Havana 2

“We can report that Edward G. Partin has been under investigation by the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office in connection with the Kennedy Assassination investigation… based on an exclusive interview with an Assistant District Attorney in Jim Garrison’s office. We can report that Partin’s activities have been under scrutiny. In his words: “We know that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were here in New Orleans several times… there was a third man driving them and we are checking the possibility it was Partin.”¹

WJBO radio, New Orleans, June 23rd, 1964; as reported by Walter Sheridan in 1972’s “The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa,” published by Saturday Review Press.

I was still feeling agitation, so I paused on the tarmac before entering the customs room. I took a deep breath that was blissfully free of JP-4 and full of moist, coastal air that soaked into lungs dried out by a long day of airplane air conditioners. It was March, so Havana was a pleasant 70-something degrees, only slightly warmer than the dry coastal air of San Diego but much more pleasant to my scratchy lungs. Of all the Desert Storm syndromes that could be anything else, I distinctly recall my asthma and sinusitus beginning just after the Khamisiyah explosion and worsening after surviving Iraqis ignited the Kuwaity oil fields and we inhaled black, greasy air for two months. I was perched behind a .50 cal machine gun atop a Humvee and wheezing for the first time after a firefight, and a medic, whom everyone called Doc, cauterized my nostrils so I could keep going without bleeding as much. Since then, the Santa Ana winds of San Diego irritated my asthma, just like the air conditioners on long flight. I breathed the moist Havana deeply to appreciate the soothing effect I felt inside my body. Pleasure is often just a balanced contrast against discomfort, and I felt good. I smiled a genuine smile, and strolled up to two customs officials sitting at a simple folding table.

They stopped joking with each other to greet me. I took off my backpack, pulled out a money belt from the front of my pants, and handed them my passport and round-trip plane ticket. I smiled broadly to say that all was good, and they smiled back. They looked at my passport and asked my name, and I said “Jason Partin,” pronouncing my last name a bit like Spanish, Par-teen, to help them verify it was me; I had lost 35 pounds since the photo was taken, and ironically I looked younger at 46 than my photo from when I was 41, especially because I was the clean shaven in the photo and was sporting a grey beard in Havana. I looked like a thin and smirking Papa Hemmingway.

The older and presumably senior official checked my travel insurance and return flight more thoroughly than my visa. I was on the first day of a three month sabbatical using a loophole to allow me into Cuba for 30 days without illegally routing through Mexico City or Toronto, an “entrepreneurship visa” piloted by the Obama administration and already being removed by the Trump administration; I was likely the last cohort. My flight back was on March 28th to provide a safety window for delayed flights or anything unexpected, but they didn’t seem to notice. The senior official was more interested in the Force Fins strapped to my backpack. He ran his finger along the thick polypropolene and flicked one of the tips with a curious countenance. With all of the tourists flocking to Cuba’s beautiful Carribbean dive sites, he had never seen fins like mine.

Force Fins are different than most SCUBA fins. They’re thick, short, black, duck-feet-looking fins modeled after a dolphin’s tail, 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. The patents had long since expired (back then, patents expired 20 years after issue, now they become public domain 17 years after filing). But, the market was so small that no new companies invested in manufacturing processes: Force Fins were still the originals. Conveniently, the stubby shape fits in a carryon bag, and I stuck them there in lieu of the Frisbee I usually carried.

I was prepared to answer any questions about my atypical visa. Had I had my Frisbee, I 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 back then, and now flying discs are ubiquitous because that anyone can copy the design. Saying Frisbee is like saying Kleenex, Zerox, Band-Aide, Q-Tip, and Super Glue for tissues, photocopies, adhesive bandages, cotton swabs, and whatever other people call Super Glue. I didn’t know if Cuba had similar brands or concepts, but I was ready to show examples of the differences between trademarks and patents and brands if anyone asked. Force Fins patents expired, too, but the niche market and expensive injection molding methods prevent them from becoming as ubiquitous as flying discs. Innovation, patents, trademarks, manufacturing, distribution, and market need could all be delved into, should someone ask. Force Fins are much harder to toss back and forth than a Frisbee, but they can still be made into a fun learning lesson in the right context.

