Grandmothers always have cool things for
their grandkids to play with. Among the many things our grandmother “Arlie” had,
was a big tin can full of buttons. There were hundreds of them packed in there
of all sizes, shapes, and colors. These days, I don’t notice many buttons in
stores anymore. I suppose they have several varieties in sewing shops, but I
don’t frequent THOSE kinds of stores. I’m afraid “people would talk” especially
if I have my pink purse with me Hey, I’m
only kidding, I don’t have a pink
purse! (It’s lavender)J. Ever since
I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated with buttons. I have a small collection of
them even today.
The only problem with buttons is that
they tend to fall off clothing. When I was in the Navy, the buttons on our
uniforms were always falling off as we were buttoning them. Most every morning
as we were getting dressed, I’d hear buttons hitting the “deck” followed by a
litany of “swear words” (Not from me.) This phenomenon seemed to happen the
most when we were scheduled for a personnel inspection that morning. I’m sure
it was the cheap thread they supplied. (Only the “best” for our boys in the
armed forces!!!) I had this problem especially with my “Pea Coat”. The bottom
button was always falling off and I’d have to sew it on repeatedly. One time I
finally had enough and sewed it on with dental floss. That cured the problem.
In fact, it’s still on today! I haven’t worn it for years, due to the cheap
wool “shrinking” over the years. Oh well, the moths have to eat too.
Soon after Tim and I arrived at our
grandmother’s house in Norwalk, we’d rush to the toy box and grab our favorite thing,
which was a red flat bed semi truck that was made out of real metal and real
rubber tires! I guess plastic toys weren’t invented yet (thank goodness!). It
endured through 2 generations of kids playing with it as all the dents and
scratches attested. After we hauled all of our contracted “loads” for that day
including several loads of very heavy lead bars, we would head for the “button
can”. This same can and buttons were also played with by 2 generations as well.
The dented top had the initials “KS” and “WP” scratched on it. “KS” was my
Uncle Kenny and “WP” was Wes Preston who was a kid friend of Uncle Kenny. The
button can was an old metal can from Grants in Norwalk that contained a new mop
head. I would conservativly estimate that can at least around 70 years old.
Talk about recycling! Tim now has the can minus all the buttons.
Tim and I would dump all the buttons on her
living room carpet and rummage through the pile of all the assorted buttons. I
don’t recall too many “repeats” in that most if not all of the buttons were
unique from all the others. This also fascinated me that there could be so many
different sizes and shapes of buttons! Some were fancy and some were steel and
plastic. There were even some made out of wood. We often got a needle and piece
of thread from our Grandmother’s massive sewing box and strung several of them
together resulting in a long strand. Another really neat thing we did was to
get the biggest buttons we could find and get a piece of string and make a
“button” spinner. As it spun back and forth faster and faster between our
hands, it would start to make a humming noise. Invariably, the string finally
broke and the rapidly spinning button would get the string all tangled up and
end up tightly wrapped around our hands. It just occurred to me that we should
have used some nylon fishing line from our grandfather “Guggie’s” tackle box.
That would have lasted much longer. However, the biggest drawback with that was
when it finally did break and tightly wrap around our hands and fingers, that
would have really hurt! Hmmm, maybe we did think of using that but used good judgment
and didn’t because we knew that would happen. On second thought, NAHHH!
Eventually we would have the inevitable
“button fights” which resulted in hundreds of buttons sown all over her house!
She never said anything about the mess and I don’t recall her ever making us
pick all of them up! WOW! Talk about being spoiled by our grandmother! We
always looked forward to going there to spend the day and/or night because we
could do about anything we wanted and not get yelled at as we did at home! I'm
really looking forward to my grandson coming for visits when he gets older so I
can spoil him. I could borrow the original "Grandma Tin Button Box"
that Tim now has and put my button collection in so he can throw them all over
the house if he wants to. (PSSST, Don't tell my daughter and son-in-law about
my "Spoiling Ethan Plans"! Keep your lips "buttoned"!) I'm
so glad that Tim now has the original.
It sure brings back many memories, indeed. I have some pictures of it
below. I could put all my buttons in the original "Grandma Button
Box" for a 3rd generation to play with! When my Grandson
gets little older, he could scratch his
initials under the ones from my Uncle Kenny and Wes Preston. I can see it now:
K.S. (1st generation)
W.P (1st generation)
E.T. (3rd generation)
I'm surprised that Tim and I never scratched
our initials on the top too when we were kids. Come to think of it, there's no
way we could have since no responsible adult would ever have allowed us
to have any sharp objects! Say, I could do it now! Well, maybe not because now
Ava won't let me have any sharp objects either! J
Excuse me for “button” in, but I guess
I’ve “button” holed you long enough, time to be finished with this “hole” story
before you hit the panic “button” and we start “button” heads. (I just can’t
resist can I!) I guess I'll have to "button" my lips...
