In 1985, the summer before the space shuttle Challenger exploded, my dad picked me up from Wendy’s house and drove us to Clinton, Arkansas. The trip took three or four joints, about eight hours, and we’d pick up groceries in Clinton before driving the final 30 miles down the winding State Route #1 to his cabin. Sometimes we’d watch movies in downtown Clinton’s two-screen theater that played mainstream movies a year or two after they were released in national theater chains. My dad’s cabin was without electricity, so he probably didn’t see Brian Dennehy portray Big Daddy in Blood Feud in the 1983 two part movie, but in 1985 he took me to the Clinton theater to see Big Daddy in Rambo: First Blood, which had also been released in 1983. Of course Big Daddy wasn’t in Rambo, but Brian Dennehy was, but I hadn’t seen Big Daddy since 1980 and everyone had told me that Brian Dennehy was Big Daddy, and all the actors in Blood Feud called him Edward Partin, so I naturally assumed Big Daddy was also an actor portraying the sherif who locked up Rambo, a physically intimidating former Special Forces solder and Vietnam vet with PTSD portrayed by Sylvester Stalone, the famous actor who also portrayed Rocky and other fighters and gangsters, and course Big Daddy was big and rough enough to lock up Rambo.

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My grandfather was famous as the Baton Rouge Teamster leader who helped Bobby Kennedy send Jimmy Hoffa to prison in 1964, and he may have also been involved with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He was Edward Grady Partin Senior, a rapist, murderer, thief, and adulterer who Hoffa described as “a big, rough man who could charm a snake off a rock.” U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy forgave my grandfather’s transgressions in exchange for him committing perjury against Jimmy Hoffa, and Hoffa was sent to prison based on my grandfather’s testimony. Ed Partin was portrayed by Brian Dennehy in the 1983 film about Kennedy and Hoffa, “Blood Feud,” and by Craig Vincent in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film about Hoffa’s disappearance, “The Irismhan.” Both actors were huge men who accurately portrayed my grandfather as Hoffa’s confidant, but neither of the films disclosed our family history.

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She stirred the eggs a cast iron skillet slowly, being careful not splash the thin layer of hot olive oil. She was standing on a small four legged stool to reach the stove, and knew where to find a fire extinguisher. I was standing behind her, just in case.

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I was strolling near my home in San Diego when I answered my phone and learned that my mother was dying in a hospital 3,000 miles away. I hung up and purchased the next plane ticket to Baton Rouge.

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I was strolling near my home in San Diego when I answered my phone and learned that my mother was dying in a hospital 3,000 miles away. I hung up and purchased the next airplane ticket to Baton Rouge. Two days later, my plane began its decent and I stared out the window, worried and fatigued and lost in thoughts.

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