She was back at work, in control, designing landscapes, transforming mundane yards into visually exciting environments where families, hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees could all thrive. One afternoon I got a phone call from John Candy. Fresh on the heels of the success of Planes, Trains and Automobiles and The Great Outdoors, John was about to star in another John Hughes film, Uncle Buck, which was to be filmed on Hughes’s home turf in Chicago. John wanted me to reprise my role as protector of publicity and to liaise with the Universal Pictures publicity department and the eager Chicago press. He also wanted me to wear the tour manager hat. Those responsibilities included getting John from one point to the next. This wasn’t always easy because John was often incapable of saying no to fans, newspaper columnists, or studio types in black towers. So I was to become the buffer, the obstacle, the doorman and bouncer that the great unwashed had to get past if they wanted to get to the goods.