The senior official laughed politely and said something to the other, and he laughed too. My Spanish was rusty and I didn’t understand, but I smiled as if I had. The first put his hand through the open-toed fins and spread his fingers wide. He moved his hand in and out, and laughed and made a joke I didn’t understand, but I surmised that he was either being vulgar or joking about my feet. I was used to both. I’m the runt of my family, only 5’11” in the morning (we all shrink about 1.5-2.5 cm by the end of the day because our spinal discs compress, ironically more from sitting than from standing or walking), but I inherited Partin-sized feet and hands that are disproportionately big for my height. It’s like having natural fins and flippers. 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, which was true. Americans call it the Bay of Pigs. I knew a lot about what to expect there, though I thought it was wise to not tell the officials that.

There are a few sunken ships there that I’d like to explore, I said.

He said it was beautiful there, and the younger official agreed. They rummaged through my carryon bag. I had a scuba mask and snorkel that fit me well and was worth packing even though most rentals were good enough. I had a pair of size 14 leather rock climbing shoes stretched over two seasons in Joshua Tree that fit me well, a compact harness, and a worn but servicable caribbeener and UTC that they ignored. I had 14W Chaco’s that could double as beach shoes or hiking shoes. Long ago, I learned to travel with extra shoes; rental shops rarely have my size, and if I loose one it’s hard to find 14W outside of the United States.

My clothing was minimal, swimming trunks, six pair of underwear and two pairs of socks, two pairs of zip-off convertible pants, four quick-dry and compressible long sleeve shirts; one of the shirt brands was Patagonia, founded by the rock climber who became a billionaire and started California’s first Benefit-Corporation, called a B-Corp, and who recently bought a patch of mountains the size of Rhode Island and donated it as a national park in Patagonia – I use it to discuss socially responsible entrepreneurship. I had an iPhone 8 – already considered old by then – and of course could discuss Steve Jobs, an adopted kid who founded Macintosh computers with a few teammates. I had a bright yellow semi-rigid sunglass case with a custom first aide kit, a handful of Band-Aides and a small tube of antiseptic cream, climbing tape that could double as first aide tape; alcohol wipes that could double as hand sanitizer or to clean sunscreen off a scuba mask; an average sized aspirin bottle with a mix of aspirin and chalky white 600mg ibuprofen pills prescribed by the VA that, as SSRI’s, double as mild antidepressants and are useful on many levels after a long flight; an expensive brand of superglue that used pure cyanoacrylate, because cyanoacrylate was originally intended to be a wound-closure glue, and quality brands can still do that and also make quick repairs on coffee-mug handles at guest houses.

I had my copy of The Irishman and a Lonely Planet guide to Cuba; the British husband and wife founders of Lonely Planet had just sold their business to a mega-publisher for something like $50 Million pounds or Euros or whatever they were using back then, about $70 Million dollars and a big enough number to let people know that two hippies with a stapled guide to traveling across Asia could create something remarkable. I had bought it off Amazon, which was originally just a book selling website “as big as the Amazon,” founded by Jeff Bezos, now the world’s richest person and also an adopted kid.

I had two remaining Cliff Bars and one Lara Bar as snacks for the plane rides. Cliff was the founder’s father’s name, and the family-run business had recently consolidated money to re-buy their company for something like $260 Million instead of giving up ownership so that they could continue doing the work they loved; the iconic image still shows a rock climber, and they support many access organizations that I use. Lara Bar was a simple two-ingredient fruit bar that seems obvious in hindsight; the founder, Lara, spent a year and a half iterating her design while she earned minimum wage at Whole Foods, who was her first distributor. Lara Bars was acquired a year and a half later for around $1.5 Million, and she jumped on the opportunity to retire at a young age.

I carried small black pull-string pouch filled with a handfull of Kennedy half dollars and a few old copper English pennies that were the conveniently the same size as Kennedy halves; two loose decks of Bicycle playing cards in metal clip cases to keep them flat in humid areas; and a Zip-Lock baggie full of flesh colored plastic thump tips stuffed with small red handkerchiefs that surprisingly didn’t gather a second glance from the officials.

