01 March 2019: the flight to Havana
“Partin was a big tough-looking man with an extensive criminal record as a youth. Hoffa misjudged the man and thought that because he was big and tough and had a criminal record and was out on bail and was from Louisiana, the home states of Carlos Marcello, the man must have been a guy who paints houses.”
Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran in “I Heard You Paint Houses,” 2004
On 01 March 2019, I was wriggling in my seat, trying to find the least uncomfortable position an Airbus parked on the Houston runway. I had a pen was in my right hand, and a half-read paperback copy of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran’s “I Heard You Paint Houses” was in my left. I was grumpy, a self-inflicted result of staying up to late and not enough time horizontal. To make it worse, I had forgotten to remove my Leatherman tool from my pocket and my Victorionox from my keychain, and both had been confiscated at airport security in San Diego.
The intercom cracked on, and a voice that sounded like it was accepting my order from a drive-through speaker mumbled an apology that the delayed passengers were boarding now.
I glanced up and craned my neck to see three people hurrying on board without carryon bags. A young man, 30 to 35 years old, navigated down the isle. He glanced between seat numbers and the ticket in his hand, as if he either didn’t recognize the pattern of seats or expected the number on his ticket to magically change. He stopped beside the empty seat next to me, looked back and forth between his ticket and the seat number, tucked his bag in the overhead bin, and plopped down.
He typed a few messages onto his phone, and few minutes later he set his phone down and cheerfully asked, “What you reading?”
I straightened my head, and spun the pen around my thumb, set the pen in the open paperback, and closed the book with the front cover facing up. I slowly removed my glasses and rotated my head to look at him.
I removed my earbuds, and said, “Say again.”
“What are you reading?” He asked even more cheerfully.
My earbuds weren’t on, I use them to discourage small talk. Sometimes it works.
I twisted my left wrist to show the book cover more clearly. He glanced down for a brief moment.
“What’s it about?”
I had seen him reading his ticket and the seat numbers without glasses, so I assumed he could read the book.
I summed him up before answering, hoping for something I could politely say or do to for him to leave me alone.
He was a white guy around 35 years old, with chubby cheeks and a polo shirt that may have once fit him but was now too tight. It emphasized his arms, which looked like he had once done a sport in college but was too busy with work to exercise regularly now. He had slight raccoon eyes, and I assumed he wore designer sunglasses to golf with coworkers on weekends. He was clean shaven and smell was unremarkable, with either no aftershave or an unobtrusive one, and I couldn’t smell cigarette smoke so I he probably didn’t smoke, and didn’t spend his days with people who did, which implied his friends or coworkers had similar lifestyles.
He was educated, or at least smart enough to not smoke and wealthy enough to wear brand name clothes and fly away to for a weekend in Fort Lauderdale, our plane’s final destination. (I assumed he wasn’t transferring overseas or joining me in Cuba.) But, he didn’t seem to recognize the book I was reading, which was the most telling thing about our age differences. I had just read Frank “The Irishman” Sheenan saying in 2004, when the man next to me was probably still in high school: “Kids nowadays don’t know who Hoffa was. I mean, they may know the name, but they don’t know how much power he had.”
In my mind’s ear, I heard Frank’s voice; I never met him, but I knew his type, and he probably had a gruff, no-bullshit, working class northern accent, forged into a sharp rasp that grated your ears by two years of combat as an infantryman in WWII, twenty years as a hitman for Philidelphia and New Jersey families, a decade of Teamster leadership in Local #35, and 13 years in prison for racketeering (I’m not sure what that meant). I wouldn’t call the young man sitting next to me a kid, but I could see how Frank would. He’d probably call me a kid. If he were me, he wouldn’t worry about being polite, and he’d tell the kid next to me to mind his own business.
I rotated my hand to show the book’s back cover to the young man sitting next to me. He glanced down for another moment, then looked up at my baseball cap and back down to my eyes.
“Did you go to LSU?” the young man asked.
I was wearing a sun and salt-water faded licensed LSU baseball cap. It was so faded that the purple was more like a soft brown, and what used to be gold LSU letters was more like the sunburnt yellow of a southwestern adobe lime-stained paint. Dana, who is more artistic than I am, called it “sunset gold.” I wore the cap on our flight to protect my newly discovered bald spot from overhead airplane air conditioners that target my scalp like campfire smoke finds my eyes no mater which way the wind blows. Wearing an LSU hat made me smile inside.
I was one of the first graduates of LSU’s new civil and environmental program, one of only eleven in the country back then, graduating 7th in my class; an “LSU Ambassador” to represent the school at fundraisers and alumni events; and I was co-captain of their revised wrestling program, mentored under former LSU wrestling head coach, Coach Dale Ketelsen. I still flew home to meet friends for football games in LSU’s Tiger Stadium, the country’s fifth largest stadium, and we joined around 88,000 fans inside and around 36,000 tailgaters outside. My email address is still LSUmagic @ whatever domaine I’m using.
I said, “I don’t know why you ask.”
He smiled broadly and nodded towards my head. “Because you’re wearing an LSU baseball cap.”
You couldn’t get anything past this guy.
“I grew up in Baton Rouge,” I told him.
“Do you have family in Houston?” He asked.
I had a lot of family in Houston. When Bobby Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover sprung Big Daddy from a Baton Rouge jail cell to spy on Hoffa, Big Daddy required that his family be provided for and kept safe. Bobby bought Mamma Jean – who kept the name Norma Jeanne Partin – a four bedroom house in an affluent Houston suburb, and paid her the equivalent of alimony so that she could afford to take care of her five children, my dad, uncle, and three aunts.1 Hoover personally oversaw the federal marshals assigned to protect them.
Houston is the 4th largest in America – Baton Rouge would be just a suburb there – with tons of police and an FBI office near Mamma Jean’s home. It’s a four hour drive from Baton Rouge, so Mamma Jean could still visit family, and about five hours from New Orleans, a slight deterrent for Marcello’s men, and at a time when the internet didn’t help you find people. I grew up seeing her in Baton Rouge and visiting my my aunts and cousins for trips to Astroworld and other perks of a big city. Mamma Jean passed away in 1996, but my aunts and uncles by marriage are still in Houston, though none of them share the Partin name because of the marriages. I still have two aunts and around a dozen cousins and twenty second cousins in Houston.
