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 resisted the urge to vomit. I breathed more shallowly, and 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 and stared at me in surprise. I smiled apologetically and shrugged a bit, and they smiled back and kept walking. I looked back up the stairs and at people filing through the exit door.

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 only 46 years old, but I had been concerned about early-stage dementia since the year before; that’s one of my motivators for re-reading history and checking childhood memories against documented information. If my mind was deteriorating faster than normal, the disease was manifesting as memory loss and irritability.

After my 2018 sabbatical, my primary care physician at the Veterans Administration was alarmed when I first bouts of mentioned memory loss, and he said it could be related to what the VA called “Desert Storm Syndrome,” a collection of symptoms that were mostly physical, but as veterans aged the VA was noticing other trends, like memory loss, depression, and increased suicide rates. He had access to almost 30 years of my medical history, because after my grandfather’s 1990 funeral I became a paratrooper in the army and served in Desert Shield and Storm before attending LSU. By 2018, I met the three the criteria for statistical probability of Desert Storm Syndrome: having a random protein present in around 40% of the population, taking Pyridostigmine Bromide pills prescribed by the government as an experimental prophylactic against Saddam Hussein’s nerve-agent chemical weapons, and being within 100 miles of the Khamisiyah airport explosion on 03 March 1991.

In the first Gulf war, my platoon, D-Company 1st/504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, led the capture of Khamisiya and participated in its destruction on behalf of General “Stormin'” Norman’s orders. We didn’t know that the airport held a stockpile of Saddam’s chemical weapons, and included the nerve agent serin. Engineers arrived and lined the airport with C4 explosives, and we called in two 15,000 pound bombs to be released by C-130’s and timed to explode with the C4 and level the airport, render it useless, and destroy all of its Soviet Mig fighter jets; the result shook the ground for miles around, and released a mushroom cloud the size of a mountain that spread serin into the air. In the 30 years since, I’ve been a part of three congressional investigations into the explosion. The medial research was led by the VA’s Office of Agent Orange Victims, a Vietnam-era effort to address high rates of cancer in soldiers near American-sprayed Agent Orange, which tells you how long these things can drag out. About 20 years before, my medical records were once used as part of a control group of symptomless soldiers to flush out the statistics in a painfully slow process; in that time, I developed the symptoms, though I’m still not sure where they originated. I have many of the aches and pains associated with Desert Storm syndrome, just like millions of former soldiers, athletes, and accident victims whose bodies had been to hell and back at a young age; it took almost 30 years for science to learn how to detect and isolate proteins in the body, and just as long to sort out the statistics of Desert Storm soldiers and the general population.

The official report about Desert Storm finally came from countless randomized doubled blinded studies comparing dozens of thousands of soldiers in the war, soldiers not in the war, and civilians, and it says that 60,000 of the 560,000 soldiers who served in Desert Storm were statistically linked to the war. I was one of them, my primary care physician proposed. He ordered tests to eliminate Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s – at least to the best of our testing technology – and began monitoring my memory to see if deterioration could be detected. So far, it hadn’t; but the memory tests were so elementary that I couldn’t imagine not passing them even if my mind was half of what it was when I was younger. But, the statistics were alarming, especially because so many people I knew suffered the classic symptoms of Desert Storm syndrome. Only a year before, a buddy from the war, Mike, had taken his life with the standard firearm of US Army Rangers and US Federal marshals, a Glock 17. None of us had seen that coming, and I wasn’t so proud that I wouldn’t keep my mind open to the possibility of what could be generalized as a mental illness that took decades to become noticeable.

I stood still on the tarmac staring at the plane, lost in thought. I took a few shallow breaths and let my mind settle. 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 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 two after landing to think clearly, and acting on autopilot until the fog in my mind cleared.

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. Forgetting the mat wasn’t dementia, I told myself. 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. I reminded myself that I had forgotten to remove my Leatherman tool from my personal item bag, and that I had been forgetting to remove knives before flights ever since 9/11 2001 without concern. Dozens of keychains later, I just accepted the habit from when people still carried knives on planes, and I automatically added the cost of new Leatherman’s and keychains to my plane fare. Carrying a knife on planes was an old habit, so forgetting them was understandable, but traveling with a yoga mat was new to me and should have been fresh on my mind. I carried it to counter increasingly aching joints and muscles, and it was so beneficial that my mind automatically reached for it and I had yet to forget it even on monthly flights and popping in and out of hotels across the country, so I didn’t yet have a habit of strapping it to my bag or remembering to get it from the overhead bin.

There was nothing to worry about, I told myself. I was just tired, and I had a lot on my mind after reading The Irishman. 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. They seemed like a retired couple going on vacation to any Carribbean Island, and could have been Canadian for all I knew. The man turned to look at me and said, “Did you go to LSU?” I sighed deep inside, and nodded towards the two customs officials seated inside and told the man it was his turn. He nudged the lady and they pulled their wheeled airline bags to the simple folding table that served as Cuban customs. About three minutes later, they walked away and I strolled up.

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 during 2018’s sabbatical – and I 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; in hindsight, maybe I should have strapped my yoga mat there instead.

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, called the Personal Survival Tool. Tim’s first contract was in the mid 1980’s with Caldera’s sporting goods, and America’s anti-terrorism special operations unit, Fort Bragg’s Delta Force, picked them up as standard issue by the early 1990’s. 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, and a little bit of history can get people looking around for other ideas that may become be self-evident to posterity. Tangible examples are best, but I ran out of space packing, and chose to strap scuba fins on my bag instead of a Frisbee, and the TSA confiscated my Leatherman.

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. I felt I was ready for any questions Cuba could ask about my atypical entrepreneurship visa.

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 for what I hope are obvious reasons.)

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,” and he opened the carry-on backpack and peered inside before rummaging around.

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 and poked my right thumb into it, then pulled out my thumb and wiggled it. Their eyebrows went back up to normal, and they leaned back and relaxed a bit.

“I give them to children at casa particulares to say ‘Thank You,'” I said.

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 without rummaging more.

They leaned forward again, and the senior official 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.

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. Free from JP-4 jet fuel, I breathed the moist island air deeply, and let my 2019 sabbatical begin.

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Footnotes:

1. 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 research after The Warren Report, they were the three with the “means, motive, and method” to orchestrate Kennedy’s assassination.
   
   Historically, Big Daddy and my family was showcased in national media (along with newly appointed President Johnson and his family ten months after President Kennedy died) after Big Daddy testified against Hoffa in 1964, and he was shown again in 1968 in Time magazine’s six-issue expose on organized crime, highlighting his refusal to accept a $1 Million bribe from Carlos Marcello to change his testimony against Hoffa and deepening America’s conviction that Hoffa’s Teamsters were linked to organized crime. Those exposes drove the forming of congressional committees to reopen the closed case of Kennedy’s murder, and led to the 1979 congressional report on JFK and Martin Luther King’s assassinations. ↩︎