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

I was wriggling in my seat, trying to find the least uncomfortable position an Airbus parked on the Houston runway. It was 01 March 2019. 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” in my left.

I was grumpy about loosing my new Leatherman pocket tool and Victorinox keychain when the kid in a TSA uniform confiscated them at the San Diego airport early that morning; of course, I knew it was my fault and that I was grumpy about staying up to late and waking up too early, but I so disliked sitting in a cramped airline seat that my mind sought scapegoats to bear the brunt of my irritation. I wiggled again, leaning into the empty seat beside me as long as I could.

The intercom cracked on and a muffled but cheerful voice 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, slightly older than the TSA kid who confiscated my Leatherman, navigated down the isle. He was around 35 years old, too young to need reading glasses. 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, as cheerfully as the intercom had sounded, asked: “What are 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 left earbud and said, “Say again.”

“What are you reading?” He asked even more cheerfully.

My earbuds weren’t on. I use them on flights for the noise-canceling feature and 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.

He was a white guy 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. (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 trying to explain who Jimmy Hoffa was in his 2004 memoir, fifteen years before and when the man next to me was probably a freshman in college:

“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.

I rotated my hand to show the book’s back cover.

The young man 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. 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.

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.”

“I grew up in Baton Rouge,” I told him.

“Do you have family in Houston?” He asked.

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 smiled a bit, thanking that bit of foresight and temporarily forgetting that I hadn’t removed my Leatherman from my pants pocket or the Victorionox from my keychain the night before. Probably because the man had asked, my mind drifted to Houston.

I did have family in Houston. It’s the 4th largest city in America, with around 7 Million people (Baton Rouge has around 250,000 and would be a suburb of Houston.) After Big Daddy called the New Orleans FBI office on his first night in jail, he was freed 48 hours later by J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy; his only other requirement for becoming a mole in Hoffa’s inner circle was that Mamma Jean and their five children (my dad and Uncle Keith, and aunts Janice, Theresa, and Cynthia) be protected against inevitable retribution by Hoffa and his mob allies. Walter Sheridan, the head of the FBI’s Get Hoffa Task Force, found Mamma Jean and where she had hid each of her children and offered her a deal: the United States would buy her and her children a big house in an upper-middle class Houston suburb, and pay her a monthly living wage as long as she remained silent about Big Daddy.

Their location was kept secret, but after Big Daddy’s testimony sent Hoffa to prison, Hoover told Life magazine that he personally oversaw selecting the federal marshals who would protect the Partin family; America had just seen Big Daddy and all his children smiling atop the Baton Rouge state capital building, and of course it made sense to protect such adorable kids (they were made to look extra-cute in those Life Magazine photos).

Houston was big enough and far enough away that it was unlikely Mamma Jean would be spotted by Teamsters in Baton Rouge or Marcello’s men in New Orleans, and the Houston FBI field office was much more heavily manned and probably less corrupt than the New Orleans and could provide 24 hour a day protection for my family as long as Jimmy Hoffa remained in prison. Her name was always kept anonymous and no one other than us knew the government bought her a house, but some of her monthly payments were known because Hoffa’s army of attorneys focused on that as a form of bribery, saying Bobby Kennedy paid Big Daddy to say whatever needed to be said. Until Hoover found a way to keep the payments secret, they were a small part of the supreme court case of Hoffa versus The United States, where Hoffa went to prison for jury-tampering based solely on Big Daddy’s testimony. In his three-page dissent against using Big Daddy’s word, Chief Justice Earl Warren mentioned Mamma Jean and her payments three times:

“After the Test Fleet trial was completed, Partin’s wife received four monthly installment payments of $300 from government funds, and the state and federal charges against Partin were either dropped or not actively pursued,”

and,

“Reviewing these circumstances in detail, the Government insists the fair inference is that Partin went to Nashville on his own initiative to discuss union business and his own problems with Hoffa, that Partin ultimately cooperated closely with federal authorities, only after he discovered evidence of jury tampering in the Test Fleet trial, that the payments to Partin’s wife were simply in partial reimbursement of Partin’s subsequent out-of-pocket expenses, and that the failure to prosecute Partin on the state and federal charges had no necessary connection with his services as an informer,”

and,

“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 147 references to Big Daddy are mostly about – or against – his character as a witness, and few people reviewing Hoffa versus The United States in today’s law schools would know about Mamma Jean, or wonder how or why “the Government” would pay her, not Big Daddy, as “partial reimbursement” for out-of-pocket expenses in traveling between Baton Rouge and Nashville. But Hoffa’s lawyers fought every aspect, and they publicized the bribe to Mamma Jean and how she and her children had disappeared; for a brief time the Partins were known as “America’s First Family of Paid Witnesses,” setting the stage for subsequent payments to informers, but unique in that Mamma Jean’s payments would exist only as long as Hoffa remained in prison. After Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, Hoover saw that his promise remained attached to our family, at least until Hoover’s death by heart attack in 1972, which was coincidentally soon after Hoffa’s pardon from President Nixon; that’s when the Partins stopped getting paid, but no one seemed to have a record of the houses and we kept them.