I took a deep breath slowly without changing my smile, and exhaled just as slowly. I told him I was focused on reading.
He shrugged, kept smiling, and pulled out his iPhone and began scrolling Facebook. I returned to scribbling notes. We took off and he paid the uncharge for WiFi access, and adjusted the overhead air conditioner. The cold air hit my cap and rolled off the brim without chilling my bald spot or drying out my eyes; I loved that LSU hat.
The plane passed over the Gulf of Mexico, but I was on the right hand side and couldn’t see Louisiana. All I could see through the clouds were a few stationary offshore oil rigs and tankers moving around them like ants circling dead bugs. I kept reading and finished just as we crossed the Florida panhandle. I set the book on my open tray table and rested my glasses atop the book. I fidgeted with the pen in my hand, absent mindedly making the cap vanish and reappear, and concentrated on relaxing so that what I read and noted could digest and mix with thirty years of reading different versions of the same thing.
Our plane landed in Fort Lauderdale and the young man put away his phone and said in the cheerful voice of someone on a golf vacation without a lot on their mind, “Have a great vacation!”
I told him “You, too,” and gathered my small personal item backpack with the book in it. I reached into the overhead bin and yanked out my carryon backpack with scuba fins strapped to the outside, and fished deep inside to reach my rolled up yoga mat that always seems to sneak past attendants counting carryon items.
About a half hour later, I boarded the a small Jet Blue plane bound for Havana. Only a few caucasians were aboard, and I kept my head down and navigated my bags and yoga mat through the narrow isle. I put the mat and carryon backpack with my scuba fins strapped outside in the overhead bin, pushing hard to force the bag in, and squeezed myself into the window seat. I
An elderly Cuban man in a botero plopped down next to me, and spoke that old-school greeting that’s blissfully uninvasive: “Buenas Tardes.” I nodded and replied in kind. A stewardess delivered the safety briefing in Spanish and then in English, and we took off. Both the elderly man and I adjusted the overhead air conditioners away from our heads, and both of us used our hands to ensure we weren’t sending it to each other’s space. I liked that guy. He opened a Spanish news magazine, and I thought it would be nice to start carrying a Spanish book around, just to help me change gears and think less in English and more in Spanish.
I took a pen in my hand and cracked open the Lonely Planet guide book an began to plan. I circled a used book shop and cafe, humorously called “Cuba Libro” – a combination of the rum cocktail, to free Cuba, and freedom of press – and located in a untouristed neighborhood. It was near Hemmingway’s house, and circling them both on the map helped me visualize Havana’s layout.
I read descriptions of the casa particulares, private homes not unlike AirBnB’s earllier model, but unable to us the American web site to help their business for reasons I don’t understand, and circled ones that sounded like they had a small courtyard or several windows, with descriptions from Lonely Planet editors that said “bright” and “airy.” I’ve been slightly claustophobic since 1983 (hence being extra grumpy on long flights, trapped inside a flying aluminum can with no leg room, much less space for my big feet) so I wanted to land and go for a walk and shake off the plane ride, and I wanted to stay in as bright and airy of a room as possible. I felt confident something would work out, and I turned my attention to the history and culture sections of my guide book.
We began to land less than an hour later, so I returned the book to my personal item bag, and pressed my nose against the window to catch my first glimpses of Havana. Even cooped up and grumpy, my spirits soared at the site of Spanish forts guarding a harbor older than most of my country, and of an island surrounded by warm azure blue Caribbean water that I knew held underwater adventures I missed in the frigid waters off San Diego’s slice of the Pacific Ocean. I stared so intently that fog built up and clouded my view. I wiped it off and watched the runway speed towards us.
The plane jostled when it hit the pavement, and the diminutive roar of its engines wound down. I smiled a smile that had been 30 years in the making. But, my body throbbed and mind was still agitated from the discomfort and my mild claustrophobia that cooks me like a slow cooker wears down food with relatively low temperatures all day long. I grabbed my things and hurried out the door and walked down the steps to the outdoor tarmac.
As soon as I cleared the stairs, I exhaled all of the cooped-up, conditioned dry air from my lungs and inhaled as deeply as I could; instantly, I began coughing and gagging. I had stopped in front of one of the jet engines, and had inhaled almost pure JP-4 jet fuel vapors. I strode forward rapidly, coughing, and stopped out of harms way to catch my breath. Away from the jet engine’s blast, I regrouped and was about to stretch when my head whipped around and looked back up the stairs and at the plane’s exit door.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed.
I had left my yoga mat in the overhead bin. A Cuban man my age and his wife who were walking behind me opened their eyes wide in shock. I smiled apologetically, and let them pass. I looked up the steps at people coming down, and in my periphery, I saw a Cuban official pointing everyone towards the customs building.
“Fuck,” I said softly. I stretched my tight shoulders, and moved my head back and forth as much as possible with my tight neck muscles. I sighed, and followed the official’s finger to customs, wondering how I had forgotten my mat.
My concern was more than the mat. Almost exactly a year before, on the second day of a three monthg sabbatical to Nepal and India, I first began noticing gaps in my memory, as if I were on some narcotic or in early dementia. The first time was walking around Nepal to unwind after almost 20 hours of flights, and I followed my Lonely Planet guide to obscure street markets among the rubble of Khatmandu’s 2017 earthquake (the 2018 edition of Lonely Planet was updated after the earthquake). I was practicing my Nepali by shopping for local coins to use for magic, and when calculating the different prices and conversion rates between rupees and dollars, I had to multiply six times seven. I froze. For almost the length of a round of wrestling, I couldn’t see the answer. I could see myself in the second grade, three rows from the chalkboard, in a bluejean jacket and with a number 2 pencil stuck in my rib cage, just under the right nipple (I had put it in the inner jacket pocket). In my mind, I saw myself removing the pencil and hiding the blood stain on my shirt out of embarrassment, then taking a written test where I made a perfect score on multiplication tables. But, forty years and a few engineering degrees later, I couldn’t see the answer to six time seven.
