Jim’s Daily Rant. Hopkins Boarding House.

I grew up in Pensacola, Florida, a seaport city. The South side of the Downtown section was the seaport stretching for miles East and West. On the northern outskirts of the Downtown business district was a three story old antebellum wooden house known as Hopkins Boarding House, one block into the old residential area. It was easy to get to.

The house today is about two hundred years old. Mamma Hopkins and her family ran a small restaurant in the middle of the downtown district and lived across the street from the Boarding house. In 1949 they purchased the house and converted the ground floor to a family style restaurant. It was a wild gamble for them. They continued to rent to boarders upstairs. My Brother-in-law lived there when he turned 17. He told me he damn near killed himself from eating the “meals included” trying to get his money’s worth.

The business was a huge success from the day it was opened until it closed around 1990. The success was because of the atmosphere. It hit you when you approached the wrap around front porch with all of its rockers filled with tooth-picking folks rocking and rubbing their bellys. The smell of Southern fried chicken could awaken a lot of Confederate soldiers if a cemetery was nearby.

But the inside atmosphere was the real draw. It was family style seating. Each large round table was cluttered with food bowls surrounded by a short dozen of starving strangers! But you were best friends after serving each other. You knew who liked what.

Now I know I can spin a yarn or two, but this is the real story here. I worked with a 25 year old computer programmer, Michael Humphreys, who went by “Mikey”. Mikey was like me, a home grown native. He was a crazy, off the wall guy, probably like Robin Williams at that age. He wore a pair of sun glasses made out of rubber he could crumble and put in his shirt pocket.

Because Hopkins got all of the downtown lunch crowd who were we to argue about where to eat. We joined a half filled table, introduced ourselves and started catching incoming platters. I didn’t notice it but for some reason Mikey introduced himself as “Michael”. After about eight minutes another 25 year old gent pointed at him from the other side of the table and said ”I know you, you’re Mikey, we met in Nacogdoches ”. Mikey said “Oh yes, and you’re Gene, I remember meeting you there.” They both exchanged the usual pleasantries while we all ate chicken, fresh peas and mashed potatoes. Then about two minutes of hearing just “Umm good, good” from everyone, Gene said, “Come to think of it, I have never been in Nacogdoches,” Mikey said “Come to think of it, neither have I.” Then at the same time, they each said ”Must have been two other guys!” Everyone at the table just stopped eating and stared with question marks on their faces. It turned out they were fraternity brothers.

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Now for a mind experiment. Let’s suppose that Mamma Hopkins didn’t have the family recipes and instead ran the only Brothel in town, highly successfully. Then she got religion and closed the house and began taking in laundry.

Imagine the emotional ruckus that would cause in that town! Many would try to persuade her or entice her to a better arrangement than the church was offering, wouldn’t they? It would be near impossible to loose what they had grown accustomed to.

This is what we are going through now. The Elite cannot even imagine life continuing without the graft and corruption they became addicted to which now is locked into the current “entire realm of humanity”. But lose it we must.

Losing that alone is death to them.