Shack still holds strong memories

I will always remember the shack.

My family had gone down to Bloomington to visit my father’s old college friend, Pete “Pinky” Ellis.

I have no idea what the real, grown-up purpose of the visit was.

But as a kid, I enjoyed it.

The Ellises lived not far from the Indiana University campus, and Pinky was — I believe — in the real estate business. The Ellis kids were close to our ages, so the visit was congenial from that standpoint.

Pretty much all I know about Pinky Ellis is that he and my father at some point in their years at Earlham College owned an old Model T Ford together and that on one memorable occasion they took the Model T to Ohio whereupon the college students consumed far too much 3.2 beer before getting back into the Model T and heading back to campus.

That would have been enough, but it occurred to one of the participants in the escapade that it might be fun to see how many rural mailboxes the Model T could knock down on their way back to Earlham.

The trail of mailboxes led, of course, right to the Model T and its owners.

I have no idea how they got out of that one, but I knew my dad and Pinky were close friends, with my father the more cautious and conservative of the two and Pinky the more daring and fun-loving. (Any guess whose idea it was to knock down the mailboxes?)

But it was on that visit to Bloomington that Pinky suggested both our families go out to the shack.

That’s what they called their place in Brown County, not far out of town on Indiana 46.

The name was apt. It was, pretty much, a shack.

The furnishings were cast-offs from the Ellis house in Bloomington. Getting a new sofa? Take the old one to the shack. Need a new stove? The old one still works on some burners. Take it to the shack.

But to a kid, the shack was paradise.

It was the grown-up equivalent to a clubhouse made from spare lumber in the backyard.

There were couches and daybeds everywhere. You never knew how many people would be sleeping over.

But the primary attractions — to a kid of about 8 or 9 — were the ping-pong table and the tire swing hanging from a huge tree in the backyard.

Pinky’s son — J.D. — beat me handily at ping-pong, but I didn’t care. And the tire swing was absolutely spectacular.

The weekend flew by, but it left a few things in its wake.

My parents started talking about a “shack” of their own. It wouldn’t be a real shack, of course, but would serve the same purpose, with or without a tire swing.

Cautious and conservative — lacking Pinky’s knock-down-the-mailboxes gusto, perhaps — they took their time.

Eventually, though, they built it, a cottage overlooking Magic Valley in Jackson Township.

I have no idea if Pinky or his family ever visited.

But I do know that, nice as it was, it never had a ping-pong table and there wasn’t a tire swing in sight.