Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

'And here's my plea. Isn't there some way you can extend this thing in view of the circumstances . . .
Isn't there something you can do about it?'[2]
It was a naïve hope: no bureaucracy is structured to indulge the roseate ambitions of young men
and the Bureau of Aeronautics was no exception. Its dour reply was brief: 'It is regretted that your
glider pilot's licence . . . cannot be extended as requested. Also it is the policy of this Department
not to extend licences.'[3] Officially it was the end of Ron's gliding career, for he never again held a
licence although he would apply, a couple more times, for a student pilot's licence.
In October, Ron contributed another feature to the Sportsman Pilot, this time a profile of Chet
Warrington, a well-known Washington pilot, and in November he wrote an article about the infant
science of radio navigation. His lack of a licence notwithstanding, he always adopted a chatty,
aviator-to-aviator style: 'Personally, I abhor navigation. It takes too much algebra and I don't speak
good algebra . . . It's my ambition to step into a ship some day and take off in rain and fog with the
other coast in mind as a destination. But I don't like circular rules and too many gadgets. I'm lazy, I
want someone to tie a piece of string to the hub of the prop and lead me right where I want to go.
That's my ambition, and I'll bet my last turnbuckle in a power dive that it's yours too.'
In addition to his three pieces for the Sportsman Pilot, Ron also sold an article titled 'Navy Pets' to
the Washington Star in 1933. But that was the sum of his published output for the year.
The going rate for freelance writers around that time was a cent a word. Polly, whose thickening
waistline added greatly to her worries, calculated at the end of 1933 that her husband had
managed to earn, during the course of that year, rather less than $100.
There were better times ahead, however, for Ron soon discovered his natural habitat as a writer -
the blood and thunder world of 'the pulps'.
Pulp magazines had an honorable literary genesis in the United States and an eclectic following:
John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915 for Adventure magazine, which at one time
counted among its subscribers such unlikely fellow travellers as Harry Truman and Al Capone.
Writers like C.S. Forester, Erle Stanley Gardner and Joseph Conrad were introduced to huge new
audiences through the pulps, as were unforgettable characters like Buffalo Bill, boy detective Nick
Cartot and the ever-inscrutable Dr Fu Manchu. The most successful of all pulp heroes, Edgar Rice
Burrough's 'Tarzan of the Apes', made his first appearance in the pages of All-Story magazine and
went on to spawn the longest-running adventure comic strip and Hollywood's biggest moneymaking
film series.
By the early '30s, pulp fiction was a major source of inexpensive entertainment for millions of
Americans and a convenient means of escape from the anxieties and realities of the Depression.
For as little as a dime, readers could enter into an action-packed adventure in which the heroes
slugged their way out of tight spots in various exotic corners of an improbable world. Good
invariably triumphed over evil and sex was never allowed to complicate the plot, for no hero ever
proceeded beyond a chaste kiss and no heroine would dream of expecting anything more.
In 1934, more than 150 pulp magazines were published in New York alone. Black Mask was
considered the best of the bunch by writers, largely because it paid its top contributors as much as
a nickel a word, but Argosy, Adventure, Dime Detective and Dime Western were all said to offer
more than the basic rate of a cent a word to the best writers. As the average 128-page pulp
magazine contained around 65,000 words and as many of them were published weekly, the
market for freelance writers was both enormous and potentially lucrative.