When it finally came to me, 42, I was scared. I should have known the answer: 42 is the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything, and references to it and the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was plastered on Elon Musk’s red convertible when he strapped it to a Space X rocket and sent it into space in 2018. And 42 was Pat Tillman’s Arizona Cardinals football jersey number; he was the pro football player who quit his multi-million dollar deal to join the army and become a Ranger, only to die from friendly fire in Aphghanistan in 2004. He become a national sensation posthumously, with people near my grandfather’s cabin in Flagstaff flaunting an unlicensed version of his #42 jersey with desert camos and black-and-white American flags, and Congress investigated his death and the coverup (they declared it was an accident), and a recent documentary had planted him in my mind just before my 2018 sabattical. Not knowing six times seven led me to wondering if I were losing my mind, and that scared me more than anything that could happen to my body.
I stared at the plane, wondering if I were just tired and claustophobic and not thinking clearly, or if I were experiencing early dementia. It was too late to go back on board – security wouldn’t allow it – so I walked towards the customs building analyzing how I forgot the mat. It wasn’t like the Leatherman tool I had forgotten to remove from my pocket, or the Victorionox I had forgotten to take off my keychain. That forgetfulness was rooted in old habits; before 9/11, pocket knives were carried on planes, and since then I’ve probably donated twenty multi-tools to the TSA and just as many keychain knives with small scissors and nail files that the TSA deems unsafe. The mat was different, because it was something I had planned to use, and because my bags were too tightly packed to strap on the mat, I had told myself that I would need to keep track of it; that alone worried me. After pondering it a few minutes, I decided I was tired, grumpy, claustrophobic, and thinking into the future about Havanna. Forgetting the mat was a consequence of a long day, nothing more.
Regardless of logic, and probably because I was grumpy, I brooded over the mat and kept looking back at the airplane, hoping to see someone carrying it down the stairs and holding it up, looking for an owner. It didn’t happen. I reached the customs building and stood in line behind a nondescript couple with Canadian accents talking to two Cuban customs officials; they were saying saying, “eh” after each sentence, and were on a scuba vacation and couldn’t wait to see some live music, in Havana, ‘eh! I glanced back at the airplane again, just in case.
Despite my worry, I was probably smiling that resting smile I inherited from Big Daddy. A caucasian guy a bit older than I am stepped behind me. He smiled back, and in a nondescript American accent, he asked, “Did you go to LSU?”
I felt my smile slide off my face and splat onto the tarmac. Then I heard a Cuban official ask for whomever’s next; I rotated back and stepped up to the customs desk without answering.
I smiled as best I could, and extended my passport with the entrepreneurship visa and my travel insurance tucked in the page with my photo. They smiled back, and the senior official looked at my passport and asked my name. I said “Jason Partin,” pronouncing my last name a bit like Spanish, Par-teen, to help them verify it was me.
My passport was only five years old, but I had lost 35 pounds since the photo was taken, mostly last year’s sabbatical. I was clean shaven in the photo, but I had a grey beard in Havana. I tried to smile just like in the photo. It took the senior official a few glances, then he accepted that it was me. They checked my visa and return flight (my flight was for three days before the visa expired, just in case a flight was delayed), and my travel insurance (Cuba requires travelers insurance, because they have a state-paid healthcare system and don’t want you burdening it, which is fair). I was wondering if they’d focus on my “entrepreneurship visa,” but it didn’t seem to matter to them how I had one. Cuba had been used to Americans visiting via Mexico City or Toronto since Kennedy’s embargo; even Lee Harvey Oswald tried to get to Cuba via Mexico City in 1962, so no one other than law-abiding Americans ever cared about an official visa. The Lonely Planet says that’s why customs officials stamp a tourist visa instead of a passport, so that Americans can throw it away without evidence they visited Cuba.
In a way, I was looking forward to getting a stamp in my passport, an official entry into Cuba lingering from the Obama administration’s attempt to loosen restrictions on Americans and promote “entrepreneurship,” a vaguely defined term that applied to people rather than systems, and seemed less overt than sending Americans to communist countries with the goal of promoting capitalism, which makes some people revulse because of preconceived definitions. Entrepreneurship was ambiguous enough to sound fun. President Trump’s administration had already closed the loophole, and I was probably one of the final people to use it for a trip to Cuba. Not knowing what to expect, I was ready for any questions officials could ask about my atypical visa and what I was carrying into Cuba.
They were uninterested in my visa, but they were fascinated with the Force Fin scuba fins strapped to my backpack. They’re unusual looking, squat and wide like webbed duck feet, able to fit into carryon bag spaces. The senior official held up a fin and wore a curious countenance. He drug his finger along the thick polypropolene edge, pulling tension and releasing it and watching the fin flip back. Even with all of the tourists flocking to Cuba’s Carribbean dive sites, it was obvious he had never seen fins like mine.
Force Fins are different than most SCUBA fins. They were invented by a guy in the 1980’s whose name I can never recall and used by SEALS and Rangers in the 80’s and 90’s for long-distance underwater missions. They’re thick, short, black, duck-feet-looking fins modeled after a dolphin’s tail. Though a bit harder to kick, the flip back gives you an extra boost. The open toe design puts forces across the top of your foot, not the toes, which aides long-distance swims because it reduces bending moments about the ankle, which is especially useful for people with feet as long as mine. The patents had long since expired, but the market was so small that no new companies invested in manufacturing processes. Force Fins were still the originals, and fit my feet comfortably. Conveniently, the stubby shape fits in a carryon bag.
The senior put his hand through the open-toed fins and spread his fingers wide. He moved his hand in and out, laughed out loud, and laughed and made a joke. His colleague laughed.
My Spanish was rusty and I didn’t understand, but I smiled as if I had. I surmised that he was either being vulgar or joking about the size of my feet. I was used to both. I chuckled back and shrugged ambiguously, as if to imply any one of the following: “What’s one to do?” or “I don’t know, I just work here.” or “That’s what she said!” They both laughed at whatever they imagined.
The senior official asked where I would be diving.
I said Playa de Giron (Americans call it the Bay of Pigs). I said there are a few sunken ships there that I’d like to explore. I waited for him to ask me something about my visa.
Had I had my Frisbee, or if someone else had one, we could toss it around while discussing the Frisbee Pie Company near Yale university, and the students who tossed empty pie tins around until someone had the idea to patent the shape as a flying disc. At the time, it was an innovative toy. Patents expired after 20 years after approval back then – now it’s 17 years after filing – and without a patent anyone can make Frisbees, though the name is trademarked to Frisbee and others are called “flying discs,” though many people call them Frisbees, like calling tissue Kleenex, cotton swaps Q-Tips, and photocopies Zeroxes, which ironically hides the original story from people not looking for it.
