Havana 2
“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.”1
Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran in “I Heard You Paint Houses,” 2014
I stepped onto the tarmac and inadvertently took a deep breath of JP-4 jetfuel, bent over and choked out thick air, and breathed resisted the urge to vomit. A few moments later, I stood up straight and smiled with a grin so wide it could have been seen from 30,000 feet. Any day you land with the airplane is a good day. But then a thought came to mind, and the grin vanished from my face faster than Jimmy Hoffa from a Detroit parking lot. I whipped my head around and stared up the airplane stairs.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed.
I said it so loudly that an elderly Cuban passing with their luggage heard me over the engine’s roar. I smiled apologetically and they smiled back. I looked back up the stairs and at the doorway that was by people disembarking.
I had forgotten my yoga mat on the plane. It was too late to go back on board. Airport officials were ushering me across the tarmac and towards customs. I quietly muttered fuck again, and forced a subtle smile and nodded towards the officials to say that I understood them. I slowly adjusted my backpack straps and stared up at the door, trying to remember how I had forgotten my yoga mat in the overhead bin. I wasn’t concerned about the mat itself. I could stretch without it, get another one, or use a towel. I was concerned about why I forgot the mat. I had carried it from plane to plane all day, and had patiently waited for the people disembarking to Havana to unload their bags from the overhead bin. I struggled to unstick my carryon bag, yet somehow walked off the airplane without remembering to grab the mat from behind the bag. I was worried that I was losing my mind.
I was only 46 years old, but I had been concerned about early-stage dementia since the year before. I arrived in Nepal for my 2018 sabbattical and took a couple of weeks to recover from the flight, practicing yoga – I remembered my yoga mat that time- and working with a Katmandhu middle school on using the internet to solve problems and start global businesses. I noticed gaps in my memory while using simple math to convert currencies. The first time, I was buying old coins from an elderly bearded vendor sitting cross legged in a street market across from rubble of the middle school. The city had just been razed by an earthquake, but classes and business was going on as usual. He was spouting several prices depending on how many I bought, but my Nepali was weak and I wasn’t used to their currency yet, so I partially listened and did mental math. At some point I was multiplying six times seven and couldn’t see the answer. For almost two minutes – the length of a round of wrestling – I stared down at the vendor and struggled internally to see what was happening; or, more accurately, what was not happening. I couldn’t “see” the answer. Multiplication tables are rote memorization, and I hadn’t thought about them since the second grade.
My mind’s eye saw me in the second grade, learning my multiplication tables in Ms. Johnson’s class. I was wearing a blue jean jacket and sitting in the third seat back and slight to the right side of the chalk board. I was copying the multiplication tables again and again using a #2 pencil, one of two kept in my jacket’s inner pocket with the sharpened end pointed up. The pencil still in my pocket punctured my skin just between my lower two ribs, and I saw myself pulling out the pencil and dabbing blood off my finger and onto my jean pants; to this day, I still have a charcoal grey tattoo from Ms. Johnson’s class, and in Nepal my hand reached for it as I saw my past self and saw the multiplication tables. I remembered feeling the spot in the second grade, realizing it wasn’t bleeding badly, and continuing scribbling multiplication tables. I could see my paper in front of me, and I could see the answer to six times four, six times five, and six times six; and I could see the answer to six times eight; but there were a fuzzy spot in my mind where six times seven used to be.
The vendor misunderstood my hesitation and kept lowering his price, but I was barely listening because I was searching through my hard drive of memories for when I had used six times seven another time. Simultaneously, I was staring at my second grade paper. Six times four is 24, which sounds right. Six times six also sounds like 36, and six times eight sounds like 48. I split the difference and finally saw 42, and memories of other times in history I used six times seven came flooding into my mind. That’s when I became alarmed. I should have known 42. It’s the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything in The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and that had been touted in 2018 when Elon Musk launched his red Tesla convertible into space covered in Hitchiker’s bumper stickers; my first startup was acquired for $42 Million in 2006; and I had recently reread a book about Pat Tillman, who wore Arizona Cardinals jersey number 42 before leaving his lucrative football career to become an army Ranger and fight and die in Afghanistan. I should have known 42. Worried, I paid for five coins, then wandered off and pondered what had happened. I scrolled through my memory of the second grade again, and on the paper I could “see” 42 with whatever it is that allows our mind to see the past, and now I could see that 6 times 7 was 42; but, it wasn’t the same 42 from my youth; it was a new memory overwritten onto the old, as if I had scribbled “42” on a piece of duct tape and pasted it onto the fuzzy spot in my brain, and my mind now saw the patch instead of the memory.
