Wrestling Hillary Clinton: Part V

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

WJBO radio, New Orleans, 23 June1964

Lea and I drove to Grandma Foster’s house five blocks away from Granny’s. Lea didn’t bother lighting a cigarette – she had probably breathed enough second hand smoke from Granny to hold her over for a while.

There was only Grandma’s car in the carport, so I decided to introduce Lea to Grandma.

Grandma Foster’s house was a carbon copy of Granny’s. We pulled in her driveway and squeezed or bodies between her tiny sedan and carport wall and rapped on her door. I opened it and stuck my head in and paused for a brief moment and stared at Big Daddy’s chair parked in front of the sliding double windows like a throne, and the football-field long empty lawn between the window and thick woods in the distance, like a field protecting a castle from charging soldiers. My heartbeat sped up as if the room had no windows; frustrated that it still did that whenever I thought of Big Daddy, I forced myself to take a deep breath and I called out: “Grandma? It’s me.”

She was in her living room and walked out with huge grin on her wrinkled little face; she had looked like Yoda since I first remembered seeing her and she thought I was my dad.

“Oh, Jason!” She exclaimed in her rural Mississippi drawl. “Oh, Hon!” She wiggled like a little dog happy to see you, and said, “I’m so happy you still visit your ol’ Grandma.”

She opened her arms and I shot down and scored a double armed hug.

She looked at Lea and said, “Who’s this, Hon?” She smiled as mischievously as Lea could, and asked, “She your girlfiend?”

I said yes and Lea stuck out her hand and said her name was Lea and called Grandma “Miss Foster.” Grandma said, “Oh, Hon! Call me Grandma,” and stepped past her hand and scored a hug.

“Sit down, sit down,” she said. “Y’all want some dinner? I got leftovers on the stove.”

Grandma’s kitchen always smelled like burnt roux, the same odor as Hillary Clinton’s armpit. I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, and so did Lea; I had warned her that Grandma Foster didn’t own any cooking books, and we planned on stopping by Tony’s Seafood by the airport for a catfish po’boy before we headed back to Belaire.

I hadn’t met Hillary Clinton yet, so Big Daddy was the only thing on Earth that terrified me. It began his first week out of prison in 1986, the same year my dad had gone to prison and they crossed paths without seeing each other. I was staying at Granny’s after my dad’s arrest because Wendy couldn’t afford a baby sitter, and even though I was 13 she felt I needed one. I walked over to Grandma Foster’s and was surprised to see a small fleet of cars parked along the street in front of her house; in the driveway was a huge new fancy Cadillac seemingly as big as Grandma’s entire house. I walked up to the carport door and knocked and entered just like I had with Lea, and that’s when I saw Big Daddy sitting in his throne and blocking the view out Grandma’s double glass doors.

My breath froze. It was stronger than any claustrophobia I felt before or since. I wasn’t dizzy, but I couldn’t move or feel my hands and feet and the room seemed to wobble and spin back and forth and always be centered around Big Daddy. The small kitchen room was packed with Partins sitting around Grandma’s six-person dining table, and through the double wide doors and in her living room were a handful more. Big Daddy’s little brother, Uncle Doug, was sitting at the table and blocking the view of Grandma’s baker’s rack and it’s rows of photos of her and her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and recent great-great-granddaughter from one Big Daddy’s daughters with his wife after Mamma Jean left him in 1963.

Doug’s little brother, my great-Uncle Joe, was standing beside Big Daddy and blocking the wall and blocking the photos and framed magazine clippings. His son, Zachary’s star football player and also named Jason Partin, was sitting at the table by Doug; though two years younger than I was, when sitting that Jason’s head was as tall as mine when I stood there frozen in space and time.

The rest of the Partins were a sprawling family tree from Joe and Doug and Big Daddy and his wife between Mamma Jean and going to prison in 1980; my dad’s little brother, the 6’4″ 280 pound clone of Big Daddy, Keith, was the only one of Mamma Jean’s kids who spent time around Big Daddy’s brothers and new family. About a dozen Partins were there all together, all the ones still listed in the Baton Rouge phone book, and their escapades could fill a book; but, my focus has always been on that first moment I walked in and froze and could see nothing but Big Daddy’s smiling face.

Grandma was at the door and beamed and wiggled with joy and exclaimed: “Edward! Look who’s here! It’s Ed!”

Doug corrected her and she said of course she knew it was me, that she had been excited and I look so much like my dad and Jean that she said Ed.

I don’t remember accurate details after that. My memory has been overlayed with similar scenes over the next three years, so I don’t trust them. All of the stories I remember Doug telling me with Big Daddy nearby and smiling and maintaining his Miranda Rights distill into that first day and bounce around in my head like a chaotic party where everyone is talking and trying to be heard over everyone else. Doug would dote on like a giddy schoolboy every time Big Daddy was around, and he’d publish his version of history as a 90 year old man in a veterans convelescent home in 2017, a self-published and un-edited book called: “From My Brother’s Shadow, Teamster Douglas Westley Partin Finally Tells His Side of the Story.”