Mamma Jean and my aunts thrived in the relatively upscale subdivision, but my dad and Keith didn’t enjoy living in suburbs and missed Big Daddy. In 1971, when my dad was 16 and Keith was ten, they moved to Baton Rouge and lived with Big Daddy’s mother, Grandma Foster (she had left Grandpappy Grady Partin and remarried a man named Foster), in a house Bobby Kennedy had arranged for her near the airport. My dad deflowered my mom soon after transferring to the small, rural Glen Oaks High School near Grandma Foster’s house, and I was born ten months later, on 05 October 1972, and I would spend the next 17 years alternating between my mom’s house in Baton Rouge, my dad’s cabin in Arkansas, and a few visits to Mamma Jean’s for trips to Astroworld and other amusement parks that could swallow Baton Rouge’s cheerful but diminutive Fun Fair Park.

After I left Louisiana for the army, I’d visit Mamma Jean and my cousin Tiffany until their deaths in 1996, Mamma Jean by breast cancer and Tiffany by a garden hose connected to the exhaust pipe of her car while it was parked in Mamma Jean’s garage. Though I still had family in Texas and occasionally saw them in Baton Rouge, I hadn’t visited Houston in decades; I may have inherited my dad and Keith’s aversion to suburbs, and after parachuting from planes with combat gear for a few years, amusement park rides lot their thrill.

Now, Houston was just a layover on my way to New Orleans once every few years; it was a long story, and I avoided talking about it with strangers on airplanes.

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 the hole to their anthill. Each tanker was the length of five LSU football fields, and I did the math of linear scaling based on 30,000 feet in the air, and felt that seemed right. I searched for the Deep Horizon, the one that was on the news for probably two years as it leaked a patch of black crude bigger than Rhode Island, but I couldn’t distinguish it from the other tiny anthills being serviced by dozens of tiny ants that were 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. The man seemed interested, so I stopped and focused on The Irishman. My mind was too muddled to make sense of it all, but I knew some points were being digested and mixed with what I already knew, and in a few days I’d probably understand more of what Frank Sheenan remembered about Big Daddy and Jimmy Hoffa.

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 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.

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. 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 you’d find on AirBnB’s app, but Cubans were unable to use the American web site because of the embargo that has lingered since President Kennedy enacted it in 1961. I circled casa particulares 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; that date’s hindsight, putting together patterns I first noticed three years into the Airborne when I first realized I reacted to being trapped in small spaces without windows: grumpy and mindless. At first, I thought it was an artifact of being crammed in C-130’s and C-141’s so tightly that we had to rest the 80-120 pound ruck sacks strapped to our legs atop each other’s laps, and the shaky circumnavigating routes the air force took when they flew low, following rivers or roads at nighttime and bouncing us around in the back for 18 hours. We lined our helmets with barf bags and passed them around generously; about half of us peed in our pants rather than unhooking and walking across 50 ruck sacks and barfing soldiers to pee in the tiny toilet near the pilots, which required having to be re-connected and re-inspected by a jump master who was usually as miserable as we were. In 1993 I began riding in the relatively luxurious C-5 Galaxy, canavernous enough to swallow a C-130 like Astroworld swallowed Fun Fair Park, and the air force began tapping into GPS then and having smooth rides while our small team reclined in plush seats in the second-level passenger section; even then, I’d get grumpy and my mind would muddle, and when we’d land or hit the ground, I’d act on habit and conditioning until I could think clearly the next day or so. After college, I swore that no job in Houston or Atlanta or anywhere would be worth any salary if I had to sit indoors behind a desk, and I sometimes simplify my career path students that I started inventing things to avoid a desk job, though I know that I would not just been miserable, I would have performed poorly because my mind would have been cloudy every day. Like digesting The Irishman, I wouldn’t realize everything I read in The Lonely Planet for a few days; I circled notes that I could glance at when I hit the ground in Havana and trust whatever logic made me circle a few options out of many.

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 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.

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, and I tried to forget about forgetting my yoga mat by concentrating on walking without limping. My mind was too muddled to think about anything other than getting away from the JP-4.

When 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.

The customs official ask for whomever’s next. I rotated back and stepped up to the desk. I found my smile and wore it the 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.

“Jason Partin,” I said, pronouncing my last name a bit like Spanish, Par-teen, to help.

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, after the CIA’s failed attempt to invade and overthrow Cuba in 1961). 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.

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 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, I could use Jobs and Bezos in a classroom setting to show that entrepreneurship and innovation are 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. I kept a pocket full of anecdotes about success stories from every race, demographic, or circumstance; that list was a continuation of what I learned as a teenager, when Coach told me that gold medalist Doug Blubaugh approached him during the 1960 olympic trials and said: “Someone has to win, and it might as well be you.” You can’t teach someone how to be an entrepreneur just like you can’t teach someone to wrestle at the olympic level, but you can point out that the path is open to anyone willing to put in the effort.

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. Entrepreneurship, like athletics, is a personal journey: some people want to quit after winning a state title and others want to go on to nationals and compete in that league.

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 District¹). 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 and tried to relax. I couldn’t think clearly, so I quit trying and called the casa particulares I had circled.

One was perfect for a couple of reasons: they confirmed that their room had two windows and two doors, one opening onto a courtyard, and they apologetically said they wouldn’t be home until at least 10pm. I said that was fine, that I was meeting a friend for dinner anyway and would see them “a las diez, mas o’ menus trienta minutos.”

I proceeded forward, armed only with what I knew then and not with what I know now, just like most of us do every day. I would have no way of knowing, but the tone in Wendy’s voice was her knowing she was about to die; on 05 April 2019, she would pass away from liver failure secondary to alcohol abuse, a slow and gradual form of killing ourselves.

Had I known, of course I would have gotten back on an airplane and flown home. Instead, 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:

1. 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. ↩︎