I'm 63 the second eldest of my father's children and the eldest of my mothers'... My father & mother both came from very large families... some of my cousins were so much older than me I called them aunties and some were just 10 or so years older than me.... but out of my mother and father's siblings.. I have only 2 uncles and one aunt left... One uncle is the same age as my elder brother.. What about you, any aunts and uncles left
I think most of the early Baby Boomers, like wife and I, Aunts and Uncles have been gone for quite a while. "Early Baby Boomers" meaning I was born in 1949 and wife in 1948. Baby Boomer Generation last for about 18 years, starting in 1946.
My mother was the youngest of 5 girls, the eldest being 21 years older than my mother, so no aunts or uncles left.
@Holly Saunders Now, thinking about it, having had many uncles and aunts as well as great-uncles and aunts, I believe they are all gone, the last being my Dad's kid brother Jim, only sibling he truly loved. Jim died in the late '90s; thank goodness I travelled to Wisconsin to see him in about 1993. My wife and her folks drove there from their home in Indiana, around 1994, never having met him, and he graciously took them to the famed "House on the Rock", then out to dinner. He was then about 83. The House is dedicated largely to music of days past, but also nostalgic things unexpected. Enormous marry-go-round inside: Every kind of mechanized music-making machines from early 20th. C., including entire playing orchestras operating solely by mechanical programming and compressed air. These are all life-sized figures, seemingly playing their instruments, but being played mechanically. One of the most incredible places I have ever seen in my entire life. My Dad early in his career, worked for Mills Novelty Company, which built many of those music machines, as well as slot machines. He was a Tool & Die Maker like @Sheldon Scott , making dies which formed and blanked the numerous moving parts within the machines. Frank
WoW!!!! what a place!! I had a letter recently from one uncle , he lives in another country, so I haven't seen him in 10 years, he's deaf and dumb and doesn't use the internet but is only 10 years older than me, and happily ensconced in a relationship, but he was my father's youngest brother and favourite uncle to all us kids.. ... the second uncle also in another country and I last spoke to him by phone a couple f years ago , he's my mothers' youngest brother but distanced himself from the family many years ago..
@Holly Saunders If you've never seen one, nor heard it play, here is an example. Note it has a keyboard as well as violin, one can see the little hammers beating against the strings. The machines have become very scarce, as over the many decades since they were built, attrition has taken it's toll. The Violano Virtuoso was built by Mills Novelty Company in Chicago:
These machines were only one type of electro-mechanical music-makers built by Mills. Some played horns, and percussion instruments, very complicated devices, for their time. Various means were used to "program" them. One I recall at the House on the Rock had a huge rotating brass drum, as big as a 5-gallon bucket, with thousands of pins sticking out, which actuated air valves controlling devices which moved the keys, bows, etc. Here is "Edelweiss": Note this machine plays 2 violins simultaneously.