My Uncle Mike was the coolest person in our family, insofar as I knew it and him. He was a bona fide hippie and intellectual. I inherited some of his cool hippie jeans and some of his much-treasured Kafka paperbacks with notes in the margins, so I know. Not to mention the baseball cards and the collections of Youth Sport Fiction that I reveled in when young. He was an opinionated man, open-minded, though... up to a point. I think that our common bond was rooted in the fact that we both found life to be a little difficult, partly because all of the really important questions are unanswerable, and partly because there are so many people who insist that the really big questions aren't worth worrying about... or perhaps aren't questions at all. He was a smart, well-educated, good-natured, frustrated, misunderstood, well-loved, likeable, hateable, and sometimes difficult and stubborn man who wanted to understand and to be understood. I wish I'd known him better, but I think we both did the best that we could. I know this about Mike-- he thought that Jeff Beck was the greatest guitarist ever. I also know that he hated tuna fish sandwiches until the day, when he was about 12, that my Dad made him one to eat while they listened to the Yankees on the radio together. I know that the ceiling fan in my Mom's townhouse in Texas still wobbles a little because he clocked it with a mattress while attempting to make up his makeshift sleeping accomodations in the "TV Room." I know that he and I spent most of my parents' 25th anniversary celebration passed out-- Mike in the parking lot and me in the "men's room" of the fine restaurant at which the event was staged. I know that he was a fair card-counter and a terrible gambler. I know that he once lived in a room furnished with nothing but a mattress and a complete set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica in its special little bookcase. I know that when I was six years old he took me for a ride in a convertible and bought me some plastic Mexican Jumping Beans and a Coke and made me very happy. I know that in his later years he didn't share my passion for vintage pulp fiction. And I know that I loved him, and will miss him a lot. I'm grateful to have my memories of him today, as his Memorial gets under way 3000 miles away, and to know that the memories will last as long as I do. Gerard Lafond.