Since I have so much relative free time on my hands, in-between the solemn recuperating, the constant blood tests and the extensive physical therapy, I’ve been doing a little bit of genealogy here and there as an obsessive hobby, trying to dig up my roots, especially on my father’s side, before I die.
My dad's Choctaw lineage was a mostly well-documented one, thankfully, allowing me to track the relatives who walked (and mostly died on) the Trail of Tears. I have also found a few things I never knew, such as how my grandfather "Two Gun" Bill Fowler was training to be a Choctaw code-talker just as World War I was winding down…or about my Uncle Lefty, who allegedly murdered a girl in Duncan and spent years in prison for it, a case covered by the creator of Perry Mason…or, as I learned just weeks ago, my dad’s cousin, a little-known rockabilly singer by the name of Don Fowler who recorded a swingin’ twangy tune in the mid-60s.