Somewhere in my itinerant Rock Dude travels, and I don’t recall where, I saw a restaurant called A Taste of Italy. And the tagline underneath said, “A little taste of Italy!” Repetitive? Yes. Effective? Well, all these years later, I may not recall what town it was in, and we didn’t eat there because the band was just passing through, but I damned sure know they served Italian food.

On the other hand, my wife Eileen and I have, for almost two decades, eaten regularly at each of the East Lyme, Waterford and Groton locations of the Shack. What’s not to love? They serve an expansive menu of delightful home cooking, and the staff is always friendly.

Have I noticed that ALL of the employees wear shirts that, on the back, are emblazoned with the slogan “Life’s short! Eat pie!”

Well, sure. I must have, right? I can read! Plus, patrons can BUY the shirts as souvenirs. They’re right there, hanging on the wall.

And yet … the ebullient battle cry — “Life’s short! Eat pie!” — sorta never registered with me. For one thing, I wasn’t much of a pie eater. For another, servings at the Shack are very large. By the time I blew through the main course, it just didn’t particularly occur to me to think about dessert.

Then, one morning at the Waterford Shack about a year ago, I saw an older gentleman eating alone, and his breakfast was a huge slab of pie with ice cream and whipped cream. Pie for breakfast! It was an epiphanic moment.

I asked our waitress what the fellow was eating.

“That’s apple crumble,” she said.

The decision was instantaneous. “I’ll have one of those, please, unless” — again, I eyed the size of the portion — “he just wiped out the species.”

No chance of that. Eating that slab of ludicrously delicious apple crumble was a truly fine moment in my life and, since, Shack pie has been a staple of my diet. I still love plenty of other items on the Shack menu – and it’s always an either/or proposition – but about half the time I just eat pie.

There is no shortage of options. In addition to the apple crumb, there are always the following pies available: chocolate cream, banana cream, coconut custard, cherry and tollhouse. Seasonal offerings are pumpkin, blueberry crumb (should be classified as a narcotic), traditional blueberry and strawberry rhubarb. And occasional flavors — often brought back into limited rotation after customer requests — include graham cracker, S’mores, chocolate peanut butter, Key lime-fudge, lime chiffon and lemon chiffon.

In a casual pie conversation with Jim Morgan, who might be thought of as the Shack general manager — “I’ll do whatever I can to be useful” — he shared that the benevolent pie sorceress is Anita Lema. She works out of the Groton location and, along with the pies, churns out cakes, brownies and other sweets.

The original Shack baker was Kathy Jack, a waitress making pies randomly until sales took off and she went full time in that capacity. She retired in 2010 — the same year that Shack founder and patriarch Russell Han died at the too-soon age of 55.

With Russell’s son and daughter, Jeremy and Michelle Han, taking over the business, members of the extended Shack Family Geralyn McPhail and Anita took up the Pie Torch. Geralyn retired in 2020 and Anita continues to craft her crust-and-goodness creations. Morgan said she weekly goes through 100-150 pounds of flour, 10 gallons of milk and 40 pounds. That delivers 50-75 pies (10-15 cakes) weekly — and you can triple that amount during Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks.

Talking to Morgan — as I ate blueberry crumble on a recent Saturday morning in the Waterford Shack — it was pleasurable to confirm what Eileen and I had long suspected. The Shack really is a huge “family.” There are nine literal Hans on staff; Morgan, a former Cleveland and the Los Angeles policeman, married Michelle and entered the rolls of Shackdom in 2005.

In that familial capacity, he said around 40 employees have been with the Shack for at least 25 years.

“Jeremy and Michelle have absolutely reinforced that family dynamic, and that’s something we’re most proud of,” Morgan told me. “Probably another 50 employees have been with us 10 years. We’re starting our third generation of kids working at the Shack, and the same is true of a lot of our employees and their children. They’ve all known each other their whole lives, and Russell would have loved it.”

In symbiotic fashion, the generations of Shack employees serve generations of regular customers — who, Morgan said, account for about 80 percent of their business. He said, “It’s like we all know or recognize each other, and time goes by, and there’s something comforting in that.”

Well, hell, that calls for another piece of pie. Let Anita know I’m coming.

This column’s short! Eat more pie!