My tolietries kit included the usual toothbrush and toothpaste, a German safety razor with a blade that had made it through airport security unnoticed. The pack of replacement blades had been confiscated when they showed up on x-ray, along with a Victorionox keychain and one of my Leatherman multitools that were habitually in my travel bag for driving trips to consulting gigs in California and Arizona. Leatherman was named after Tim Leatherman, the Portland engineering graduate who spent six months traveling across Europe in an old van with a Swiss Army Knife – Victorionox – and a pair of pliers, then spent five years in the early 80’s iterating cardboard mockups and sheetmetal prototypes of the world’s first pair of pliers that folded into a knife and tool set; his first contract had been with Delta Force, the army’s anti-terrorism unit based around the corner from the 82nd in Fort Bragg, and then national outdoor supply chains picked up his product, and after Tim’s patents expired, multitools became ubiquitous. I use them in workshops on innovation, and rarely remember to remove them. I’ve probably had dozens confiscated in the years since 9/11 banned them, but that was an old habit and not the the type of forgetfulness that worried me; though to this day I still feel irritated every time a uniformed TSA agent younger than my first Leatherman lectures me about not bringing knives to the airport.

I had peppermint scented liquid Dr. Broner’s soap in a clear, 3.0 ounce, TSA-friendly plastic tube that made decent shaving cream in a pinch, and a homemade aftershave in a 3.25 ounce glass Tabascoo bottle with the label removed that made it past inspectors; the concoction was a mix of witch hazel, grapefruit and lemongrass oil, and a balance of ethyl alcohol so that, if needed, I could use it to either sooth rashes from tight diving weight belts or clean bacteria off of a scrape from rock climbing. I had square plastic container of dental floss with a few extra hefty sewing needles taped to outside; nylon floss is useful as emergency sewing thread, because it’s durable and water-resistant. I had an inexpensive and unobvious double-sided diamond knife sharpener that I habitually carried on flights to use on typically dull kitchen knives in AirBnB’s. The rest of my baggage included reading glasses, sunglasses, a couple of extra Bic pens, a 3.0 ounce tube of sunscreen, etc., and was unremarkable.

The senior official handed back my passport. I put it away in my money belt among a stack of U.S. bills – my visa wouldn’t allow credit card transactions – and closed my backpack, then straightened my posture and hoisted the pack onto my shoulders and tightened the hip strap. I paused for a moment and smiled. They both smiled back, waved goodbye, and said buen viaje. I said gracias, turned around, and strolled out of the building, still ruminating about my mat, but smiling and strolling through the terminal like a duck moving slowly across a murky pond without anyone noticing that its feet are frantically paddling under the surface; I was still thinking about the mat, and worried that I was still thinking about it, which was creating a vicious cycle.

At least I’m through customs, I thought to myself. I made it into Cuba. Despite that relief, my mind returned to the mat. After some effort, I concluded that I had been cramped up all day and had forgotten the mat because of an agitated mind and nothing else. I steered my thoughts to the adventure awaiting me.

I had envisioned going to Cuba ever since my grandfather’s funeral almost 29 years to the day, when I was a senior in high school and had just read Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea, and was told he wrote it from his house in Cuba, where he and Castro used to chat or go fishing and drop hand-grenades overboard to shock German u-boats searching for the mouth of the Missisippi River. Growing up believing that my grandfather was a part of that group probably led me to keeping my Papa Hemmingway beard, even though I planned to shave it before wearing a scuba mask and diving in the Bay of Pigs. A quarter of a century was a long time to look forward to closing that chapter of my family’s stories, and not even a lost yoga mat or lung full of JP-4 could have removed the smile on my face.

My feeling on the flight and irritation at losing my Leatherman were forgotten, in a good way. A side effect of cannibis is short-term memory loss, which for me increases the perception of pleasure from the absence of discomfort. Though I wasn’t stoned, I felt as high as I’ve ever been. I breathed moist island air deeply, and let the trip begin.

