If you visit Kevin and Wendy Button's home in the Wheatland section of Muhlenberg Park, don't ever expect that they'll invite you into their family room.
Better yet, to be on the safe side, don't even mention the words "family room" to this nice couple. They might just turn on you.
Perplexed? Well, you should be. But there’s nothing to be worried about. There is an issue of semantics, to be sure. But there is no doubt about the warm hospitality of the Buttons.
They may shoot down the verbiage of family room, a space commonly found in circa-1980s homes like theirs. But they understand the importance of a gathering area where memories can be made for all family members as well as their friends.
A Rec Room
So if you know Wendy and Kevin, you know they just love their rec room. Yes, rec room. The expansive basement space is filled with the accoutrements, accessories, décor, and furniture marking an era half a century past.
Kevin and Wendy, solid Gen Xers born in the early 1970s and coming of age in the excessive 1980s, really seem like throwbacks to their parents’ Boomer generation. They like old arcade games, admire vintage vehicles, and just love Lucy.
And when you sit on one of the overstuffed couches in their rec room and look around, it’s pretty clear they live what they say.
Staring you in the face is a very young Tony Curtis touting the advantage of Van Heusen button-down dress shirts courtesy of an old Saturday Night Post advertisement.
Old beer cases stamped with vintage names and logos like Ortlieb’s, National Bohemian and Koehler’s are stacked on the diagonal in some corners. These were salvaged from a project in Wyomissing on which Kevin’s firm, Rainbow Roofing Co. Inc., was working. The space above what is now Slick Willy’s “was filled from floor to roof with the empty cases and bottles,” Kevin says.
Roaming through the Fifties
You might just think you’ve had one too many of those vintage brews when you eye a couple of Roamer Tours brochures.
A 1950 ad centers on a four-day Independence Weekend trip to Niagara Falls replete with round-trip bus fare, two meals daily, hotel stays, a boat ride under the falls, and a steamer trip to the Canadian town of Niagara-on-the-Falls all for the grand total of $63.50 per person. Just a few years later, Roamer offered a five-day round-trip to Chicago with hotel, meals and attendant excursions for a slightly heftier $68.50.
Nearby the Roamers’ ads is another vintage ad of a young Burt Lancaster offering a smiling testimony for Whitman’s Samplers. It’s an especially sweet one for Wendy – it is from August 1953, the very month when Wendy’s mom, Diana Schaeffer, a classmate of this writer, came into the world pretty much smack in the middle of the Boomer years.
The Roamer ads provide a glimpse into the economics of the early 1950s; the variety of memorabilia, some vintage, some reproduction, does the same.
Also on display are two auto ads with the press releases that accompanied them, one for a 1955 DeSoto and the other for a 1955 Dodge with an innovative “new control panel” to shift gears. Kevin is especially fond of these and the visceral connection to the bygone day they represent.
“It has tangibility to it,” he says, pointing to the Dodge press release sent from the Dodge Press Bureau via Grant Advertising in Detroit. “What you see right here went out across the country and so many people saw it.”
Coca-Cola – It’s the Real Thing
There are a variety of metal signs and trays, reproductions from a Cape May, N.J., store the couple loves to shop. The trays feature everyone from Lucille Ball to popular products of the 50s and 60s. Among those products are vintage sodas: Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and, of course, Coca Cola.
It is another Coke product that really attracts a visitor’s attention: a shiny red Coca Cola cooler at the far wall.
The cooler, or chest as Kevin calls it, was located on the back porch of a friend’s old farmhouse in rural Berks. They found it during the years they were members of the local PT Cruiser Club around 2001. Yes, the Buttons coalesced with a group of like-minded Berks Countians who loved the Chrysler vehicles reminiscent of vehicles of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
“Yes, we had PT Cruisers then, but not anymore,” Kevin says.
But the old Coke chest would prove to have more staying power despite its weathered condition.
“It had shotgun holes in it and was a rusty mess,” says Wendy.
But it was clearly an authentic Coke cooler and the Buttons knew they just had to have it.
So Kevin lugged it to his workplace and it became an off-hours project that many of his colleagues would share.
“The sheet metal guys started repairing or replacing panels, depending on the extent of damage,” he says. Part of that effort was a careful rebuilding of the iconic Coca-Cola raised logo.
Some parts were either not rebuilt or not reconstructed to the original design – one side of the insulated lid is a case in point. But with a careful fold-over, that’s tough to spot unless the Buttons point it out.
An auto paint shop restored the color of the chest to the shiny Coca-Cola red trademark hue. “It’s not perfect, but it looks pretty good,” says Kevin.
All in the Family
The collective effort behind the cooler makes it all the more special a keepsake for the couple, but the really important pieces are family pieces, objects that evoke childhood memories for the Buttons.
