Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

name originates from the large expensive gold nuggets which the prospectors mined in previous
years on the main street of Helena.'
Although Ellen Galusha rather upstaged her follow jokes editor by winning first place in the district
finals of the Extemporaneous Speaking Contest, Ron felt he kept his end up by having one of his
essays selected to represent Helena High in the State Essay Contest. He had also written a short
play which was performed by the junior branch of the Shriners and very well received.
After school on 2 December, Ron and a group of his friends rushed round to the showrooms of
Capital Ford hoping to see the sleek new Model A. Fords which were said to have arrived in town
that day. They found a crowd of around four thousand people jamming the street outside the Ford
agency, all with the same idea. Replacement for the beloved Model T., the Model A. was not only a
completely new design but was also available in a number of different colours, a development
which caused Ron and his friends to gasp with amazement. Later, over sodas at the Weiss Café
on North Main Street, the boys hotly debated which of the models - roadster, sports coupé or sedan
- was preferable and which colour each of them would be purchasing as soon as they had some
money.
That winter was the worst in living memory for the people of Helena. On 8 December, Ron woke to
find the overnight temperature had dropped fifty-eight degrees [Fahrenheit] to thirty-five below zero,
one of the coldest on record. Outside, a biting blizzard swept down from the mountains, obliterating
the town and the surrounding country.
Morning editions of the Helena Independent were full of terrible stories of families marooned and
frozen to death, school buses lost in the storm and entire herds of cattle wiped out.
The snow had still not melted when Ron began preparing for the annual Vigilante Day Parade, the
high spot of the school year, held on the first Friday in May. Although the theme of the parade
always harked back to the pioneer days, Ron plumped for a more unconventional role and decided
he would go as a pirate. He somehow persuaded five doubting friends, two boys and three girls, to
join him, casually brushing aside any objections based on the rather obvious absence of pirate
involvement in Montana's early history. Aunt Marnie helped with the costumes by taking down her
drapes and removing the brass rings to provide the pirates with suitable earrings, as worn on the
Spanish Main.
Thus it was that as the Vigilante Day Parade, led by the Helena High School Band, progressed
along Main Street on the afternoon of Friday 4 May 1928, the settlers, cowboys, cowgirls, miners,
trappers, prospectors, Indians and sheriffs were inexplicably joined by a small band of ferocious
pirates with eyepatches and painted beards, waving wooden cutlasses. At the dance after the
parade, 'Pirates by R. Hubbard' won one of three prizes in the 'Most Original' category.
The report on the parade in the Helena Independent next day positively glowed with pride: 'The
parade was larger, more ingenious, spectacular, striking, imaginative and suggestive of the past
this year than ever before. The high school students once more covered themselves with glory -
besides having a jolly good time and communicating a lot of fun to the bystanders . . . As a success
the Vigilante parade was complete, and once more advertized to the world that the Helena High
School and Last Chance Gulch puts on a show once a year unmatched elsewhere on the globe.'
A week later, Ron disappeared. When he did not show up for school on Monday 14 May, there were
excited rumours in the junior year that he had been expelled. 'Certainly we believed he had left in a
hurry, under something of a cloud,' said Gorham Roberts. 'The story was that he had got mad at a