Pilla-Dex

I found the following description of Pilla-Dex in the "Evolutionary History of Table Tennis" collection housed virtually in the vast depository of the Table Tennis Museum:"In 1896 this game, and an American counterpart Pillow-Dex, used a cord to divide the length of the table, the players then using their hands to bat a balloon to and fro. Other variants of Tennis motif games were card games and Tiddledy Winks played on a miniature felt court with a small net." I found further, but not much more informative description of the game in the Jaeger Tennis Heritage Collection.

For the junkyard sport, as I sometimes view myself, this is all positively inspirational. Batting a balloon to and fro on a cord-divided table is in its very essence as potentially amusing and skill-development-encouraging a pastime as anything that we have come to know as ping pong or table tennis or even Tiddledy Wink Tennis (yes, Tiddledy - for more on the pre-eminently junkyardworthy origins of Tiddling, see Rick Tucker's "Tiddlywinks: The Classic Victorian Pastime: On Target for the 21st Century"). See also Steve Child's Junkyard Sports Hall of Fame-worthy description of Pong Ping and Geof Englis' similarly enlightenuping Eraser Bouncing.