Had I had my Leatherman, or any multitool with pliers that I call Leatherman, I could tell the story of Tim Leatherman traveling across Europe with a pair of pliers and a Swiss Army Knife not unlike my Victorionox, then spending five years prototyping the world’s first folding pliers in a knife and tool set, called the Personal Survival Tool. Tim’s first contract was with America’s anti-terrorism special operations unit, Fort Bragg’s Delta Force, and they gave them as standard issue by the early 1990’s.2 Tim soon scored a few national contracts with outdoor equipment companies, and almost 40 years later still runs the company, though few people know he innovated what is now ubiquitous as multi-tools. Like with the Frisbee, the original folding pliers patents expired. Younger people felt the world always had multi-tools; innovation is aided by realizing that everything was done for the first time once, and the next idea might as well begin with you. If I had my Victorionox, I’d tell almost the same story about a Swiss entrepreneur 120 years ago, but end in the founder naming his company after his mother, Victoria, and that long after patents expire, brand names and quality assurance keep a company going.
In an entrepreneurship education emergency, I could whip out my Lonely Planet book, and tell anyone interested that the company had just been purchased for something like $50 Million Euros; the founding husband and wife team scored big, and were currently blogging from satellite phones on their round-the-world retirement road trip. I’d say that’s bad for two hippies who started with a stapled pamphlet on how to drive across Asia on the cheap, and is a lesson for doing what you love and doing it well, and all things will probably work out in the end.
I was wearing a lightweight Patagonia travel shirt that dried quickly and compressed tightly; in 2013, Patagonia became California’s first B-Corp (Benefit-Corporation), and the founder of Patagonia did well enough financially to buy a mountain range the size of Rhode Island and donate it to the country of Patagonia as a new national park. He began by making rock climbing equipment in his garage because he liked rock climbing; there was no long-term plan other than summiting the next peak.
I bought The Lonely Planet’s guide to Cuba off Amazon, which was founded after the adopted kid Jeff Bezos wrote a business plan for an online bookstore “as big as the Amazon River” when he was on a cross-country road trip with his wife. Now he was the wealthiest person on Earth, and his ex-wife isn’t far behind. I don’t know if they love their work, but it’s hard to deny that entrepreneurship can lead to financial freedom.
I used the Amazon app on my Apple iPhone to order the Lonely Planet. Apple was founded by another adopted kid, Steve Jobs, who also became one of the world’s wealthiest people. He said said a lot of his inspiration came from traveling through India (along with the mind-altering side-effects of psychodellics, and the visual appeal of caligraphy, which was his one partially completed college class).
Combined, Jobs and Bezos point towards entrepreneurship and innovation as possible regardless of family background. On a more palatable scale, I’d point to Wendy’s hamburger chain; the founder, Dave Thomas, was an adopted kid who took over a floudering fast-food restaurant on a bet that if he could make it profitable, it would be his. Dave focused reducing the overwhelming number of choices on their menu, making a superior product to McDonald’s (which was launched by a middle-aged milkshake-machine salesman), and plopping Wendy’s across the street from McDonalds and Burger Kings across America; years later, Dave used his fortune to lobby congress to make adoption more affordable for more families, showing how entrepreneurship lets you pay your fortune forward to society.
The junior official had a confident and friendly face with a toothy smile and thin mustache, and he asked – probably just to practice his English – if he could peek in my bag for “frutas” and vegetables. I articulated slowly for him: “Yes; thank you for asking,” if only to practice saying Spanish reflexive verbs, “Ci; gracias por me pregunta.” He opened my carry-on backpack, and peered inside before rummaging around.
My carryon bag included snacks, Lara Bars and Cliff Bars. Lara was founded by a Whole Foods employee who, in less than two years, turned an idea for two-ingredient fruit snack bars into something on the shelf at Whole Foods, and she was given a $1.5 Million buyout for her company. Cliff Bars was started in a California kitchen by a cyclist and rock climber who wanted a better tasting, healthier snack bar that met the needs of athletes; he named the product after his dad, Cliff, and they’ve continuously declined hundreds of millions in buyout offers because they enjoy their work and the impact they can accomplish with their employees and community.
With Cliff Bars, I could point to a buyout not being necessary to turn your idea into a family business that can last generations; entrepreneurship can create a lifestyle for your family, and can give a lifetime of opportunities to engage with your community and inspire others. With Lara Bar, and Amazon now owning Whole Foods, I could point to Lara as a hybrid entrepreneur/employee, who saw opportunity in an existing system rather than revolutionizing the world, and accepted a short-term buyout instead of trying to run her own business; in other words, entrepreneurship knows no size, and there’s no one formula for what makes a person happy.
But the junior official brushed aside the snack bars without commenting on them. The first thing to draw his attention must have shocked him, because his white teeth vanished behind the curtain of his upper lip, and his dark eyebrows lowered and his thin mustache bunched up into a pucker of consternation. He slowly pulled out a clear plastic Zip Lock bag full of fake thumbs with tiny red silk handkerchiefs poking out of each one. He let it dangle from his fingertips, and though his pucker disappeared, his gaze never left the bag.
I assumed he had never seen that in a tourist’s luggage before. My smile perked up, and to help him understand I spoke in Spanish at first.
“Soy magico,” I said.
“Ohhhh…” he said, and looked at the senior official, who didn’t quite shrug, but somehow conveyed that he had never seen a bag of fake thumbs, either.
“These,” I slowly said in English, gesturing towards the thumb tips, “are to make the napkin disappear, like this…”
I made a fist with my left hand, keeping an opening near the thumb, which faced the ceiling. I shoved the red handkercheif inside, then tucked the final bit in with my right thumb. I slowly pulled out my thumb and wiggled it to show the thumb tip with a hint of red showing through the flesh-colored plastic. Their eyebrows went back up to normal, and they leaned back and relaxed a bit. That’s an odd way to tuck something into your fist. Had I not been trying to show them what it was, I would have pushed the red tip in with my long right fingers, angling the thumb tip into the gap between my right middle and ring finger from when Hillary Clinton broke it and it healed awkwardly, and stolen the tip with my right thumb from behind my fist; thanks to a break from when I was 17, my method of using a thump tip fools magicians who think they know everything, which is one of my favorite thing to do at magic conventions.
