Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

affled the local coastguard and signal station. In another he described his role in tracking down a
German saboteur who had been sent to Alaska with orders to cut off communications with the
United States in the event of war. And his dramatic and sometimes hilarious account of how, on a
fishing expedition with a friend, he lassooed a swimming brown bear which then climbed on to
their boat, had listeners everywhere glued to their sets. Off the air, at Jimmy Britton's request, Ron
re-organized the station and wrote new programming schedules with all the confidence of a man
who had spent a lifetime in broadcasting.
With little interference from other radio stations, KGBU's signal, on 900 watts and 1000 kilocycles,
carried for hundreds of miles and could often be heard as far south as Seattle and Bremerton. It
was for this reason that Ron always contrived to mention that he and his wife were stranded in
Ketchikan because the Regal Company of Bremerton had refused to meet its obligations and
replace their defective crankshaft. When a new crankshaft arrived in early December, Ron was
convinced it was his constant needling on the air that was responsible.
As soon as the new crankshaft was fitted, Ron and Polly set sail for home. No one was more sorry
to see them go than Jimmy Britton: he felt that KGBU had hardly begun to tap Ron's fund of stories.
The Maggie sailed back into Puget Sound on 27 December 1940. Ron bought Marnie a yellow
canary to thank her for looking after the children and not a word was said about the dentist.
Beset once more by debts, Ron went straight back to work to earn some money. For many weeks a
light could be seen burning all night in the window of the little cabin at the back of The Hilltop as the
stories rolled relentlessly out of his typewriter. In one of them, 'The Case of the Friendly Corpse',
published in Unknown, Ron cheekily disposed of Harold Shea, the hero of a story by L. Sprague de
Camp that had appeared in the magazine two months previously. Ron had his own hero meet
Harold Shea and demonstrate a magic wand which turned into a serpent and proceeded to
swallow up poor Harold. L. Sprague de Camp fans were outraged that Hubbard should so
brusquely dispatch someone else's hero.