I was hanging out in the Rio Grande Valley in deep South Texas and was part of a program of entertainment for "snow birds". Those are folk that come south for the winter. On the program was a man playing guitar and his son on fiddle. The dad had had 2 1/2 fingers cut off his right hand in a railroad accident. He still had the thumb and the index finger. He said he use to do a lot of finger pickin' but then went to a thumb pick and Carter family strum with his index finger. He still got a couple of finger pickin' licks in and it sounded great! Where there's a will there's a way, I guess. Z