Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

war notwithstanding. He had been selected for training as an Assistant Paymaster and if he made
the grade, he proudly explained in a letter to May, it would mean that he would become an officer.
On 13 October 1918 Harry Ross Hubbard was honorably discharged from enlisted service in the
US Navy Reserve Force and the following day he was appointed Assistant Paymaster with the rank
of Ensign. He was thirty-two years old, positively geriatric for an Ensign - but it was one of the
proudest moments of his life.
Eleven days later, the front pages of the Helena Independent was dominated by a single word in
letters three inches high: PEACE. Underneath, the sub-heading declared, 'Cowardly Kaiser and Son
Flee to Holland.' The terms of surrender were to be so severe, the newspaper innocently reported,
that Germany would forever 'be absolutely deprived from further military power of action on land and
sea and in the air'.
Unlike most wives whose husbands had gone to war, May knew that the Armistice did not mean
that Hub would be coming home; he had already told her that he intended to make a career in the
Navy. It was a decision she could not sensibly oppose, for she was obliged to admit that he had
been incapable of making progress in his varied civilian jobs and he was clearly happier in the
Navy. Furthermore, his position with the Capital City Coal Company was far from secure, for she
knew that her father was worried about the business - they were having difficulty finding sufficient
supplies of coal from Roundup and a third coal company had opened up in town, increasing
competition. The Waterbury girls were helping with the company's cash flow problems by knocking
on doors round and about Fifth Avenue to collect payment for overdue bills.
Lafe Waterbury never allowed his business worries to cast a shadow over his family life and for the
children, Ron included, weeks and months passed with not much to fret about other than whether
or not the taffy [toffee] would set. 'Taffy-pulls' were a regular ritual in the Waterbury household: a coat
hanger was kept permanently on the back of the door in the basement to loop the sugar and water
mix and stretch it repeatedly, filling the taffy with air bubbles so that it would snap satisfactorily
when it was set. Liberty Bill would always sit and watch the proceedings with saliva dripping from
his jaws. Once he grabbed a mouthful when the taffy looped too close to the floor and disappeared
under a bush ill the garden for hours while he tried to suck it out of his teeth.
One day Marnie and June were in the basement pulling taffy with Ron when they heard their father
laughing out loud in the front room. They ran upstairs to see what was going on and found him
standing at the window, both hands clutched to his quivering midriff, tears streaming down his
cheeks. Outside, a young lady, in a tight hobble skirt - the very latest fashion in Helena - was
attempting to step down from the wooden sidewalk to cross the road. To her acute
embarrassment, she was discovering that while it was feasible to totter along a level surface, it
was almost impossible to negotiate a step of more than a few inches without hoisting her skirt to a
level well beyond the bounds of decorum, or jumping with both feet together. Eventually, shuffling to
the edge of the sidewalk, she managed to slide first one foot down, then, with a precarious swivel,
the other. By this time Lafe was forced to sit down, for he could no longer stand, and the entire
family had gathered at the window.
Laughter was an omnipresent feature of life in 'the old brick'. When Toilie brought home a bottle of
wine and gave her mother a glass, the unaccustomed alcohol thickened her tongue and the more
she struggled with ever more recalcitrant syllables, the more her daughters howled. Then there
was the time when Lafe leaned back in his swivel chair, overbalanced, fell under a shelf piled with
magazines and hit his head as he tried to get up - no one would ever forget that. On the other hand
almost the worst incident any of the children could remember was the day when their mother's pet
canary escaped through an open window into the snow and never returned. Ida had loved that