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Stock theatre is something most Americans today know little about. It still exists; but it’s a faded and impoverished ghost of what it was at the turn of the 20th century. It’s something of a niche art form, patronized by a small but enthusiastic cohort that tends to pride itself (not without reason) on its cultural refinement. But in 1901, when George first hung out the shingle over his very own stock-theatre playhouse, that wasn’t the case at all. In this era, live theater was the preeminent visual storytelling medium. It supplied the stories and narratives that Portlanders used to define themselves and their world, and it was the most accessible source of the East Coast culture that middle-class Portlanders felt the lack of rather keenly in their rough-hewn frontier city. For the first decade of the century and most of the second, the Baker Stock Theatre was the center of Portland’s mainstream social and cultural life. (Portland, Multnomah County; 1901-1922) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1803d.baker-stock-theater-in-portland-488.html)