Craws for a Cause at Hopkins Icehouse on Saturday

This year's Craws for a Cause will benefit the Literacy Council of Miller and Bowie Counties. The event is on Saturday, April 25, and it'll be some of the best eating with plenty of crawfish to go around coupled with live music by the Moss Brothers.

The crawfish boil starts at 5 p.m. on Saturday and the party won't end until 1:30 a.m. so bring your dancing shoes! Get your groove on with crawfish and the music of the Moss Brothers for just $20 all while helping out a great cause -- Literacy Council of Miller and Bowie Counties.

Hopkins Icehouse building has a lot of history and their Facebook page and website has a lot of photos from back in the day: The term “Icehouse” dates back to the day when families purchased blocks of ice for their “ice box”. These early ice boxes were small & the woman of the house would not allow the men to keep their beer in them. So, the men would keep their beer at the icehouses down by the RR tracks (this is how ice was transported). This is where they would congregate after work and enjoy a cold beer. Hopkins Icehouse is a corner bar that is reminiscent of days gone by.

The building was built in early 1900s. Legend has it that it was a Ford dealership and you are sitting in the “showroom.”  Roy D Hopkins Feed & Seed began business here Jan. 2, 1936 and closed in 2007. That’s when George Dodson and David Jones purchased the property. For 18 months at nights and on weekends, the proprietors’ worked to build Hopkins Icehouse as you see it.

Almost 100 percent of the work was performed by George and Dave, from cutting the concrete then jack hammering it out, scraping and painting the ceiling, hanging the sheetrock then painting it, building the walk in cooler, bar and kitchen. Original items are; tin ceiling, transoms, doors, floors and glass windows.The brick wall on the east side is original and was covered with plaster that had to be removed with sledge hammers.