The shack is back (sort of)

An infamous dive bar called The Shack burned down under mysterious circumstances on Halloween 1988, shortly after the University of Missouri-Columbia bought the property on which it stood, across from Jesse Hall, with plans to build an alumni center there.

Truth is, the 67-year-old campus landmark had been slowly dying out for more than a decade. By the time the hangout met its demise, students had been largely ignoring The Shack, preferring fancy new bars like Harpo’s and Déjà Vu. The bulk of The Shack’s patrons were visiting alumni who crowded into the cramped, rickety wooden building for greasy hamburgers, cheap beer and a bit of nostalgia after football games.

It was a de facto alumni center, and long after it was replaced, alumni asked about The Shack, wondering whether some memorabilia had been left behind.

So, when Jeff Zeilenga, the assistant vice chancellor of student affairs, was looking for ways to make the new student center a more comfortable hangout, The Shack quickly came to mind.

Brady Commons was built in 1963 and resembles a cafeteria, with a section of fast food vendors and a dimly lit expanse of tables and chairs made of metal and plastic. On the east side of building, the bookstore houses several computers and the occasional comfortable chair. As a student center, Brady Commons is functional, but that’s about it.

The Shack’s most endearing characteristic was the presence of wooden tables and walls covered with graffiti carved by students, sometimes with knives borrowed from the bartenders. The Shack’s most famous patron was cartoonist Mort Walker, creator of that lazy soldier Beetle Bailey.

Zeilenga wanted to give the new student center a part of the Shack’s soul, to make students feel about the student center a little bit like their predecessors felt about The Shack. When the new commons opens next year, one of the restaurants on the first floor will be The Shack. The Shack is mostly seating, but food can be ordered at the adjoining Mort’s Place, where memorabilia and original artwork by Walker will be displayed.

Near the former site of The Shack, the university placed a sculpture depicting Beetle Bailey sitting at a well-carved table with a frothy beer. But can the university really capture the spirit of what it calls an “endeared home for our students?”

The original version of The Shack was built in 1921 around a truck, which was sort of the recreational vehicle of its time. As the building evolved, pieces were added on. Eventually, The Shack annexed a nearby taxi stand.

The ceilings were low; the room was dimly lit. The tables, benches, ceiling and walls were so scarred with students’ initials that the edges of the tables looked rat-chewed. Former owner Joe Franke said that carving wore out benches so fast that something usually had to be replaced at the end of every weekend.

The ceiling, walls and floors garnered automatic demerits for The Shack whenever health inspectors came to visit. Repairs were constantly made on the fly to keep the doors open.

The fire code allowed 85 people in the bar at any given time. They crowded inside to scarf Shack Burgers and pursue cost-effective drunkenness by throwing back pitchers of 3.2-percent-alcohol beer. When the building reached capacity, the owners reportedly locked the doors and ignored the pounding from disappointed students separated from friends inside.

Walker was the editor of Show Me magazine, and he held staff meetings in a corner of the bar. Years later, The Shack occasionally appeared in his comics.

“Once, in a Show Me meeting, we tried to burn the ceiling with matches,” Walker told the Columbia Daily Tribune in 1979. “It just seemed like a good thing to do. I am sure that place would never burn down with all that beer-soaked wood.”

But burn it did, almost nine years later and less than one year after the university purchased the property. No arrests were ever made.
MU’s acquisition of The Shack was controversial years before the deal took place. In 1979, former owner Butch Weston heard rumors that the university was interested in the property and began a petition to block the sale. In that year alone, the Tribune reported that Weston collected 300 signatures, largely from alumni who didn’t want to see their beloved hangout torn down.

Franke eventually sold The Shack because he was tired of chasing rent and concerned about his legal liability. Because he held the beer license, he took the heat when minors got served. Not only did Franke have to stay on top of the management about checking IDs; he also had to struggle to collect rent from the Westons, who didn’t always pay.

“They were pretty good about it at the beginning, but in those last years they got behind,” Franke said.

He laughed when asked where the Westons are today. “I wish I knew! They still owe me money!”

Anyone hoping the new Shack will serve beer and keep knives behind the bar for drunken carving will be sorely disappointed.

Zeilenga is not foolish enough to attempt to recreate The Shack as it once was. Instead, the new Shack will be an attempt to capture what Zeilenga describes as the “intangible quality” that has less to do with what it looked like and more to do with the time students spent with each other.

The new Shack will offer students a place to hang out while acting as a monument to the history of student life on MU’s campus, to the old campus hangout and to the generations of students who wolfed down Shack Burgers and made valiant attempts to get wasted on 3.2 percent beer.

Franke took some tabletops from the restaurant after he sold it to MU in 1988, making way for the Reynolds Alumni Center. He has donated some of the tabletops to the university and plans to donate others. The plank tabletops will hang on the walls of the new Shack along with articles, photographs and cartoons. Walker designed a Beetle Bailey statue to lean against the beer-free bar.

Because MU is a dry campus, no beer will be sold at The Shack. “We considered non-alcoholic beer, but I think we’ll probably stick to root beer,” said Michelle Froese, a public relations manager in student services. While alumni are forgetting about beer, they should also forget about graffiti. The tables “will not be carvable,” Froese said.

However, she said the university is considering ideas such as allowing seniors to carve their names or initials on walls as part of senior send-off and selling space on walls and tabletops to raise money for scholarships.

While alumni and students who love beer and vandalism may be disappointed with the new rendition, those who loved Shack Burgers may be in for a treat. The new Shack will be home to burgers made with Shack Sauce proven in a taste test to resemble the real thing.

When Franke turned the secret recipe over to Campus Dining for the unveiling of the Beetle Bailey statue, they made two batches of sauce and asked him to pick which was most accurate.

“I picked one, but they were both pretty similar,” said Franke.

Those who believe bigger is better will be in luck as well. The new Shack will hold between 200 and 250 patrons.

Cramped booths and low ceilings will be replaced by space enough for open mic nights and small concerts. The new Shack will be a “programming area,” Froese said, offering students something they don’t have today: an area smaller than Jesse Hall but larger than a classroom where they can hold events.

“When students were surveyed about what they wanted in a student center that they couldn’t currently have, [a programming area] is what they described,” Froese said.

Like the old Shack, the new Shack will be open late. The new student center will be divided into zones, Froese said, and so areas like The Shack can stay open until midnight or 1 a.m. even when other parts of the building are closed.