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Footnotes:

1. After Kennedy’s assassination, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison spearheaded what is still the only criminal trial against anyone for Kennedy’s murder. He, like approximately half of America, didn’t believe The Warren Report’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone when he shot and killed Kennedy, and so did Ruby when he shot and killed Oswald two days later. Garrisoin brought Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, to trial, and suppeaoned anyone and everyone he could. Oswald was born in New Orleans, but left for the marines and then defected to the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian lady and had a baby. He returned to New Orleans, with the FBI inexplicably buying his airplane ticket, and worked odd jobs while handing out pro-Castro and pro-communism fliers; and traveled to Mexico City in an unscuccessful attempt to fly to Havannah and speak with Castro. Jack Ruby was a Dallas nightclub owner, low-level mafia runner, and associate of Hoffa; though the extent of his relationship with Hoffa wasn’t known back then. Shaw was found not guilty, and Garrison wrote a book about the case, “On the Trail of Assassins: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy,” published by Skyhorse in 1988 and a national bestseller.
   
   Garrison said that after the report of Big Daddy driving Oswald and Ruby around, he had two witnesses who saw Big Daddy meeting with Jack Ruby, and that they had a black and white photograph as evidence. Big Daddy was indicted by a Grand Jury, but not brought to trial because the two witnesses and that photograph disappeared before testifying. The reason for that is alluded to in Big Daddy’s Wikipedia page and in a few books from the 1970’s. His Wikipedia page changes often, but here’s a snapshot of one paragraph in 2024:
   
   “Partin was the business manager of the five local IBT branches in Baton Rouge for 30 years. In 1961, he was charged by the union with embezzlement as union money was stolen from a safe. Two key witnesses in the grand jury died. He was indicted on June 27, 1962, for 26 counts of embezzlement and falsification and released on bail. On August 14, 1962, Partin was sued for his role in a traffic accident injuring two passengers and killing a third. He was also indicted for first-degree manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident. He also surrendered himself for aggravated kidnapping.
   He was finally convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice through witness tampering and perjury in March 1979. Partin pled no contest to numerous other corruption charges in the union, including embezzlement, and was released in 1986.
   
   That Wikipedia blurb underexaggerates the safe. It was a massive steel box that would seemingly take two or three strong men to budge, yet someone removed it from the Local #5 office and knew the combination to open it. The empty safe was found empty at the bottom of a shallow but murky river near the swampy woods of my childhood home, just beneath a nondescript concrete bridge overpass in an area were Big Daddy and my father took me hunting. The safe was for Local #5 records, and before vanishing it also held $450,000 in cash, which was like having around $2 million lying around today. Hoffa tried to use that incident to discredit Big Daddy, too. In 1971 he wrote:
   
   “When Partin began to attract the attention of federal law-enforcement agencies he had been boss of the Teamsters local in Baton Rouge for several years. Some rebellious members of his local accused him of embezzling union funds. They also charged that he had gone off to Cuba and consulted with a Castro deputy about a gun-smuggling deal.
   
   At about the same time and just before federal auditors arrived on the scene to see if there as anythign to the charges made by union members, a six-hundred-pound safe containing all of the union’s records and books disappeared from the union hall. It was found sometime later in the Amite River – empty.
   
   Then, in November, 1961, Partin was involved in a mysterious shooting. A pistol was discharged. Partin was wounded in the abdomen. Partin insisted to authorities that he had been handling the weapon and that it had gone off accidentally.
   
   Leading the union criticism against Partin were to rank-and-file Teamsetrs, A.G. Klein, Jr., and J.D. Albin. In company wihtthe other Teamsters from the local, the two men tstified before a grand jury in East Baton Rouge that indicted Partin for forging a withdrawl card – a form of resignation card – that, it was alleged, effectively removed one of Partin’s other critics from the union.
   
   Subsequently Albin and Klein were brutally beaten up by a group of six men, allegedly Teamsetrs from Partin’s clique in the local. And soon thereafter Klein was killed when a truck loaded with sand ‘fell on him’ in St. Francisville, Louisiana.”
   
   Hoffa would go on to rant about the safe and dead witnesses for a few pages, and then say that Big Daddy’s charges disappeared and his bail bonds were reduced “like magic.” After Klein was killed, Albin recovered from his beating and chose to not testify. I don’t know why Wikipedia says both men died, implying at the same time. As for the witnesses who reported to Jim Garrison, neither was seen or heard from again, as if they vanished like Hoffa and Big Daddy’s records. ↩︎