“I give them to children in casa particulares to say ‘Thank You,’” I said in decent Spanish. I also give them away as “tips” to bartenders and cab drivers in English speaking countries, but I was tired and didn’t feel like talking too much, or seeing if they knew a pun about a tip, or giving just the tip, or any other joke that I’d build upon if someone started.
They nodded and chuckled subtly, more like satisfaction at understanding something than humor, and the younger man replaced the Zip Lock and slowly said, “Thank you, sir.” He closed the bag and rummaged a bit more. My size 14 rock climbing shoes, an old pair of leather Mythos stretched to fit my feet over many seasons and resoled every year, and a size 14W waterproof sandals that doubled as shower shoes. The big shoes were unremarkable at that point. After they were out, the only things left in my belongs were an e-reader, a few articles of clothing, and a toiletries bag. It took an extra couple of minutes to pack everything back and squeeze down the bag before zipping it, and then to strap the Force Fins back on.
The officials leaned forward again, and the senior one handed me my passport and ticket. I put them in my money belt among a stack of U.S. bills and and emergency credit card, closed my backpack, straightened my posture, and hoisted the pack onto my shoulders. I made an ordeal out of tightening and readjusting the hip strap, giving them time to ask anything else, but they remained silent. I smiled as if saying “thank you” to the officials, and bowed slightly. They both smiled back, waved goodbye, and simultaneously said “Buen viaje and “Have a good trip.” I said “Gracias,” turned around, and strolled out of the building.
I passed the state-operated taxis and followed The Lonely Planet’s tip to walk outside the airport and find rows of private cars, many now being restored 1950’s classic American cars, trapped in Cuba since the embargo. I asked to go to the Plaza de Saint Francis de Agasi, a plaza near the melancon, but away from tourist zones. The map in my Lonely Planet showed the plaza was surrounded by tons of restaurants and bars, some with live music. It was within a mile walking distance of several casa particulares I had circled, and the walk would help me unwind.
The car was a work of art. I’ve never been good at identifying cars, but it was a classic 1950’s convertible and we drove along the melancon with the top down, and something that sounded like The Buena Vista Social Club but wasn’t blaring from the newer Bluetooth stereo the owner had installed. His bolero was on the bucket seat between us so that it wouldn’t blow away in the wind; my LSU cap was rotated backwards on my head. My hand was out the window, flat and flying like Superman, swooping up and down as I rotated my wrist. In the rear view mirror, I saw two massive Spanish forts overlooking Havana Harbor, and I smiled at the English words written on his mirror: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
To brush the dust off my Spanish, and to look for memory lapses, I chatted with the driver over the sound of Caribbean rhythms. I asked where I could get public WiFi, and he told me there were only two places in town, and that Plaza de San Francisco de Asi was one of them. He was about my age, and he also had what looked like a new bald spot; he patted his head and showed the sunburnt spot, and said he should get a hat like mine. We joked a bit about bald spots, and he said he should get a hat like mine. I tried to joke back “hair today; gone tomorrow,” but my neither my Spanish nor his English wasn’t good enough to get the joke.
We arrrived about two blocks from the Plaza de San Francisco de Asi, still on the melacon, but in a much easier place to disembark. I handed over U.S. dollars cash and didn’t try to use my “tip” joke, but I tried my best Spanish to ask, “How do you say ‘trade’ in Spanish?”
“Traficar,” he said.
I smiled, and I asked in Spanish: “? you want we our shoes trade?,”
He enthusiastically said, “Si!” He held out his bolero in one hand, and kept the other open as if expecting something. We traded and both hats fit. We were happy, and said goodbye. He got in his dad’s convertible, rotated his LSU cap backwards, and took off along the meloncon and back towards the airport for his next job.
I walked towards the plaza and bought at WiFi card from a private vendor’s street kiosk. I set my bags on a bench beside two statues in the center of the plaza. I pulled out my iPhone to let my circle know I had arrived and to remind them I’d be offline for a month. Before I did that, I saw I had a voice mail from Wendy. Few people have my private phone number, and all of them knew I was leaving for Cuba and would’t have cell reception for a month, so I assumed it was important. I ignored the automatic translation, and moved into a modified Warrior’s pose with my right hand pointed forward, and my left hand holding the phone next to my ear. I glanced at the screen and pushed play for Wendy’s voice mail, then returned to my modified warrior’s pose.
“Hey Jason, it’s Wendy,” she began, followed by a pause.
“I know you’re going to Cuba, but I was hoping to speak with you about my will.”
Pause.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said quickly, and continued at a similar pace: “I’d just like to add Cindi as executor because you travel so much…”
“And I thought…” there was a whiff of a sound that sounded like she took a breath and began to say, “I…” The transcription software didn’t pick it up, so it may have been my imagination, but I believe I heard her inhale deeper than usual and begin to confess something; it was as if she changed her mind just as she began to exhale, but the momentum sent me a thought that transcription software wouldn’t feel. I stood upright and put my right finger in my ear to block background noise.
“It’s not important. Call me back when you can.”
Another pause, and then a barely noticeable sigh; audible, unlike the whiff, but the transcription software missed it, too.
A sudden feeling of terror flooded my body, and my mind thought Wendy was planning to commit suicide. My heartbeat spiked and my breathing shallowed. I kept a finger in my right ear, and pressed the phone more tightly to my left.
“Tell Dana I said hello, and I hope y’all are enjoying San Diego,” she said quickly. Her tone was forced, but it felt as if she was trying to end on a happy note. “If I miss you, have fun in Cuba, and we’ll talk when you get back.”
She hung up.
The drum beating and telling me Wendy would commit suicide was so loud that I automatically opened my apps and began scrolling for a travel app to buy a plane ticket. I didn’t consider that my apps were blocked, because I wasn’t thinking that clearly yet. I was doing math in my mind, cringing at the thought of getting on a plane to Miami and then to New Orleans, renting a car and driving two hours north to Saint Francisville; Wendy’s town was already on my mind because of the coincidentally named Cuban plaza, and my mind quickly calculated that the trip between the two places named after Saint Francis would take 10 to 12 hours, if I were lucky and didn’t get stuck in Miami overnight. Despite how my mind and body felt getting off the plane in Havana, I was ready to get back on, even if it meant another 12 hours cooped up and immobile.
