Warren Hinckle - Ransoming Pagan Babies: The Selected Writings of Warren Hinckle

ALSO BY WARREN HINCKLE

Guerilla-Krieg in USA (with Steven Chain and David Goldstein)

If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade: An Essential Memoir of a Lunatic Decade

The 10-Second Jailbreak: The Helicopter Escape of Joel David Kaplan (with Eliot Asinof and William W. Turner)

The Richest Place on Earth: The Story of Virginia City and the Heyday of the Comstock Lode (with Frederic Hobbs)

The Fish Is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (with William W. Turner)

Gayslayer!: The Story of How Dan White Killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone & Got Away with Murder

The Big Strike: A Pictorial History of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike

The Agnos Years: 19881991

Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (with William W. Turner)

Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson?
The Picaresque Story of the Birth of Gonzo

Ransoming
Pagan
Babies

The Selected Writings of
Warren Hinckle

Edited by Emmerich Anklam and Steve Wasserman

Copyright 2018 by Linda J. Corso

All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from Heyday.

The essays and articles in this book originally appeared, sometimes in slightly different form, in the following publications: The Argonaut, City of San Francisco, Frisco, Ramparts, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and Scanlans Monthly. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Guy Stilson for permission to reprint articles which were originally published in Ramparts magazine.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online.

Endpapers: front, Warren Hinckle arrested in the San Francisco Chronicle newsroom for walking his dog, Bentley, without a leash, February 1985. Photograph by Eric Luse, San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris. Used by permission; back, Illustration by Robert Crumb drawn for San Francisco Examiner cardboard rack cards on newspaper stands promoting Warren Hinckles new column, 1985. Used by permission.

Cover Design by Ashley Ingram

Orders, inquiries, and correspondence should be addressed to:

Heyday

P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, CA 94709

(510) 549-3564, Fax (510) 549-1889

www.heydaybooks.com

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This book is dedicated to Warren James Hinckle III.

While in high school in Erie, Pennsylvania, I became intrigued by the writings in Ramparts and Scanlans magazines, which opened my eyes to a world I had never imagined. Little did I know that I would one day meet the creative force behind these journals and become his partner for over nineteen years. Warren was the love of my life, my partner through thick and thin, and always encouraged me to be me. I will forever miss him and be thankful for our time together.

Ransoming Pagan Babies became a reality thanks to Heydays Steve Wasserman, publisher and executive director, who was hired by Warren in 1975 to help edit City magazine and who later helped research Warrens book on Castro and the CIA, The Fish Is Red. Steve had long yearned to publish a collection of Warrens writings and proposed it to Warren in the months before his passing and received his permission to do so. He then came to me with the project shortly after Warrens death. I was only too happy to give him my blessing.

Thanks to Emmerich Anklam of Heyday, who found the editorial key that turned a stack of sallies and columns and essays into a monument to Warrens brilliant and often game-changing writing, muckraking zeal, and rollicking lust for life; and to the entire publishing team at Heyday: truly it takes a village.

To John Briscoe, Warrens longtime friend, and my friend in need, who helped make this publication possible through his generosity, I will be eternally grateful.

Thanks also to Guy Stilson, legal custodian of Ramparts rights and permissions, for granting reprinting of various articles from that remarkable publication. And a grateful acknowledgment to Warrens daughters, Pia and Hilary, and to his son, Warren Hinckle IV, for their enduring love for him.

After an amazing run with life, Warrens health took an unexpected hit. His medical team at St. Marys Medical Center in San Francisco treated him with respect, kindness, compassion, and dignity.

Thanks to the family and friends who stood by both of us through the most trying of times and held us together with both laughter and tears.

Finally, I especially want to acknowledge the dear friends without whom I would be lost:

Janet McKinley and George Miller for standing beside us when we needed it most: George for his generosity of spirit as he and Warren solved the worlds problems, ranging from politics to football, and Janet for being my friend, confidant, and sous-chef.

And, of course, our dog Delilah, who steadfastly sat by his side waiting for the crumbs.

Linda Corso
San Francisco
November 2017

T HERE IS SOMETHING to be said for the disadvantages of Catholic education, at least as it was in San Francisco of the logy, foggy fifties. For one thing, in grammar school I learned about ransoming pagan babies. We had to save our dimes to ransom the poor unbaptized creatures of China. To facilitate the financial aspect of this spiritual transaction, we purchased savings certificateswatermarked in the fuzzy purple of the nuns hectograph machine and resembling somewhat Blue Chip Stampswhich were popularly known as Pagan Baby Stamps. When we had accumulated sufficient markers, we were assured that a yellow pagan baby of our choice would receive a Catholic baptism. We also got to name it, with a saints name, of course. It cost five dollars to ransom a boy, and three dollars for a girl. The good Sisters explained that girls came cheaper, since the Chinese routinely drowned girls at birth like baby kittens, because there were so many of them. This led to considerable discussion about the relative value of boys and girls, and provoked a compromise, arranged by the nuns, which was widely considered a bargain: for ten dollars we could ransom one boy and two girls.

The Catholic umbrella under which I grew up shaded a vacuum-sealed, middle-class, and unflinchingly white ghetto. We all went to Catholic schools and our parents paid their dues and regularly received the sacraments, as did we kids, but it was more routine than a leap of faith. The church seemed everywhere, Authority incarnate, yet it didnt really connect. It was authority largely without terror. The church I knew was not the Church of Savonarola, nor of James Joyceit was too settled and comfortable to summon the fire and brimstone for Stephen Dedalustype retreats. The priests who werent stuck in the confessional box on Saturdays put on Pendleton sport shirts and went off to play golf at the Irish Catholic Olympic Club. Our confessors did scare us a little by warning we could lose our minds and maybe even our hair if we touched ourselves, but suggested that if we pulled hard on an ear it would dispel temptation. Naturally we tugged our ears, but otherwise the operating principle was to accept everything the church taught while paying as little attention to it as possible. Thus we went to Mass on Sundays and sinned on Mondays and went to confession on Saturdays so we could receive Communion on Sunday and be in a state of grace to sin again on Monday.