Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Of all this L. Ron Hubbard knew virtually nothing until he began to cast around for new outlets as a
matter of urgency after his first disastrous year as a writer. 'He told me', said his Aunt Marnie, 'that
he went into a bookstall and picked up all the pulp books from the rack. He took a big pile home to
see what it was that people wanted to read. He thought a lot of it was junk and he knew he could do
better. That's how he started writing mystery stories.'[4]
More importantly, perhaps, it dawned on Ron that he had been writing in the pulp genre for most of
his life. The swashbuckling short stories he had scribbled across page after page of old accounts
books when he was in his teens were, he belatedly realized, precisely the sort of material that was
to be found between the lurid covers of the most popular 'pulps'.
Polly was fast expanding and every week they were deeper in debt. Ron knew he had to earn
money somehow and the 'pulps' seemed to offer the best hope. He began writing one story after
another, winding page after page into his typewriter without a break, often hammering away all
night. Typing at phenomenal speed, never needing to pause for thought, never bothering to read
through what he had written, he roamed the entire range of adventure fiction with red-blooded
heroes who were gunslingers, detectives, pirates, foreign legionnaires, spies, flying aces, soldiers
of fortune and grizzled old sea captains. For a period of six weeks he wrote a complete story of
between 4,500 and 20,000 words every day, gathered up the pages when he had finished and
mailed it to one or another of the pulps in New York without a second look.
It did not take long to pay off. One morning Ron went out to collect the mail and found there were
two cheques waiting for him, totalling $300 - more money than he had ever earned in his life. The
first was from Thrilling Adventures for a story called 'The Green God', the second from The
Phantom Detective for 'Calling Squad Cars'. More acceptances soon followed - 'Sea Fangs' was
bought by Five Novels Monthly, 'Dead Men Kill' by Thrilling Detective, 'The Carnival of Death' by
Popular Detective . . .
By the end of April Ron had earned enough money to take Polly on a short holiday to California.
They took a cheap hotel room at Encinitas, a resort a few miles north of San Diego, but Polly, now
seven months into her pregnancy, found the unaccustomed heat somewhat debilitating. On 7 May
1934, she decided to take a dip in the ocean to cool off and got caught in a rip tide. She was a
strong swimmer but only just managed to get back to the beach and the exertion brought on labour.
Later that day she gave birth to a son.
The baby weighed only 2lb 2oz and clung to life by the most gossamer of threads. Praying he would
survive, they named him Lafayette Ronald Hubbard Junior. Ron constructed a crude incubator, first
out of a shoe box, then by lining a cupboard drawer with blankets and keeping it warm with an
electric light bulb; Polly wrapped the mewling mite in cotton wool and fed him with an eye-dropper.
For two months they maintained a day and night vigil, taking it in turns to watch over the infant and
marvelling at its will to live. While Polly was pregnant, Ron's father always used to ask her how 'his
Nibs' was doing and by the time the danger period had passed L. Ron Hubbard Junior was known
to the entire family as 'Nibs', a name that would stick for the rest of his life.
Fatherhood in no way moderated Ron's desire to be seen as a devil-may-care adventurer and
fearless aviator and he assiduously promoted this image at every opportunity. In July, for example,
he was the subject of a glowing tribute in the 'Who's Who' column of the Pilot, 'The Magazine for
Aviation's Personnel', which described him as 'one of the outstanding glider pilots in the country'.
The author, H. Latane Lewis II, made no secret of his admiration.
'Whenever two or three pilots are gathered together around the Nation's Capital,' he wrote, 'whether