" Kind friends and relatives; 

I am deeply interested in the old homestead. It is with great pleasure that we meet at the old home once more, but it is sad that father and mother are not here to join us in this reunion.

I am interested in this place, because my Father and Mother lie yonder sleeping in the silent dust, it was here that I worked in the harvest field with such neighbors as Dan Gibson, Bill Buck Stumbo, John Turner, Id Martin, Martin Beverly, J.D. Turner, W.M. Martin, Bone Martin, Tandy L. Martin, Preston Spencer, Job Martin, Henry Stewart, Dick Allen, and of course, my Father, Alamander "Squint" Martin. Most of them have passed to the great beyond.

I never can, nor ever will, visit this place but what my mind will be recalled to the memory of the OLD WASH PAN.

Father and the farm hands and myself and brother Hoosh, have just come in for dinner, summoned by the toot from the old tine horn, whose music grows sweeter evermore.

And we gather around the cistern pump near the kitchen door, to bathe our sunburned faces and necks black with tan, and each one takes a dip from the old wash pan.

Upon a board nailed to a stake, set deep in the ground there sits inviting us, big, bright and round: rust-eaten at the bottom, with here and there a leak.

While Mother stops with muslin stings a dozen times a week, I lift it from it's pedestal and hold it beneath the spout, and soon the soft rainwater comes dashing, splashing out.

Then brimming full, return it to it's old custom place, While each insist that the other be first to wash his face. Uncultured though we may appear, and roughened with our toil, Yet flowers of gentlest courtesy may spring from our country soil, and never was social justice, nor the democratic plan, More fittingly exemplified than round the old-wash pan.

And if, in our politeness we cannot just agree, The two the nearest dip right in, and very often three, And then we seize a towel, and our heads together bend, And wipe our dripping faces, each from the other end:

But I am speaking of the present, and now must let you know, Far back to the old homestead, an aged man I've strayed, and stand beside the cistern pump, beneath the apple shade, Musing all alone bereft sweet memories counting over, Dear Mother with the towels smiling sweetly in the door, and the jolly set of harvesters, with faces red and tan, all jokin and makin' merry around the old wash pan.

I've bathed in lavatories of the latest modern style, with walls of solid mirror, and with floors of marble style, but the water from this cistern is a luxury more dear, for my old farm companions seem to gather around me here: Father and my brothers Hoosh, Bruce, Bob and Grover, and Marion and Drewey, and the other hands.

I think I see their faces, in the Old Wash Pan.