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The Button King

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BISHOPVILLE, S.C. -- This is a story about how one odd -- and seemingly crazy -- choice made in the middle of the night changed a man's path from obscurity to fame.

When you can't sleep at night nowadays there are any number of slumber inducing pills you can pop. There are gentle nighttime sound machines that wash over you and take your mind off the crickets in your head. There are meditation CDs and DVDs you can buy to help mitigate the anxiety keeping your eyelids open and your mind spinning.

But 30 years ago, when Dalton Stevens awoke one night in the South Carolina countryside he knew none of this. Night after night he awoke with no explanation. Night after night he wrestled with demons. His sleepless fits turned from nights into weeks into months and then years. When you live deprived of sleep for long enough your mind will start to play games on you. It can get downright silly. 

And so they did for Dalton. One sleepless night he decided that perhaps sewing would take his mind off of the emptiness. So he sewed. He grabbed his wife's tin full of buttons and started sewing them on a denim suit he had. In time he covered it with buttons of every color and size -- 16,000 buttons finished the job. 

He noticed the torture of being awake disappeared so long as he was attaching buttons to inanimate objects. It wasn't long before Dalton Stevens had covered all his clothes with buttons.  When he ran out of clothes he turned to gluing them onto other objects.

Years of sleeplessness, as you might imagine, meant nothing was safe from the man with the button habit. Hats, toilets, chairs, his guitar, the family car was next. And that's where Dalton's wife put her foot down. So he went and bought another car. (Actually, it was the hearse in which his mother's body was carried to its resting place, but hey, one crazy fetish at a time.)  He glued 600,000 buttons onto that hearse. It's weird, but magical looking. I'm not just saying that. It's a jaw dropper.

There were whispers in Bishopville whenever the man smothered in buttons happened into town.   Is it a gimmick or is he just plain nuts? That was the only question on everyone's mind.  In time people got their answer, it was neither. Dalton Stevens was as sane as the next person trying to cure insomnia. He wrote songs about his plight and strummed them out on his button-covered guitar for anyone who would listen: "Give me a bag of buttons, buttons are my bag..." and on he sang. People listened. And soon he became a cross between a sage and a mystical side show -- this wise old man covered in buttons, teaching people lessons in turning a negative into a positive.

Word spread town to town and before long Dalton Stevens had a new part-time job. Children would press their faces against schoolroom windows as he drove up in that hearse covered in buttons. As he stepped out of the magical button-mobile you'd first see a cowboy boot covered in buttons. And then a thin, leathered old man in a button suit from hat to toe.

Eventually, some newspaper photographer snapped a picture of him and his weird car and the legend was born. That photo and brief story splashed its way into newspapers all over the country. One day shortly after that Dalton's phone rang and his life would never be the same. On the other end of the phone the man said, "Dalton Stevens, Johnny Carson wants you on his television show!"

One fateful night Dalton walked out from behind that famous curtain in Burbank, Calif., and turned The Tonight Show upside down. The whole country fell in love with his disarming plainspoken Southern wit and his theme song about insomnia and buttons. It was a long, strange trip from torturous sleepless nights to worldwide fame for "The Button King." He could never have imagined that what started out as a late-night way to keep from going insane would bring him so far on yet another late-night on national television.

I met Dalton Steven decades after that wonderful night. He was singing to an enthralled group of elementary school children -- "Give me a bag of buttons, buttons are my bag." He hasn't lost his touch.

Enjoy our television version of "The Button King" and if you want to tour Dalton's Button Museum (Yes, he has a button museum), visit www.scbuttonking.com.

(Note: A large amount of traffic has caused the Button King's website to temporarily crash. You can learn more about the Button Museum by calling 803-428-3821, or visit the museum at 55 Joe Dority Road, Bishopville, SC 29010.)