Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

teacher and put his butt into a waste-paper basket. Old A. J. Roberts, the principal, was a German
from Heidelberg and a strict disciplinarian. Ron knew that he would never put up with such
behaviour, so he didn't trouble to come back.'[7]
Aunt Marnie explained it differently: 'He just got itchy feet. He wanted to see something new. He was
an adventurer at heart. The wanderlust was in him and he couldn't see himself staying in a little
town like Helena when there was adventure ahead. He went off to Seattle to stay with my sister
Midgie and her husband Bob. They tried to talk him into staying with them, but he went south,
hopped a ship and worked his way back to Guam.'[8]
Whatever the truth, Ron never returned to Helena High. Two years later, he wrote two colourful
accounts of the events leading up to his departure from Helena. Although they were only separated
by a few pages in his journal, many of the details do not match; indeed some passages read
suspiciously like the adventure stories he was constantly scribbling in his spare time.
It seemed he was driving his friends home after the Vigilante Day Parade in his 'mighty Ford'
(presumably his grandfather's Model T.) when someone threw a baseball at them and hit him on
the head. He stopped the car, chastized the offenders and dealt with them so severely that he broke
four 'marcarpals' in his right hand.
'That was the beginning and the end. I couldn't wait and school faded from the picture. My hand was
reset four times and life lost its joy. I sold the Ford and went West, taking Horace Greeley's [sic]
advice.'
He announced to his grandfather that he had decided on a 'change of scenery' and caught a train
for Seattle, where he stayed with his aunt and uncle for a couple of days. On 7 June, trading on his
'scout prestige', he moved to Camp Parsons for about a week, until it became too crowded and he
decided to move on.
'I set out at noon, hiking a swift pace under a heavy pack through the lofty, virgin Olympics. At nine
o'clock that night I made camp about two miles down the trail from "Shelter Rock". Twelve hours
later I was limp on top of a boulder pile, saved from a broken spine by my pack. I gazed at the blood
pumping from my wrist and decided it was high time I went to visit herr Docteur.'
No explanation is offered for this incident or for how he managed, in such a parlous state, to find
his way back to Bremerton. It was there, while being treated by a Navy doctor, he was told that a US
Navy transport, USS Henderson, was due to leave for Guam from San Francisco in a week's time
(in the first account), or two weeks (in the second account). That night (first account), eight days
later (second account), he was on a Shasta Limited overnight train heading south for California,
apparently intent on rejoining his parents in Guam.
By the time he got to the Transport Dock in San Francisco the Henderson had already sailed. With
only twenty dollars left in his pocket, Ron invested a nickel in a newspaper and read on the
shipping page that the liner President Pierce, bound for China, was moored at Dock 28. An hour
later he was standing in line at the dock, waiting to sign on as an ordinary seaman. While in the
queue, smoking to calm his nerves, he suddenly decided it would be worth a call to Twelfth Naval
District to find out where the Henderson was. Perhaps, he thought, she had not yet sailed for
Guam, but had just moved down the coast to another port. His hunch was correct - an officer at
Twelfth District told him the Henderson was in San Diego. Within half an hour - he appeared
remarkably lucky with connections - he was on a bus bound for San Diego, five hundred miles
further south.