AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
RALPH JOHN WESLEY HOWARD

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thought that there was in the whole world. It had been gathered and shucked by hand and piled in great heaps for want of sufficient granary room. I also saw, chained near the front door, a serviceable boat and a pair of oars, evidence that waters from our deep winter snow had passed down this valley.

After we passed Omaha, we headed for Lincoln, Nebraska. After passing Lincoln, our route was south down the Blue River, until we reached Manhattan, Kansas. Here we arrived in a snowstorm and the coldest weather they had recorded in years, 32 degrees above Fahrenheit. This storm delayed us and it was years before we left that vicinity. Father rented a house in town and we moved in. Mother and Ruby soon joined us.

In the spring, dad bought a farm, such as it was, eight miles north of Manhattan and we moved to it. There was a small house on the place and a good spring of water. There was not much land under cultivation on our place and dad rented more from a neighbor. I hired out to a neighbor and worked long enough to pay for three pigs, at fifty cents a day. The price of pigs at that time was two cents a pound, on the market. One of mine had sunstroke and died. When the other two were at their best, dad sold one and we butchered the other one for our own use. Nothing seemed to go just the way we wanted it to go; I guess we didn’t do the right thing about the weather. Three out of five consecutive crops were failures, burned dry by hot winds. I hired out to a neighbor and ran his farm, while he and his wife went to the Worlds Fair in Chicago.

Manhattan, Riley County Kansas, USA was our address for many years. I often heard mother say that the number of times we had moved, have equaled the number of years they had been married. The old saying "A rolling stone gathers no moss and a setting hen never gets fat" must have been true in our case. We never lived more than twelve miles from Manhattan and not less than six except when we lived right in town itself. It seemed that the business of making a living was all that we could accomplish. After Bert and Frank rigged up a prairie schooner and headed west for Liberal, Seward County, Kansas. The farm work all fell to Floyd and me. Dad was doing day work at his trade most of the time, to help make a living. At all the places we lived but one, there was a country school handy and doing business in the winter. Floyd and I usually attended and learned again the "Three R’s" that we had forgotten.