An aqua chair and Black Knight pinball and slot machines that belonged to Wendy’s grandfather, Alvin Schaeffer, are positioned near the bar. Her Schaeffer grandparents first resided in the Cherokee Ranch section of Muhlenberg, later moving to Riverview Park.
Just a few feet away is a gorgeous red-and-white enamel and chrome kitchen table that belonged to Kevin’s grandparents who also lived in Riverview Park.
The old kitchen table saw a lot of use in its day. He recalls watching his grandmother use it as a place to fold clothes. His grandfather would take little cups and plant seeds. The sprouting of the seedlings was always a joy to see, Kevin remembers.
The new chrome chairs, very much like ones that may have originally accompanied the table, have their counterparts with the bar stools that rest on a black-and-white block linoleum floor. The bar boasts a full-sized modern refrigerator, but vintage canisters and an old bread box integrate the style of a 1950s kitchen.
Oldies and Goodies
And what would a rec room be without music?
There’s a juke box to take care of that, loaded with some of the best songs of the era the Buttons love.
“In my house, music was huge,” says Kevin. “It was all about the 1950s and 1960s. I loved Happy Days and American Graffiti and watching those helped reinforce my love of that music.”
If music is not a favored thing, the Buttons are making sure there’s plenty of vintage reading material.
Two Muhltohis, the Muhlenberg Township High School yearbook, one from 1951and the other 1957, rest on the side table next to the couch. In the latter, they point out a handsome young athlete who would go on to teach both their parents and themselves at Muhlenberg.
On the lower shelf are little brochures of the day from civic clubs and fire halls. There is also a 1959 Reading directory, which provides a bit of fun exploring who lived here at the time and how the area has grown as well.
But Kevin’s proudest vintage literary acquisition is a Carpenter Steel Corp. “Working Data Manual” signed and dated on May 18, 1954, by a number of Carpenter executives. The technical book appears to be a prospectus of sorts explaining the process behind the company’s stainless and heat-resistant steels to prospective buyers. The manual is in pristine shape and says much about the precision specialty alloy work of Carpenter.
Kevin keeps an eye on eBay for the 50s and 60s items he loves as well as Berks-centric items.
“I have to say that eBay can be addictive,” he says. “I’ll look at something and all of a sudden it seems 10 other people are interested. I say to myself: ‘I have to have it.’”
Twice is Nice
The Button’s current rec room is actually their second.
The couple’s first home following their marriage was on Boeshore Circle just off Tuckerton Road in the northern section of Muhlenberg Township, where they resided until 2005.
It was there that their passion for collecting items and recreating the era really took off. With a nod to the iconic Arnold’s Drive-In in Happy Days, Kevin installed diner booths in that basement. When the couple moved to their bigger digs, the booths stayed behind.
Wendy grew up pretty much entranced with the entertainment of her mother’s girlhood. Whether it was Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, or The Dick Van Dyke Show, she was often as much of a fan as her mother had been a generation earlier.
“Back then, when we grew up, there were only 13 channels and some showed a lot of reruns,” says Wendy, “and usually there was one TV in the house so what Mom said to watch, we watched.”
The homes on these shows had a familiarity with their own surroundings. Cherokee Ranch homes were the sort of Berks County equivalent to the Levittown of Long Island, small bungalow or Cape Cod-type homes that lured city folks to the suburbs in the post-World War II days. And, like many, Wendy’s and Kevin’s parents were among those taking the next step and building homes in the booming mid-1960s as Riverview Park developed.
And in those homes were the newfangled rec rooms that became synonymous with the Boomers’ youth. Often wood paneled, they were a more casual alternative to the formal living room. The linoleum floors were made for dancing, and the location in the lower level of the house provided some escape for the teens and put some distance between the rest of the house, the phonograph, and the rock’n’roll blasting from it.
The term rec room actually got its start in 1850s England. Back then, based on some literary examples, it was a large common space in institutions, most commonly hotels, used for entertainment and social gatherings.
In private homes over the centuries, gathering rooms bore the name of parlor, drawing room, living room, den, and then, finally, rec room and family room. Rec rooms were also known as rumpus or ruckus rooms. And, indeed, for the Boomer generation ruckus was certainly part of the experience.
All in for Muhlenberg
The Buttons are as committed to Muhlenberg as they are to their vintage rec room. The children and grandchildren of township residents, they’ve never wanted to live anywhere else. “We just love Muhlenberg,” says Wendy.
“We know it’s changed a bit over the years, but it’s home to us and we hope our kids will decide to stay here, too,” says Kevin. The couple has two daughters, Shelby, 18, and Madison, 13.
If Muhlenberg is indeed changing, there is one local institution that has endured over the years, as important to subsequent generations as it was to the Boomer children when it was the new place in town. That place is Schell’s, the quintessential snack bar, ice cream parlor, and miniature golf complex, which first opened its doors in 1952.
“As long as Schell’s is here, we’re okay,” says Wendy with a smile.
By Donna Reed | Photos by John A. Secoges