Over the next few months, I experienced a few similar lapses, each with the same patchwork replacing the old memory with something conjured up from more recent memories. I returned to San Diego and met with my primary care physician at the Veterans Administration Hospital, Doc. He had been my primary care physician for eleven years, and had access to 30 years of my medical records and a few congressional studies about me and my old platoon. I told him about the two minutes with the coins, and to make it real for him I did a simple coins from hand to hand routine. Doc wasn’t a fan of magic tricks, but he knew I wanted a distraction while discussing something unpleasant for me. He is a fan of The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – before my trip we had talked about Elon Musk’s convertible with the bumper sticker “Don’t Panic” – and after I finished the coin routine I joked that only reason I didn’t panic when I couldn’t multiply six times seven was because of Elon’s convertible. Doc didn’t joke back, like usual. He leaned forward and said that gaps in memory may be related to what the VA dubbed “Desert Storm Syndrome,” a range of symptoms that, after 30 years of research including the holy grail of randomized, double-blinded clinical trials, is believed to affect around 60,000 veterans of the first Gulf war. I met the three criteria for inclusion: having ironically taken experimental nerve-agent pills called Pyridostigmine Bromide leading up to the ground war, having a random protein naturally present in around 40% of the general population, and having been within 100 miles of the Khamisiya airport explosion on 03 March 1991, three days into the ground war, which unknowingly blew one of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapon stockpiles and sent a massive mushroom shaped cloud over the desert that carried with it serin nerve agent.
I stood still on the tarmac staring at the plane, lost in thought. I had an aching body and a lot on my mind, and my mind was still agitated from having been cooped up all day. Though never diagnosed by the VA, I’ve been slightly claustrophobic since 1983, and that affects how my mind reacts to being inside an airplane. I realized that as a paratrooper in the army. I was in one of nine Battallions on America’s quick reaction force, and I spent three and a half years on notice to go anywhere in the world on the president’s orders and without congressional approval, with the goal of being anywhere in the world within 18 hours. I spent many long days and nights crammed into the bellies of C141’s and a few older and more cramped C130’s. I always needed a day or to after landing to think clearly; until then, I was acting on autopilot. Mike, the buddy who had taken his life, was one of the few people who knew that about me; remembering him was overlapping my thoughts and adding to my worry.
I had forgotten to take my Leatherman out of my pocket before boarding in San Diego, too. But that was common. I must have lost 30 knives to kids with TSA uniforms since 9/11, but that had been happening since 2001 and was just because I had 20 years of experience flying with knives and guns before then, and out of habit usually forgot to remove my daily carry knife; I had lost just as many Victorionox keychain knives, too. But the mat was new, and was important specifically because of my memory, so it was different than my Leatherman or Victorionox.
I took a few shallow breaths and let my mind settle. Forgetting mat wasn’t dementia, I said. I was moving on autopilot, a creature of habit. I stared towards my big feet, and reminded myself that it had just been a long day, that my mat wasn’t strapped to my backpack like my fins were. In the 82nd, I would have jumped out and left anything not dummy-corded to my body. Old habits are hard to break, I said. My mind was agitated and the mat was extraneous gear, and that’s all there was to it.
Satisfied at least temporarily, I snapped my head back and forth to loosen neck muscles and shifted my gaze to follow the official’s finger. I walked towards customs slowly, willing my stiff hips to move as smoothly as possible, and focused on my gait to direct my mind away from the mat.
I joined the line to customs behind a couple about ten to fifteen years older. The man turned to look at me and said, “Did you go to LSU?” I nodded towards the two customs officials seated inside and told him it was his turn. He nudged the lady and they drug their wheeled airline bags to the officials seated behind a simple folding table. About three minutes later, they walked away and I strolled up.
Most Americans fly to Cuba from Toronto or Mexico City, but I was on a legal visa authorized by President Obama to “promote entrepreneurship.” After moving to San Diego, I invented some medical devices and sold either the technologies or companies based on them. For the previous few years, I consulted in quality assurance and international healthcare law for a few medical device corporations, and I was an instructor in engineering, entrepreneurship, and physics at a few universities around town. I ran USD’s innovation laboratory in the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering called “Donald’s Garage,” named after the mechanical engineer who invented the world’s most common heart valve in his garage, Donald Shiley; and I was an entrepreneurship advisor for a similar lab attached to UCSD’s Jacob’s School of Engineering called “The Basement,” funded by a consortium of local entrepreneurs that included the electrical engineer Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm and the chips used in almost every smart phone in America, and patron of the San Diego Charger’s Qualcomm Stadium. (Donald had a bachelor’s and no more; Irwin had a PhD from UCSD from before it was the Jacob’s School of Engineering.) I also volunteered with a few national nonprofits trying to facilitate hands-on entrepreneurship practice for kids in all American public schools beginning in kindergaten, and that’s how I scored an entrepreneurship visa to Cuba. The Trump administration had already closed that loophole – which is ironic, considering Trump touted himself as a self made billionaire entrepreneur and Obama was a lawyer who never started a business – so I was probably one of the last Americans to use it.
I smiled a genuine smile, 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 – about 20 of it only a year before on a trek across the Himalayas – and was the clean shaven in the photo, but I had a grey beard in Havana. I looked like a thin and smirking Papa Hemmingway in person, maybe an older brother to the younger and stronger person in my photo. But the older official checked my travel insurance and return flight more thoroughly than my visa photo. Cuba has national healthcare, so they require anyone visiting to have travel insurance that would either reimburse their system or pay to fly you home for treatment. I had a return ticket already issued. My flight back was on March 28th to provide a safety window for delayed flights or anything unexpected.
