Must be something about great uncles. I was a little kid when I met my great uncle Charlie, and he was old. He lived in a cabin with one electric light bulb and cooked and heated the place with a wood stove. I remember the one time my family went there, he'd just baked an apple pie. There was a fiddle hanging on the wall. I asked him to play it, but he just showed me his hands, all knarled from arthritis like the roots of an old tree. He died when I was perhaps 10 years old - maybe younger. When I was about 20 and decided to learn fiddle, I asked my mom to find out what happened to Uncle Charlie's. Another relative had it, and was learning how to play. I was happy someone would be caring for it, even if it wasn't me.

I wish I'd had a chance to hear him play. He was part of the tradition of Adirondack fiddlers, and I would have loved to have learned fiddling from him.