Doug was current president of the Baton Rouge Teamsters when Big Daddy had was elected because of a special election 1981 to override the Baton Rouge Teamsters who had voted Big Daddy to remain in charge and to keep getting paid in prison, just like Hoffa maintained control of the International Teamsters the first year or so he was in prison. Despite Doug’s success and the title of his autobiography, I never felt he never left Big Daddy’s shadow; his book read exactly like he spoke back then, which was a giddy boy seeking approval from his big brother.

Today, my version of being frozen in time and space by Big Daddy’s face hasn’t changed from how I explained it to Lea late that same night, when I snuck out of Granny’s house through the same window Wendy used to sneak out and lose her virginity to my dad only 13 years before I showed up at Grandma’s that day. Her older boyfriend had a car and picked a few of us up for a party in an empty parking lot probably intended for long-term parking at the airport but never used. Lea and I had met at Scotlandville Magnet High the semester before, and we were sitting on the roof of her boyfriends tank, a massive 1979 Chevy Impala. We were smoking cigarettes and getting to know each other better while other guys in a group of fun-loving who called their group The Atomic Dogs who swore off alcohol and danced to music by George Clinton and Parliament, who had just released The Atomic Dog.

“It was like Time Bandits,” I said. “When they were running from God’s big face but the face kept getting bigger and they were moving backwards instead of forwards.”

Time Bandits was a classic of our time about dwarfs who stole a map of time from God and kidnapped a boy from our time and took him flying pirate ship to steal gold from people like Napolean, and secrets from the mystical beasts whose identity was lost on me. All the while, both God and Satan pursued them and tried to get the map of time.

“Everything was in slow motion,” I said. (My first attempt to describe it was as if I were in slow motion and looking around at everyone, but today I recall being motionless and simply knowing who was in the house with us.)

Lea said, “Like Luke Skywalker meeting his father in Yoda’s dark forces tree?”

I shook my head “no” and said, “No, not like that. Slower. And his head was getting bigger like God in Time Bandits.”

I was only 13; I had a limited vocabulary, and the more I tried to describe what I saw and felt the more I was changing what I would remember that I saw and felt; I kept repeating “like God in Time Bandits,” so I believe that movie was the closest thing I had scene that would compare.

“Hmmm…” she said. “Are you sure it wasn’t like that tree, but with Darth Vader’s head getting bigger? I mean, you know you don’t want to be like your dad, and he didn’t want to be like your grandfather, so maybe that’s it?”

I thought about it for a minute and then said, “Well, yeah, but it wasn’t really his head; it was his smile.”

She beamed and said, “Like the Cheshire Cat!”

I didn’t know what she meant. She showed me. I was too trapped in my memory of that morning to appreciate it.

“No,” I said. “Not like that. Subtle. And with his blue eyes staring at me, like this…” I tried to be calm and penetrating like he was, but I couldn’t.

Lea didn’t get it and she asked: “What did he say?”

I shook my head and said I couldn’t remember. I said I could hear Doug laughing and talking loudly to anyone who would listen, and hear everyone telling stories at what seemed like the same time, as if no one could stop talking around Big Daddy.

“My grandmother – his mother – was the only one I remembered talking to me.”

Grandma had held my hand while Big Daddy’s face loomed, and she kept smiling and patting my hand and doting on me and saying, “You such a good boy. You come visit y’er old Grandma Foster all the time. Y’er daddy be proud of you. I’m proud of you!”

She was doing the same thing while Lea looked around her tiny dining room, which was framed by where we stood, the big window and Big Daddy’s throne of a chair, Grandma’s malodorous kitchen, and the small living room; Big Daddy’s Cadillac still seemed bigger than her living space, and I if I tried to imagine all of my uncles and cousins packed in there my heartbeat would speed up as if I were trapped in a closet.

Grandma saw Lea staring at a signed football on the top shelf of her baker’s rack.

“That there is the LSU winning football,” Grandma proudly told Lea. She let go of my hands and waddled over to reach for it. Lea followed and reached up on the shelf and pulled it down for her. Grandma took it and showed her Billy Pappas’s John Handcock of a signature across one side, and at least a dozen other signatures from the 1954 LSU national championship victory that won Billy the Heinemann Trophy and another all-American title. Lea knew the names better than I did, and chatted with Grandma about LSU football while I stared at the photos and books and magazines on Grandma’s baker’s rack.

There were many photos of Big Daddy, and a few group photos. The framed 8’x10″ picture of my dad and Big Daddy atop the new state capital cut out from Life Magazine was no longer on the wall; it was now low on the baker’s rack and in plane site; in it’s place was an 8x9framed collection of 1964 silver Kennedy half dollars, the first and only year they were made in 100% silver, assembled in neat rows around a hand-written note that said: “To Mrs. Foster, Thank you for all of your help. Bobby Kennedy.”

She had copies of Walter Sheridan’s book and Hoffa’s second autobiography; both looked unread, except for pages bookmarked with sticky notes and opened to where Big Daddy’s name appeared; he filled Walter’s telephone-book sized account of the Teamsters and the FBI’s account of getting Hoffa, and out of the 500 or so names listed in the back Edward Grady Partin was cited more than anyone other than Hoffa and Bobby Kennedy, though Grandma only marked the parts that showed his name ten times across multiple pages.

