My Uncle Charlie.
We went to visit him once when I was just a little kid. He lived in a two-room cabin, heated with an old Franklin stove. The only electric devices he had (which, according to my parents, was a recent development) were a couple of bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. There was a fiddle on the wall. I asked him to play, and he showed me his hands - all mis-shapen and crippled with arthritis. He was a member of a group of old "liars" called, I believe, "The Horse Thieves," and one of his cronies was Lawrence Older, an Adirondack fiddler, recorded on Folk Legacy.

As far as I know, he'd never lived away from that cabin. There were stories of him chopping firewood in the snow - in bare feet. I wish I'd been old enough to have heard him play. I wish I could have seen him more often and heard some of his stories.