March 10, 2012 Ukiah Brew­ing Com­pany, Ukiah, Cal­i­for­nia
Moon­al­ice poster by Wendy Wright

Accord­ing Moon­al­ice leg­end, tonight’s poster by Wendy Wright fea­tures one of the great matri­archs from these parts, Ukiah Moon­al­ice. Ukiah led the tribe for a gen­er­a­tion, but her great­est con­tri­bu­tion was the inven­tion of crop dust­ing. In true Moon­al­ice tra­di­tion, Ukiah put her own twist on it. She didn’t believe in pes­ti­cide, but she believed in keep­ing her farm hands happy. Each day at 4:20, she took to the air and dropped doo­bies to the peo­ple work­ing in the fields. As you can imag­ine, this was a great advance in labor rela­tions. Then one of the work­ers pointed out that it’s always 4:20 some­where. Ukiah had to scram­ble to keep her biplane in the air, but she kept the field hands fully sup­plied 24x7.

Accord­ing to Moon­al­ice leg­end, artist Wendy Wright believes the poster depicts Frances Moon­al­ice, she was a famous W.A.S.P pilot back in WWII. She was a real ace. After she fin­ished the ser­vice, she bought her own bi-plane. She became a aer­o­batic stunt pilot and par­tic­i­pated in air show car­ni­vals. She would steal the show with her tricks and maneu­vers and become one of the most influ­en­tial women pilots of her time.

M438