They seemed surprised that I didn’t carry more luggage for a month in Cuba, and were interested in the Force Fins strapped to my backpack. 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, 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, and I stuck them there in lieu of the Frisbee I usually carried.
I was prepared to answer any questions about my atypical visa and anything in my backpack. 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 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.” Out of habit, I call all of mine Frisbees, like calling tissue Kleenex or cotton swaps Q-Tips, and I usually carry a Frisbee strapped to my backpack. Had I had my 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; Tim’s first contract was with Fort Bragg’s Delta Force, America’s anti-terrorism special operations force, in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s. He soon scored a few national contracts with outdoor equipment companies, and almost 40 years later still runs the company. Like with the Frisbee, the original folding pliers patents expired, and copies worldwide make Tim Leatherman’s invention ubiquitous.
It’s the history of entrepreneurship I admire, the ideas obvious in hindsight that were hidden in plain sight back then; the same thing is happening every moment today. But I ran out of space packing, and chose to strap scuba fins on my bag instead of a Frisbee, and the TSA had my Leatherman. Force Fins are much harder to toss back and forth than a Frisbee and less useful at cracking walnuts than a Leatherman tool, but they can still be made into a fun learning lesson in the right context: the needs of the market didn’t warrant new manufacturing costs for competing brands, and the market for Force Fins was so small that they blurred into just another type of fin, a version of an older and more revolutionary invention. I find it less useful to talk about entrepreneurship without having something in hand to see and touch, so I keep many examples handy when I’m traveling on an entrepreneurship visa. In a pinch, I could show my Lonely Planet book and tell anyone interested that the company had just been purchased for something like $50 Million Euros or Pounds (it was a British company, and with the new Euro and EU I was often confused about what Brits were using, but it amounted to around $75 Million dollars) and the founding husband and wife team scored big and were currently blogging from satellite phones on their round-the-world retirement road trip; not bad for two hippies who started with a stapled pamphlet on how to drive across Asia on the cheap. I bought The Lonely Planet’s guide to Cuba off Amazon, which was founded after the adopted kid Jeff Bezos wrote Amazon’s business plan – an online bookstore “as big as the Amazon River” – on a cross-country road trip with his wife; now Bezos was the world’s wealthiest person. I accessed Amazon via my iPhone, and Apple was founded by another adopted kid, Steve Jobs, who was also one of the world’s wealthiest people, 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). 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.
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’m the runt of my family, only 5’11” in the morning (we all shrink about 2 cm by the end of the day, because our spinal discs expel fluid and compress from standing or sitting and rehydrate when lying down), 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. Americans call it the Bay of Pigs. There are a few sunken ships there that I’d like to explore, I said. I omitted the part about Big Daddy supplying arms to Castro to defend the Bay of Pigs, and I smiled broadly knowing something that the officials did not.
The senior official handed me my passport said it was beautiful there, and the younger one agreed. I put the passport in my money belt among a stack of U.S. bills and 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, an old habit from when I didn’t want to tell junior soldiers to use their hipbelts before long marches so I made a point of adjusting mine in front of them. I paused for a moment and smiled as if saying “thank you” to the officials. They both smiled back, waved goodbye, and said buen viaje. I said gracias, turned around, and strolled out of the building.
At least I’m through customs, I thought to myself. I made it into Cuba. The claustrophobic feeling on the flight and my irritation from losing another Leatherman were forgotten. I felt good. I had even forgotten about forgetting the yoga mat. I breathed moist island air deeply, and let the trip begin.
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Footnotes:
- To “paint houses” was mafia lingo meaning to spatter someone’s blood across a wall. When Hoffa first called Frank Sheenan on what could have been a tapped phone line, he said, “I heard you paint houses,” implying Hoffa was looking for assistance and seeking men he could trust, vipers who wouldn’t bite unless told to. Frank, like every other Teamster in America, knew of my grandfather, especially after he was the surprise witness who sent Hoffa to prison. Most insiders who wrote books about Hoffa mention something about Big Daddy being a big, brutal, man, even by their standards.
As for mentioning Marcello, Frank knew that Hoffa worked with all the mafia family heads, and that New Orlean’s Carlos Marcello was a primary partner, along with Miami’s Cuban exile, Santos Trafacante Junior. Contrary to the hastily assembled 1964 Warren Report that said Oswald acted alone when he shot and killed Kennedy, those three men – Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante – are the suspects identified by the classified 1979 congressional JFK Assassination Report as prime suspects in orchestrating the president’s murder. According to fifteen years of reaearch after The Warren Report, they were the three with the “means, motive, and method” to orchestrate Kennedy’s assassination. It was interesting for me to read that Frank implied Marcello had Big Daddy in his back pocket instead of considering it could have been the other way around; not that I suspected one or the other, I just tried to keep an open mind and not parrot what other people had always assumed. ↩︎