AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
RALPH JOHN WESLEY HOWARD

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It was a great surprise to me one day when dad came home from town. He had left that morning with a load of loose hay to sell, if possible, and get the mail. He remarked at suppertime that he had rented a house in town and we would move in. The object of this move was to get Floyd, Ruby and I into school. Floyd entered the town school. The Kansas State Agricultural College was located there and they had prepared a special branch for me, in advance. To qualify for admittance, I had to write my name and age. If they could read it any my age was more than eighteen years, I was admitted and if I finished the equivalent of high school work, I could then join the first year class. Then take the regular four-year courses. The object of an Agricultural College, I understand was to vanish, any delusion about farming being a paying proposition for me. My experience during the preceding twenty years had already convinced me that this was true. I figured that perhaps the college knew some drawbacks that I hadn’t learned. Anyhow, if I could stand the college treatment, it must stand mine; it accepted me on its own conditions. If I had joined the classes as a new recruit, it would have been a different proposition. We would be in a new place among strangers glad and willing to help each other find our places. They still were, but I didn’t know it. When I joined their class, they were half way through the fall term, and I had to learn what they had and pass with them, at the end of the term. It looked to me like this farming business was well wrapped in a single package and the directions on it said not only to shake well, but take it! I took all that I could stand and them made my escape.

A class room door had just closed on a class of sixty registered agricultural victims of both sexes in about equal numbers. After roll call, the boss (the teacher) made this remark, "Did any of you have any difficulty with your lesson for today? You are at liberty to ask any questions if in doubt". I was sure that I had not encountered any difficulty until the present, sometimes I read the lesson before coming to class.

No one spoke, and the boss procured some chalk, and a lady student in the front seat removed the cork from a bottle of ink. The boss turned to the blackboard to display his craft with chalk. He completed three characters, and then it happened; I mean something important to agriculture. He dropped his chalk, he dropped his glasses and I don’t know what else besides his dignity. A black bull’s eye appeared on the back of his neck and he faced the class "Myo Pronto" as the Mexicans say, to observe an upraised hand with a young lady fastened to it. He gazed a moment down