i had a nice time at the picnic. a lot of good music

and interesting conversation. there was a ton of food.

the weather was beautiful. i made sure to put a lot of

sunblock on my nose (i burn easily!) and as you can see from

this photo, uncle buck was there!

now, for those of you that are regular followers of my little

blog, you recall the poems about uncle buck and sugar lake.

well, most of uncle buck went to sugar lake, but he was such a

sweet and crazy man that loved parties, especially family parties

with pudd'n boy, randy and everyone, that pudd'n kept a little of buck.

i might have mentioned buck was at halloween with all of us

as we handed out candy. well, buck came out for the picnic.

funny, as i wrote, i had a very hard time dealing with tending

to the graves the other day, but having buck come out now and then

is sort of comforting and not macabre in the least. it's a tribute to the man

he was. somewhere buck is smiling and saying,

"go ahead, have another piece of cake! " s