Prairie Gothic: The Story of a West Texas Family

Chapter Twenty-four: And Then There Was One

187 Chapter Twenty-four: And Then There Was One After Grandmother Curry’s death, Olive, Burt, and Roy continued living out at the Sherman ranch in a ready-built house they had moved in from Lubbock sometime in the 1950s. It was more modern and convenient than the old house, with inside plumbing, electricity, and gas heat, and located closer to the blacktop highway. Uncle Roy tore down the original ranch house. (Mike Harter letter, December 29, 2004). Olive and Roy Sherman as children. Photo courtesy Martha Marmaduke and Barbara Whitton. 188 Chapter Twenty-four Of the three surviving Shermans, Burt enjoyed the best health and took over all the housework, cooking and cleaning and taking care of Olive. She had been sickly all her adult life and that pattern continued. Occasional letters from Uncle Roy said that Olive was in and out of her sickbed, in and out of the hospital, first brought down by some malady and then miraculously cured. In 1978 Roy’s health began to fail. He had severe arthritis in his hands and knees, and in the summer of 1979 he had a bad spell with his heart and had to spend a week in the Seminole hospital. One evening after Roy came back home, Uncle Burt dropped dead on the kitchen floor. Olive found him. So once again the clan gathered in Seminole for another funeral. I was not able to attend, as I had just taken a cowboy job on the Beaver River in Oklahoma, but I heard about it from my father. My aunts and Sam Sherman went to Seminole thinking that they would need to put Olive and Roy in a rest home, or make some kind of arrangements to care for them. Roy was so crippled he could hardly walk, but when Sam offered to gather the eggs, Roy said no thank you. A stranger would upset the hens and then they wouldn’t lay. So Roy hobbled outside to his pickup, drove a hundred feet to the hen house, and gathered the eggs himself. Later, Sam found a snake in the yard. He went for a garden hoe, but when he returned, the snake was gone. When he told Roy about it, Roy said, “Yes, that’s our bullsnake. He catches mice under the house.” Aunt Olive worried about Burt’s cat. Burt was the only one who had ever fed her. When Sam tried to feed the cat, she took one look at him and disappeared. Aunt Olive sighed, “She’s not used to strangers.” Aunt Drucilla tried to persuade Roy and Olive to move to Roswell, where she could look after them. No. So Aunt Dru hired a woman in Seminole to drive out to the ranch every day and cook for them. That didn’t last long. The Shermans had always eaten a big breakfast at seven o’clock sharp, and they couldn’t start the day without steak, fresh eggs, biscuits and gravy. The woman made the long early morning drive out to the ranch for two days and quit. That was fine with Roy and Olive, and as pleasantly as they could, they invited Sam Sherman, 189 And Then There Was One Aunt Drucilla, Aunt Jonye, and Aunt Bennett to go back home. They would be all right. One month after Burt’s death, Uncle Roy died in his sleep, on the same day Grandmother Curry had died six years before in 1973. Sam Sherman hired a man to round up and sell the few remaining Sherman cattle, and Aunt Olive finally decided to leave the ranch and move to a rest home—a lifelong invalid who had outlived all of her brothers and sisters. One of my aunts went out to the ranch to pack up some clothes for Aunt Olive, and had to enter Aunt Olive’s room, a place where she had never been before. What she saw caused her to stare in amazement. The room was filled with dolls. Olive’s needlepoint pillow, showing a hair style similar to the one she wore most of her life. Photo courtesy of Kris Erickson. ...