Wendy was my mother, Wendy Anne Rothdram Partin. She dropped out of high school to have me, then abandoned me when I was an infant. I entered the state foster system, and she fought for four years to regain custody. In that time, she visited me once a month and took me around Baton Rouge, but she was embarrassed to be an uneducated single mother who abandoned her only child, so she taught me to call her Wendy. Old habits are hard to break, and forty years later I still called my mother Wendy.
Gut instincts can be wrong, so I put in my earbuds and listened again. I have a 15% hearing loss in both ears, but at different frequencies, so I often rotate my head back and forth when listening for nuances. I rewound three times around where I had caught a whiff of a sound; anyone watching may have thought I was grooving to music, badly. The feeling Wendy would commit suicide diminished a bit every time I listened, but it was still there. I realized I was slouching, so I straightened my posture and listened again, without my head bobbing. I finished, focused on breathing and holding an upright posture, and pondered what to do.
I stared at the phone in my hands, worried about Wendy, and also worried about my strong initial reaction.
I began to talk myself down. It had been a long night and then a long day. Ever since the previous year’s concern about my memory, I’ve been watching for irrational and overly emotional behavior, which are also symptoms of early stage dementia. This wasn’t overreacting. I was physically uncomfortable, and my mind has always been loopy when I get out of a cramped space, especially long flights. Mike had just committed suicide. The coincidence about St. Francis was in the back of my mind, and I had just reread my 1976 custody report, looking for clues to Jimmy Hoffa’s 1975 disappearance (like a lot of my family history, Wendy and my history are publicly available in court records from the East Baton Rouge 19th Judicial District3). It all made sense, but my heartbeat was still up and my breathing still wanted to be shallow and rapid. I stretched and tried to relax.
I took few deep breaths and called, anyway.
As usual, her cell phone wasn’t getting reception; she lived in a private community on the outskirts Saint Francisville, a town of on 1,500 people about two hours upriver from Baton Rouge, and her community was far enough away from downtown St. Francisville that it rarely picked up a signal (she used a service that depended on tower relays, and the signal could be blocked by cloudy weather or tree overgrowth). I tried her land line, and her archaic answering machine picked up with a cheerful message that hadn’t changed in more than a decade.
“Hey, this is Wendy. Leave a message!” Beep.
“Hey Wendy,” I said. “It’s Jason. I got your voice mail.”
I paused, then said, “I just landed in Havana. It’s around 4pm your time on March 1st.”
I chuckled to lighten the tone, and said that that the cell reception in Havana was worse than at her place, and that I’d only be able to check messages when I came back to Havana every week or two, but to text or email me if it were important. I said I’d stay in Havana longer, if necessary, so we could schedule a time to speak. Coincidentally, I added, chuckling again, I was calling from a public square named after Saint Francis, the patron saint of kindness to animals, and I hoped that put a smile on her face. (Wendy volunteered at the West Feliciana Parish humane society just outside of St. Francisville and had fostered dozens of dogs over the years, and the fastest way to cheer her up was to get her thinking about her dogs.) I reiterated that I’d check messages when I could, and added a perfunctory “I love you.”
I sent an email with a similar message, then called Dana and left a voice mail that I was safe and would be offline soon, and that I had received an ambiguous voice mail from Wendy, and to tell her that I received her message if, for some reason, she called my condo when Dana was there.
I glanced at unread voice mails and text messages. Nothing jumped out as important, and I didn’t feel like checking any more, especially because my WiFi minutes were almost gone. I sighed, then called a couple of casa particulares circled in my Lonely Planet. With each one, I used my best broken Spanish to find one that had what I was looking for: at least two doors, and a window looking onto a garden courtyard. The elderly woman who answered said it would be fine for me to arrive by 10 PM, mas o menus, but no later than that because they went to bed at 11; she gave me directions I didn’t understand, but her casa was identified on a street map in my book and I was sure I’d find it.
I re-checked my messages and emails for a message from Wendy. Frustrated at myself – and her – because I knew she wouldn’t be sober this late in the day, I grew more frustrated by the feeling she’d commit suicide. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from; it seemed more than just fatigue at the end of a long day, but because of that fatigue I couldn’t think clearly and that frustrated me more than anything.
I pulled out my lonely planet and pretended to read it while stretching in warrior pose. I tried to focus on my breathing, tried to let thoughts come and go, and tried to relax. After about five minutes, it began to work. By ten minutes, a few thoughts inside my head clicked together; things I was digesting from Frank “The Irishman” Sheenan’s memoir connected to other memories like a single piece of a puzzle that made the image finally begin to make sense.
Frank wrote: “Partin was no good to them dead. They needed him alive. He had to be able to sign an affidavit. They needed him to swear that all the things he said against Jimmy at the trial were lies that he got from a script fed to him by Bobby Kennedy’s people in the Get Hoffa Squad.”
Hoffa reemphasized to Frank that nothing should happen to Big Daddy. Frank reemphasized that in his book; he said: “Jimmy told me point-blank to tell our friends back East that nothing should happen to Partin.”
That explanation made sense to people who knew details about Hoffa’s conviction. But it didn’t explain why the mafia listened to Hoffa, and Frank didn’t ask. I knew that the mafia collectively owed $121 Million to Hoffa, and Marcello owed about $21 Million of that. Hoffa sent word through his attorneys that he would forgive all mafia debt if Edward Grady Partin lived and changed his testimony. And, as extra incentive, Hoffa said that if no one did it, when he got out and resumed control of the Teamster pension fund, no family in America would ever be financed again.
The friends back east were the mafia families near Frank’s Teamster territory. Ragano spread the word to Miami and New Orleans. I assume Chuckie O’Brien mentioned it to Detroit and Chicago families, though I never found evidence for that. I don’t know who would have reached out to Hollywood and Las Vegas. But the message was consistent and straight from the mouth of Jimmy Hoffa: Use any method possible to intimidate Edward Partin, but nothing should happen to him. Hoffa alluded to my family not being adverse to kidnapping, the “minor domestic problem” that Hoffa joked about in news and his books. Do onto others as you’d have them do onto you: Edward Partin betrayed his teammates to save himself, beat adults to death, and kidnapped kids to get what he wanted; now, get him to change his testimony using any method that kept him alive long enough to free Hoffa from prison. It failed.
