Robert Button

I knew him as grandpa, but I really didn't know him. Now all that I have of him are some gag gifts he once got, a Miller High Life beer sign that he made, a miner's helmet (not to be confused with minor's), and an amazing yellow, tan, and white sweater jacket that he used to wear.

I'm fairly sizeable, I suppose, but I still have some growing to do if I am to properly fill it out. That is for certain. The thing is, I don't have any particular memories of him wearing it. When I found it, I remembered hearing in his eulogy that he was a sharp dresser. I wasn't too sure that this was evidence of that assertion, but I took it with me anyway. I came across it while my family got together to clean out the home built by my great-grandfather Gayle. Of course, we came across a LOT of intereting things -- too many to bear mentioning it all. Grandpa was truly a packrat in every sense of the word. He collected everything it seemed. There were license plates from pretty much all of the states and from different eras. He had golf balls everywhere, for he was an avid golfer. Coins, stamps, postcards, gag gifts, Playboys -- all of it had just accumulated over the years. Every room in the house, it would turn out, was just brimming with stuff. And so, when I came back for my first summer since leaving for college, I was most certainly expected to help clear everything out so that the home could be sold.

After several days of clearing things out, sifting through garage sale worthy items, and finding all sorts of manner of interesting photos and the such, hardly a dent had been made. It was truly a monumental task, in every sense of the word.

The home was in Middlefield, Ohio -- home to the third largest Amish settlement in America and known for its muenster cheese (the best damn cheese there is). Growing up in Parma though, roughly an hour and a half from Middlefield, the relationship that I had with the place was almost strictly on an Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas basis. It meant hiding away in the basement away from all the adults with my cousins -- getting bossed around by Jeff, playing pool, sneaking into the playboys, and solving the Rubik's Cube which revealed nudie pictures when solved correctly. We would all sit up on the bar and take turns playing the bartender, from where you could control the basement's stereo setup and radio (quite the ancient relic). The light switch cover was a golfer with an embarassed look on his face. Only when I was older would I draw the connection that the switch in the on position was meant to convey the allusion that the golfer had gotten out his wood, as it were. The quote bubble over the golfer's head read something corny like, "Old golfer's never lose their balls," or maybe it was "Old golfer's lose more than their balls," or it could have even been like, "Quit playing with my pecker you prick." OK, it definitely was not my latter-most suggestion, but I think we can all agree that it should have been. My appreciation for lewd behaviour and bawdy jokes does indeed have an origin after all.

There are so many things that seem vivid about that basement even today. A Norman Rockwell drawing hung on the wall. It was of an urban neighborhood experiencing an automobile driving down its thoroughfare for the first time in its history. Kids and adults alike were hanging out the windows and were amazed by the sight, as it noisily clattered down the street. Surprised housewives accidentally drop all manner of household items and flower pots out of trembling fear and fervent excitement. But perhaps they were just looking out of the drawing, trying to understand what all the commotion was about regarding us kids, working off a meal with a game of pool and still glowing from the fruits of our Easter egg hunt earlier in the day.

I had no idea that there was much more to the house. This ignorance was a natural consequence of spending so much time in the basement with the cousins or in the living room watching golf or football. The upstairs areas were normally a place where we did not venture too far. Irregardless of that, there was a room in the basement, directly next to where we spent most of our time that I had not even seen until we started cleaning the house out. There was no room to walk in there. We found a rifle, that no one seemed to know had even existed. All sorts of tools. Even more sex gag gifts. And junk...lots of junk. I found what looked like an old German military helmet. It had huge bullet holes going through both sides of it, most likely from the rifle we presumed and due to an afternoon of drinking with friends I hoped. I took it home with me, along with the same miner's helmet that I'm wearing in my profile pic.

One summer though, following my completion of the first grade, my mom flew home to the Philippines following the death of my lolo (which is Filipino kid-speak for grandpa), and she spent what seemed to be the entirety of my summer vacation in the Philippines. As a result, my brother and I were split up for the summer, and my dad was left to be at home by himself. Scott had the pleasure of staying in Middlefield with my grandparents. Apparently, one of my brother's first words was "ninety-nine" and because he was given to saying that quite a bit, my grandparents took to calling him "ninety-nine."

One of my favorite memories of my grandpa happened about that time. I tried to pull a prank on him. Now, I was very little at the time, and so it didn't amount to much. He had some of his friends over, and they were all out on the driveway in front of the garage sitting in their lawn chairs. The driveway was slick, and I got the idea to try to sneak behind him and then hide behind his back while he turned to see me. And he played along with it. He said, "Who's that? Who's that?" as if there were any other mischevious young children around that day. But I wasn't paying any attention and in shuffling about to stay behind him, I immediately slipped onto my ass once I stepped back onto the pavement. The joke, as it should be, was on me.

I got shifted around from place to place that summer. I got to stay for a couple weeks at a family friends' condo out on Candlewood Lake, where I learned how to fish and how to repair broken G.I. Joe's using only a lighter. I stayed for a couple days in Middlefield, but then got handed off to stay with my aunt and uncle out in Akron, which was deemed to be more to my liking because I could spend time with my cousin Sara, who is very close to me in age. But I think now, maybe I would have preferred to have stayed in Middlefield, where I could have explored the deep recesses of the attic and the upstairs' closets. I'm sure the immensity of it was lost on me because I really didn't get to see it until I was much, much older. I think also, that my brother was too young to appreciate it.

And so, when I came back home for the first time, only one week since moving into Wabash and on the occassion of my grandfather's funeral, I didn't fully realize what I was walking into or what I would be saying goodbye to. I wish I knew my grandfather beyond the anecdotes, memories, and things. But it was the moment there at the funeral home, when I saw him for the last time, that I realized that I actually came from somwhere and that there is something that I will grow into. It was that sublime feeling of the largeness of fate and the consequence of time, seemingly catching up to you.

For now though, at least I've got that yellow sweater jacket to fill into and a hardy miner's helmet for my head just in case I'm in danger.