/farmhand‘s dress of straw hat and white smock, chewing or sucking a piece of straw and carrying a pitchfork or rake, listening to “Scrumpy and Western” music. Yokels are portrayed as living in rural areas of Britain such as the West Country, East Anglia, the Yorkshire Dales and Wales. British yokels speak with country dialects from various parts of Britain.[3]
Yokels are depicted as straightforward, simple and naive, and easily deceived, failing to see through false pretenses. They are also depicted as talking about bucolic topics like cows, sheep, goats, wheat, alfalfa, fields, crops, tractors, and buxom wenches to the exclusion of all else. Broadly, they are portrayed as unaware of or uninterested in the world outside their own surroundings.
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 Paint brush, and equally as brilliant.
I have described Rena Christian as a Great American Midwest Beauty, the epitome of what America truly is, not a screeching bald eagle, but a beautiful Farm Girl Temptress, that sprout like healthy corn so that Midwest Men may obey God’s first commandment, “Be fruitful and multiply!”
I was fascinated with how Rena grew up, she living with her grandmother apart from her three beautiful sisters who became models. I considered Royal’s four beautiful daughters, and the name Rosamond that can be taken by a man married to a woman named Rose. If Rena had agreed to marry me, she would own the name Irene Rosamond. What was her middle name? The original Daisy Mae had dark chestnut hair.
Rena told me she was tall and knocked kneed, not pretty when she was thirteen, but shwn she turned fourteen, she was – The Death. She suddenly had power over men – of all ages. She noticed married men were taking long peeks at her especially when she went swimming in the Platt River. Rena nurtured this power,and un;eashed it upon me as she came gliding out of that darkened doorway at three A.M. in the morning, she stranded, homeless, and afraid, thus she sought the upper hand. And it hit me like a blast of cosmic fire, she looking down on me like a superior being – that could not be from this world – for I never beheld such a stunning creature. I had to look away, for just a second, just to compose myself, just to find, me. Her beauty was that overpowering.
Four days later, I was exhausted by this Beauty. And thus by a waterfall on Mount Tamalpias, I surrender.
“I give up!”
Safely on hither side, I tell Rena she is my Muse. I now wonder if she was my granfather’s Muse – as well as my sister’s. The Great American Muse?
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011
Beulah Loufloye Rosamond was born 12 Jun 1919 in Lurton, Arkansas, and died 15 Jan 1996 in Leach, Oklahoma.
Edna Alienne Rosamond was born 21 May 1922 in Lurton, Arkansas, and died May 1980 in Lawndale, California.
Wynona Maxine Rosamond was born 14 Oct 1927 in Lurton, Arkansas, and died 5 Aug 1997 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
Shirley Rosamond.
Edward Madison Jr. Rosamond.
Gladys Mae Rosamond.
Exert from Ravola of Thunder Mountain by Royal Reuben Rosamond.
I met her in Eminence this morning. I never beheld another such being. She is like the beautiful notes of an organ with all the stops subdued. You see by this that the very implication of her is wonderful. She’ll stand fully six feet tall in her bare heels and this means that, in high heals, she can pick up a shingle and mend leak in most Ozark cabins. She can look down on most men. Her figure if that of a model, rivaling even the dreams, I vow, of the artists of ancient Greece. Her perfect body needs no no adornment in exquisite , clinging garments. Her features have class; her complexion is pink and healthful, her air of grandeur is almost appalling, cowing most men with her sheer superiority. Her eyes large and luminous, deep chestnut, are thrilling, but not come hither. Those great and beautiful orbs seem seem to be a lover’s moon rising over the horizon of her lower lashes. Yes she is temptation, her generous lips and full mouth the last straw to break a mans resistance, She’s exotic and provocative in the same wondrous breath, made but for the arms of a man, made to love and be loved. Have I describe her?
I would add a marked timidity, that gleam of wildness to be found in the does demure eyes” suggested teacher.
Yes, I notice her inward struggle to be natural and unafraid – not bashful, to speak plainly?.
Which hid the air, I take it, of knowing how really superior she is.
“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 Paint brush, and equally as brilliant. But, enough. Please let me aloud this, A Few Come Our Alive”
She was tall, dark, half developed, beautiful as a poet’s dream, her rope of hair hanging to her waist. We could tell them what a raving beauty she was due to become.. Shell stand nearly six foot tall.”
Daisy Mae (née Scragg) Yokum: Beautiful Daisy Mae was hopelessly in love with Dogpatch’s most prominent resident throughout the entire 43-year run of Al Capp’s comic strip. During most of the epic, the impossibly dense Abner exhibited little romantic interest in her voluptuous charms, (much of it visible daily thanks to her famous polka-dot peasant blouse and cropped skirt). [3] In 1952, Abner reluctantly proposed to Daisy to emulate the engagement of his comic strip “ideel,” Fearless Fosdick. Fosdick’s own wedding to longtime fiancée Prudence Pimpleton turned out to be a dream—but Abner and Daisy’s ceremony, performed by Marryin’ Sam, was permanent. Once married, Abner became relatively domesticated. Like Mammy Yokum and the other “wimmenfolk” in Dogpatch, Daisy Mae did all the work, domestic and otherwise—while the useless menfolk generally did nothing whatsoever.
Li’l Abner is a satirical American comic strip that appeared in many newspapers in the United States, Canada and Europe, featuring a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Written and drawn by Al Capp (1909–1979), the strip ran for 43 years, from August 13, 1934 through November 13, 1977. It was distributed by United Feature Syndicate. Read daily by scores of millions of people,[1] the strip’s characters and humor had a powerful cultural impact.
Rosamond Press 