Hoffa turned to President Nixon and offered him millions of dollars in campaign financing, and the first endorsement of a republican candidate in Teamster history, and the history of most labor unions; that would come with almost 3 million voters following Hoffa’s word. Nixon sent Audie Murphy to Baton Rouge with a presidential pardon for perjury if Big Daddy would recant his testimony. For almost two months, Audie courted Big Daddy; they even flew to San Diego and drove up to Nixon’s ranch perched above a surf spot humorously called Tricky Dick. Big Daddy wouldn’t change his testimony. Audie continued pursuing until, shortly after flying out of Baton rouge, his small airplane crashed and Audie and all four passengers died.
After Audie died and the mafia failed to convince Big Daddy to change his testimony, Hoffa donated to Nixon’s campaign and endorsed him on behalf of the Teamsters. Nixon pardoned Hoffa in 1971, the year I was conceived, but on the condition that Hoffa remain out of the Teamsters for eight years. Hoffa wanted back in the Teamsters more than anything, and he sent out word again that Edward Grady Patin be made to change his testimony. The mafia still owed Hoffa $121 Million, and he would still forgive it all to get back into Teamster leadership, especially control of the $1.1 Billion pension fund.
Like most court records, there’s more behind the scenes of my custody report than is obvious at first glance; I knew those details, so my mind connected the puzzle. After she lost her virginity to my dad and realized she was pregnant, Wendy couldn’t afford $125 for an abortion and so she decided to accept his marriage offer. They dropped out of Glen Oaks High School and eloped two hours away to Woodville, Mississippi, where he still had family and a couch to crash on, and where state laws didn’t require parental consent for a 17 year old boy to marry a 16 year old girl. They returned as Mr. and Mrs. Edward Grady Partin and moved into one of Big Daddy’s houses on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, nestled between thick forests, a rustic concrete bridge over the Comitee River, and the open and unbuildable swampland of the Achafalaya Basin.
Low level mafia hitmen probably know how to read the phone book, or at least know someone who could. I doubt anyone knew my dad’s name was Edward Grady Partin Junior, or that when I was born, he and Wendy moved into one of Big Daddy’s houses and were listed in the Baton Rouge phone book as Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. Partin. Standing there in Havana, my mind saw flashes from my memories resurfacing in new context, exploding cars, house fires, being yanked by people, my dad shouting, Wendy crying, and lots of blood.
I wasn’t seeing new memories, I was contextualizing the flashes in context knowing what I knew thanks to The Irishman. I had always suspected Wendy saw violence in her new home, but I didn’t imagine the extent until, fatigued and grumpy and exhausted, I added the mafia into our story. I could hear Wendy’s voice saying the words recorded by Judge Lottingger in 1976, realizing how no one knew what was going on, not even Wendy. She said: “I was scared, very confused. I didn’t know exactly which way to turn. I felt I had no one to listen and help with the situation at hand.”
I was, for the first time, seeing a lifetime of Wendy’s habits make sense. She had what Audie Murphy would call PTSD; her outbursts, drinking too much, and avoiding talking about the past, were all typical of someone who had been through extreme trauma.
I stared at the phone in my hand, waves of memories washing over me and new patterns emerging based on what Frank’s book added to our history. But, under the current, there was still worry for Wendy. It wasn’t overwhelming any more, but the feeling she’d commit suicide was still there.
She wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t taint her memory by building up tension to what happened; she’d die six weeks later, on 05 April 20-19 and at 64 years old, from liver failure secondary to excessive alcohol consumption. I would see the obvious – that alcoholism is like slow suicide – and I would relive this moment in Cuba again and again, wondering what would have happened if I had gotten on a plane instead of talking myself out of it. But, like everyone with Kennedy assassination theories who didn’t know then what we know now, on March 1st I didn’t know that my mother would only be alive for five more weeks. In hindsight, of course I would started the journey to Saint Francisville and skipped Cuba. Perhaps that’s why we write memoirs, not just to document hands-on observations from history, and to test our memories half a century later, but to contextualize our history, and hope our story helps someone else learn before it’s too late.
I proceeded forward, armed only with what I knew then, not with what I know now, just like people countries do every day. I packed away my phone and continued what I was doing, unaware of my ignorance. I probably do the same thing every day to this day.
Go to The Table of Contents
Footnotes:
- This is discussed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Hoffa’s legal team, because it implied Big Daddy was a “paid witness,” not just a witness motivated by getting out of jail, but one who would ease their conscious by having their family cared for in exchange for testifying. Warren wrote:
“For his services, he was well paid by the Government, both through devious and secret support payments to his wife and, it may be inferred, by executed promises not to pursue the indictments under which he was charged at the time he became an informer.“
The extent of the payments was always debated in courts and media pundits, but we knew what had happened because it happened to us.
Walter Sheridan as who inspired Big Daddy to “settle down in Baton Rouge,”
In his book on Hoffa, Walter Sheridan described Mamma Jean, not by name, but enough to show he knew her well. He said she was “an attractive southern girl from Baton Rouge,” and that she inspired Big Daddy to “settle down in Baton Rouge,” but that wasn’t true, because though they knew each other for thirty years, they weren’t more than business partners. He understated when he called her attractive, because Mamma Jean was gorgeous. Growing up, we compared her to her namesake, Norma Jeane Mortenson, better known as legendary Hollywood icon Marylin Monroe, Mamma Jean looked like a movie star. Big Daddy met her when she was 18, and he was 26; it would have taken someone like Mamma Jean to get him to marry and settle down. But she was from Shreveport, five hours north of Baton Rouge. Mamma Jean moved to Baton Rouge because that’s where Big Daddy could run the Louisiana teamsters, hobnob with the governor in the state capital, and, according to Walter, “forcibly install” Hoffa’s men in New Orleans.
Mamma Jean was a church-going woman who practiced what she preached. She kept her promise to Walter and never discussed Big Daddy, at least not while Walter, who died in 1995, was alive, because she had told him she wouldn’t, and it was simple as that.
