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Readers' Email
Sleeping in the Courthouse
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A
1906 view of Hopkins County Courthouse and the Square.
Postcard courtesy James Perkins |
I may have had an experience with the Hopkins County Courthouse that
few others have ever had.
As a young highway patrolman in Oct. 1962, I was transferred to begin
work at Sulphur Springs. I had gone there a few weeks earlier in search
of a place to live. Housing was in very short supply there at that
time. After laborious searching, I found a nice old house out on College
St., east of downtown. The problem was, it would only be available
a week after I really needed it. I really wanted and needed it badly,
so I was willing to wait a week. The problem was I started to work
there on Oct. 1st, but had no place for my family and I to live for
a week. So, certain county officials and my work friends suggested
that I could sleep in the Hopkins County Courthouse for a few nights.
Luckily they thought of that, since I was temporarily "homeless".
They gave me the courthouse door keys and my work friend loaned me
a sleeping bag and a pillow. We found a big, long, solid hardwood
table up in the Jury Room on the third floor. It was there I slept
on that table in the Jury Room for the next seven nights while working
and eating elsewhere. Later on I moved into the house.
A tremendous THANK YOU to you, Ms. Herda and Mr. Sam Fenstermacher
for a most wonderful and detailed report and pictures Sulphur
Springs and that old courthouse.
I remember that place so well.
- N. Ray Maxie (now retired), January 11, 2005 |
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