Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

subsequently rounded the city.
The Family Theater, at 21 Last Chance Gulch, occupied part of a handsome red-brick terrace with
an ornate stone coping, but it suffered somewhat from its position, since it was in the heart of the
city's red-light district and could not have been more inappropriately named. Respectable families
arriving for the evening performance were required to avert their eyes from the colourful ladies
leaning out of the windows of the brothels on each side of the theater, although it was not unknown
for the occasional father to slip out after the show had started and return before the final curtain,
curiously flushed.
Harry Hubbard's duties were to sell tickets during the day, collect them at the door as patrons
arrived, maintain order if necessary during the show and lock up at the end of the evening. Although
his title was resident manager, he chose not to live at the theater and rented a rickety little wooden
house, not much better than a shack, on Henry Street, on the far side of the railroad track. May
hated it and soon found a small apartment on the top floor of a house at 15 Rodney Street, closer to
the theater and in a better part of town.
Travelling road shows, sometimes comprising not much more than a singer, pianist and a
comedian, were the staple fare of the Family Theater. Ron was often allowed to see the show and
he would sit with his mother in the darkened auditorium completely enthralled, no matter what the
act. Years later he would recall sitting in a box at the age of two wearing his father's hat and
applauding with such enthusiasm that the audience began cheering him rather than the cast. He
claimed the players took twelve curtain calls before they realized what was happening.[4]
When the Waterburys paid a visit to Helena, Hub arranged for them to see the show, made sure
they had the best seats in the house and solemnly stood at the door of the theater to collect their
tickets as they filed in. Not long after their return to Kalispell, May heard that her father had slipped
on a banana skin, fallen and broken his arm. She did not worry overmuch at first, even when her
mother wrote to say that the arm had not been set properly and had had to be re-broken. Indeed,
her worries were rather closer to home, for Harry had been told by the owner of the Family Theater
that unless the audiences improved the theater might have to close.
The news from abroad was also giving cause for concern, despite Woodrow Wilson's promise to
keep America out of the war threatening to engulf Europe. On Sunday 2 August 1914, headlines in
the Helena Independent announced that Germany had declared war on Russia and a despatch
from London confirmed: 'The die is cast . . . Europe is to be plunged into a general war.' Closer to
home, rival unions in the copper mines at Butte, only sixty miles from Helena, were also at war.
When the Miners' Union Hall was dynamited, Governor Stewart declared martial law and sent in the
National Guard to keep order.
It was in this turbulent climate that the Family Theater finally closed its doors, for the audiences did
not pick up. Harry Hubbard was once again obliged to look for work, but once again he was lucky -
he was taken on as a book-keeper for the Ives-Smith Coal Company, 'dealers in Original Bear
Creek, Roundup, Acme and Belt Coal', at 41 West Sixth Avenue. May, meanwhile, found a cheaper
apartment for the family on the first floor of a shingled wood-frame house at 1109 Fifth Avenue.
Back in Kalispell, Lafe Waterbury was still having trouble with his arm. He was not the kind of man
to complain about bad luck, but no one could have blamed him had he done so. His arm had to be
set a third time and just when it seemed it was beginning to heal he was thrown to the ground by a
horse he was examining. He was never to regain full strength in that arm and although he was only
fifty years old he knew he would not be able to continue working as a vet, with all the pulling and