Given the way I was reared, except for the school-issued recorder, the 'Tonette', we were allowed no musical instruments but harmonicas. We were a big family and just about all of us learned the harmonica. (I think there were two in the family who did not.)

One brother and I were the two youngest of the family so we learned a good many things at the same time. One of my warm and fuzzy memories is of the two of us sitting in the big kitchen on a cold winter's evening, the door to the living room closed, sitting knee to knee, him sitting on the oven door of a cooling wood stove, sharing one harmonica.

I sketched that memory- it shows two grinning kids tapping their bare feet, one playing while the other's hands are hovering in the air waiting for their turn. We did practically the same thing years later with a guitar.

When it came to guitar I learned flat picking long before I learned to make chords; my brother was just the opposite.