Yours truly with my favourite two uncles! I’m the youngest of 64 cousins (‘first cousins’), so there’s a smattering of uncles and aunts who begat ’em.
This was taken the summer after I graduated high school. That glistening on my face is sweat pouring off of me. Blech! Obviously, no air conditioning!
My lovely Auntie Hazel grabbed me at about 8AM, shoved me on a bed and put a fan directly on me. Bless her, she understood my lupus better than I did at the time.
She could cook up a storm, too.
I often kvetch about family but that’s because I had FANTASTIC family, who dropped dead first, leaving me with this lot.
These blokes were top-notch! They’re two of the four who fought in WWII. The one to the right, my left, was the one who also was in the Pacific War. This was rare. He was a Medic and you know how brave you have to be to jump out of trenches all day to try to bring back fallen comrades?
He was the clown of his generation. You have to be, don’t you?
opinions expressed may be incorrect 
Look at you!
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Young MT before I was a T…
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Both your uncles have wonderful time-worn faces and I’m sure they could tell wonderful stories about their lives. Hope they did for your benefit.
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Thanks, GOF. They were true Ozark Gentlemen.
They could tell stories but CLIFFORD the clown was outstanding!
They’d also bust you in the head (not me) and then shake your hand and have a drink with you. Grudges can’t be held in the Ozarks the way it was…life was too hard. You needed neighbours even if you had to punch one or get punched now and then.
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You look terrific! I can’t imagine having 64 cousins – my family is pretty small. Dad was an only child of an only child (maternal) and 2 paternally. My mother is one of two and her father only had one brother but her mother was from the biggest of our family tree – there were 5 siblings there.
Me and my 3 siblings have made advances on increasing the numbers though with 3 of us having 3 children and one having 2. The base of the pyramid is getting wider……
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You shall take over the WORLD!!! Yeah, having grandparents born in the 1880s who (this was normal) bred young and for a long time (having 9) means quite an army.
I knew my aunts/ uncles better than cousins because a) growing up where I did, there were no neighbours and I really only ever felt myself around adults as a kid. I can clearly recall telling Gran how I didn’t know how to at with ‘those kids.’
I was so freaking excited to go to school to see what it was like having a whole building of kids, though!
Also, being the youngest of 64 means my cousins were freaking OLD — a lot. My ‘cool’ cousin Gary is approaching 70.
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Yes it was weird only having 2 first cousins and 3 second cousins growing up – everyone else seemed to talk in double numbers when it came to their relatives.
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