For Hoffa’s autobiography, she only had Chapter 10, the chapter about Big Daddy, bookmarked. It began with: “Edward Grady Partin was a big, rugged man who could charm a snake off a rock,” then went on to the only regrets Hoffa had was appointing Fitzgerald as his successor and escalating the Blood Feud with Bobby Kennedy. Grandma liked to point out that her son’s name was always used next to Bobby Kennedy, and that he had risked his life to save Bobby’s.

I glanced at the coins covertly. I had never owned silver Kennedys, all of mine were from after 1970. I had borrowed Doctor Z’s once, and instantly realized that silver feels much better for sleight of hand and has a cleaner sounding clank than modern slippery coins with a lot of nickel in them. I felt badly that every time I saw that frame I felt – almost hoped – that Grandma would leave them to me in her will. I looked away from the coins and stared down at that photo of my dad everyone pointed out, and wished people would stop saying how much we looked alike.

Grandma turned to me and said: “Oh, Hon! She’s lovely. You a lucky boy.”

I said I agreed.

Lea saw the framed Life photo and picked it up and said, “Wow! You really do look like your dad.”

I took a deep breath and held it and kept smiling.

“He always did, Hon,” Grandma said. “He’s a handsome boy, just like his daddy.”

Lea’s left eyebrow agreed.

“Look here,” Grandma said, picking up a copy of the May 1964 issue of Life with Edward Grady Partin’s name and Lynda Bird Johnson’s photo on the cover and opening to the well-worn, multi-page focus on the Partins that took up more of that month’s Life than Lynda Bird and her dad, the newly appointed president, former vice-president Lyndon B. Johnson. That issue was released immediately after Big Daddy stood up and surprised everyone as a walking bugging device inside of Jimmy Hoffa’s inner circle; it had obviously been queued up and released when the world would want to know more about him.

“See?” she beamed, pointing to the shirtless picture of Big Daddy in boxing gloves when he was twenty or so. “All my chil’ren and grandchil’ren is good looking.”

“Y’all gonna have good looking chil’ren, too,” she said with her Chesire Cat grin. Lea matched the grin and stared at me until I walked over and focused on the 1964 Kennedy halves.

Grandma told Lea, “They is sayin’ all kinds of mean things about Edward in the paper now that he’s sick, but I don’t read it and I don’t believe none of what they say.”

She tapped the almost worn out photo of Big Daddy strapped to a lie detector machine and surrounded by white lab-coat wearing scientists, and a two-page spread of the peaks and valleys of his polygraph test.

“See this here?” she said. “It proves Edward told the truth. He didn’t rape that Negra girl or steal them two chil’ren. They was saying that about him back then to get Hoffa out of jail. They said all kinds of bad things.”

“They say anything to free Hoffa,” she continued passionately. “But Edward’s a good boy. He weren’t afraid of them.”

“And Bobby!” she exclaimed. “He was so grateful he bought me this house with that big yard”

She waved her tiny arm around to show off her house and big yard.

Her face lost its smile; she said, “And Walter found Jean and where she hid Edward’s chil’ren, including Jason’s daddy. She weren’t no good to take them away like that, but Walter found them and Jason’s daddy moved in here with me.”

She started smiling again and looked at me and rhetorically asked Lea, “Don’t he look just like his daddy?”

I said we had to go so I wouldn’t be late for wrestling practice, which was a lie because I wasn’t going to practice but wanted to start practicing driving and didn’t want to explain why; but, it was a gentle lie, and for three years I had used wrestling as a way to escape eating Grandma’s food or being there when Big Daddy pulled up.

Lea put the LSU football back on top of Grandma’s baker’s rack and we all hugged a few more times before Lea and I finally got into her dad’s van, the one he had first bought with his landfall after Big Daddy sold Pelican International Speedway in the 1970’s.

Lea had mentioned it to me but didn’t tell Grandma that she had met my Doug before, and had heard of Big Daddy through her father. He was a Teamster who had been one of the Teamsters who stole construction materials from all over the southeast to build the Pelican International Speedway for him; like everyone who helped, they did well financially and believed any Partin was worth helping. After Big Daddy was sent to prison, Lea’s dad had stopped by Local #5 with her in that van when she was only nine years old to ask Doug if there was anything he could do to help, and he was one of the 1,400 Baton Rouge Teamsters who unanimously voted to keep paying Big Daddy his salary. he begrudendly re-voted and elected Doug after the International Brotherhood of Teamsters reminded Local #5 that not even Jimmy Hoffa could get away with being paid to run the Teamsters from prison.

That’s how it was with Big Daddy; as Doug would say in his 2017 self-published autobiography, “You either loved Ed or hated him, there was no in between.” Doug would his book by saying that, finally, almost thirty years after Big Daddy’s funeral, he was “free from my brother’s shadow.” But, as I said, I don’t believe that was true.

Lea and were so hungry and ready for a po’boy that Lea drove away without lighting a cigarette, though that may have still been because we had inhaled so much indoor smoke at Granny’s house.

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