↩︎ - That’s not true; in verifying this story, I learned that Delta Force ordered a bunch of original Leatherman PST’s in the early 1909 their supply seargent, Sgt. Major Walter Shumate, happen to stumble upon one in Cabela’s, the high end sporting goods retailer that was Tim Leatherman’s first contract. Tim keeps a small museaum at Leatherman’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon, with their company’s story, though they omit the part about Sgt. Major Shumate. ↩︎
- My 1976 custody court records are available online for reasons I don’t understand. The originals are in the East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District family court records. Judge Pugh is the unnamed “trial judge” who originally oversaw my custody; he died by alleged suicide, and some people suspected my grandfather was involved. Judge Lottingger took over as the single family court judge in 1975. He was a 30 year veteran of Louisiana legislative law and served under three governors, all of whom had tasked Lottingger with helping them rid the state of Edward Grady Partin Senior and what Governor McKeithen called “his gangster teamsters.” I assume Lottingger knew that my dad was Big Daddy’s son, though he barely mentions my dad in records. He seems more concerned about my mom, who was by then a 21 year old young lady on her own.
Here’s what Judge J.J. Lottingger had to say about Wendy, my dad, and me in the 1970’s:
This is a suit by Edward Partin, Jr., plaintiff, seeking a divorce from his wife, Wendy Rothdram Partin, defendant, after having lived separate and apart for more than one year following a judgment of separation from bed and board. Plaintiff also seeks custody of the minor child, Jason Ian Partin, and the defendant reconvened asking that she be granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child.
The Trial Court had previously, by ex parte order, awarded the temporary care, custody and control of the minor to Mr. and Mrs. James Ed White. Following trial on the merits, plaintiff was awarded a divorce as well as the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child, with the temporary physical custody of the minor child to remain with Mr. and Mrs. James Ed White. The defendant has appealed this judgment as it regards the custody of the child.
This couple was married when plaintiff was 17 and the defendant was 16 years of age. Nine months following the marriage, they gave birth to young Jason. While we are not concerned with the facts surrounding the separation and divorce, it was apparently one of incompatibility as defendant testified that at the age of 17 she found herself married to a man who did not love her and so she left. Her testimony was as follows:
“As I say I was emotionally upset. I was receiving little support from Edward. I was scared, very confused. I didn’t know exactly which way to turn. I felt I had no one to listen and help with the situation at hand.”
Several weeks later she returned and lived with her husband again. She found that the situation hadn’t changed, and felt she had to get away again. She heard of a man who wanted someone to share expenses on a trip to California, so she quit her job and with her last wages left with him. She testified that she had no sexual relations with this man, and plaintiff does not accuse her of such. Following this trip she returned to Baton Rouge still emotionally upset. Her husband was suing her for separation and told her he was going to take custody of Jason. She went to live with her aunt and uncle, got a full time job with Kelly Girls paying $512.00 per month.
In February, 1975, the defendant’s mother was injured in an accident and she moved in with her to care for her. In September, 1975, following the recuperation of the mother she returned to live with her aunt and uncle.
During these above periods of time, the minor child lived with Mr. and Mrs. White. The Whites came to regard Jason as their own and, although the separation judgment awarded custody to the plaintiff with reasonable visitation privileges to the defendant, the Whites decided the defendant-mother could only see the child two days a month and that she could never keep the child over night. The reason the defendant did not contest custody at the separation trial was because at the time she felt unable emotionally and financially to care for her son.
[Judge Lottinger wrote a paragraph of legal jargon here, citing the “double burden” placed on Wendy by the deceased Judge Pugh to go above and beyond what was typically necessary to regain custody.]
We note that the petition for separation was grounded on habitual intemperance, as well as abandonment of the husband and the minor child. There are no other grounds listed for the separation nor for custody. The petition for the separation and custody of the minor child was not contested by the defendant, and a default judgment was granted. Defendant testified in the instant proceedings that the reason she did not contest custody in the separation proceeding was that she was not financially or emotionally capable of caring for the minor, and that knowing the Whites were going to be caring for him, she knew he would be in good hands.
Though the petition for separation had as one of its allegations “habitual intemperance”, the plaintiff in the instant proceeding testified that he had never accused his wife of drinking, nor had he ever seen her drink.
[Judge Lottinger goes on to cite a few precent cases, verdicts from previous judges in higher courts used to justify his opinions, a detail that’s less important in Louisiana’s unique version of the Napoleonic legal code still lingering from the Louisiana purchase that gives judges more freedoms than in all other states.]
The welfare of the child is the main issue that the Court is concerned with. This issue is more important than any wishes or wants the parents may have. Fulco v. Fulco, 259 La. 1122, 254 So.2d 603 (1971), rehearing denied (1971). As a general rule, and in particular where children of young age are involved, preference is given to the mother in custody cases. This preference is very simply explained, the mother is normally better able to care for the child and look after the education, rearing, and training necessary. Estes v. Estes, 261 La. 20, 258 So.2d 857 (1972), rehearing denied (1972).
No argument is made that the mother is not now morally or emotionally fit to care for the child, or that the house in which she lives is not a proper place to rear a child. In fact, the Trial Judge admitted that it was a fine home.
The Trial Judge has not favored us with written reasons for judgment, however, we must conclude from various statements by the Trial Judge that appear in the record that he could find no fault with the defendant, nor was there anything wrong with the house in which she lived. It thus becomes apparent to this Court that the Trial Judge applied the “double burden” rule to the defendant. We have already ruled that the “double burden” rule does not apply in this situation, and thus, under the established jurisprudential rules, we can see no reason why the defendant-mother should not be granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor child with reasonable visitation privileges granted to the father.
In consideration of our above opinion, there is no need to discuss the specification of error as to the ex parte granting of custody to the Whites.
Therefore, for the above and foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Trial Court is reversed, and IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the defendant-appellant, Wendy Rothdram Partin, be and she is hereby granted the permanent care, custody and control of the minor, Jason Ian Partin, and IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that this matter be and it is hereby remanded to the Trial Court for the purpose of fixing specific visitation privileges on behalf of plaintiff-appellee Edward Partin, Jr. All costs of the appeal are to be paid by plaintiff-appellee. ↩︎