Prairie Gothic: The Story of a West Texas Family

Chapter Eleven: The Sherman Family

85 Chapter Eleven: The Sherman Family My mother’s first-cousin, Roger Joe Sherman, described his grandfather as: “…strong, exceedingly masculine, and over six feet in height. His face was spare, sharp-cornered, and intently serious and it matched his disposition. Although he usually walked stiffly and with short steps, he possessed a certain agility and could, when necessary, be quick and cat-like.” (Roger Joe Sherman 1985: 16) Grandmother Curry remembered that in the early years of their marriage, Joe and Lina enjoyed each other’s company and seemed very compatible. There was laughter in the house and Joe tried to lighten his wife’s load of housework. In the mornings, he would rise early, build a fire, grind the coffee, and start breakfast. When the babies arrived, he was kind and attentive. In the fall of the year, he would ride the train with his cattle to the Kansas City market, and while there, he enjoyed shopping for Lina and the children. For Lina, he bought leather gloves, pretty hats, warm slippers, and bolts of cloth. Grandmother Curry remembered him bringing her an amethyst ring and a little cup and saucer. But as the babies grew into teenagers, discord crept into the home. In her later life, Grandmother Curry admitted that she was stubborn and willful, 86 Chapter Eleven and said that Uncle Forrest was too. Joe Sherman had difficulty coping with rebellious children and began withdrawing into a brooding silence. (Bennett Kerr interview, 2004) As they grew older, his children viewed him as aloof and stern, a man whose anger you didn’t want to arouse and with whom you wouldn’t want to spend a few years on a desert island—unless, of course, you shared his passion for silence. He seems to have had a temperament that darkened with age and drought, perhaps a genetic curse thrown his way by his father. My mother said that Joe’s early years had done little to prepare him for family life: the murder of his mother and untimely death of his father; being shuffled around from relative to relative, always the step-child no Sherman family circa 1908. Front row from left: Mary, Joe, Burt, Lina, Olive. Back row from left: Roy, Mable, Forrest, Roger. Photo courtesy Martha Marmaduke and Barbara Whitton. 87 The Sherman Family one really wanted; and then his formative years in the Loving camps, tutored by bachelor cowboys who, one speculates, were there at least in part because they lacked the social skills to be somewhere else. MaxColemanseemstohavegottenalongwellwithhim,butMaxhad spent his youth trapping and breaking wild mustangs on the lonesome sweep of the Llano, and had the ability to deal with long periods of silence. We don’t know how many wordless hours he had to wait before Joe Sherman was stirred to tell a story about the old days. As he grew older, Joe Sherman wasn’t a loveable man, but on the frontier, that wasn’t uncommon or even a bad quality. Once again, John Graves says it well: “Sharp around the edges, not tender…They couldn’t have been, bringing wagonloads of women and kids and chattels where they brought them. Like the Comanches, they were unlovable to neighbors of other breeds, but like the Comanches too they did not care.” (John Graves 1960: 25-6) The men who survived drought and Indians and horses that were serious about wanting to kill anyone who approached them—those men had qualities of spirit that, today, we would find harsh. Or “insensitive,” to use the popular term. No doubt Joe Sherman was insensitive. So were Charles Goodnight, Sul Ross, Billy Dixon, the Slaughters, the Lovings, and all the other men who left deep tracks on the frontier—not to mention Quanah Parker and his Comanche companions. Men who were sensitive cried sensitive tears while their wives were being raped, and drowned their guilt in saloons while their children went hungry. Maybe Ezra Sherman was a sensitive man and maybe being sensitive in that time was another name for careless . . . or stupid. The very qualities that made Joe Sherman seem distant to his children allowed him to raise beef cattle in a hostile environment, survive the droughts of 1885–7 and 1893–4, the ferocious blizzard of 1886, 88 Chapter Eleven and the financial panic of 1893, pay off his ranch, and provide a home for six...