In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies
and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone..
The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.
Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.
Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they
would scramble to hide under their beds.
He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries.
Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings,
but no food either.
If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that
time, I certainly knew nothing about it.
I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my
best homemade dress. Loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy
and drove off to find a job.
The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our
small town. No luck.
The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I
tried to convince whomever would listen that I was willing to learn
or do anything. I had to have a job.
Still no luck. The last place we went to, just a few miles out of
town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted
to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel.
An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the
window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on
the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She
paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night.
I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat
for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa
for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and
the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good
arrangement to her, so we made a deal.
That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we
all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the
Big Wheel.
When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent
her home with one dollar of my tip money--fully half of what I
averaged every night. As the weeks went by, heating bills added
a strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had
the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak.
I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every
morning before I could go home.
One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and
found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, no
nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires.
Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered.
I made a deal with the local service station. In exchange for his
mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it
took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for
him to do the tires.
I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't
enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for
toys for the kids.
I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some
old toys. Then hid them in the basement so there would be something
for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning.
Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on
the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.
On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the
Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a
state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging
around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the
pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked
through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home
before the sun came up.
When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas
morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake
up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the
basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a
small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was
still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some
dark shadows in the car-or was that just a trick of the night? Something
certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached
the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw
dropped in amazement.
My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all
shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side door, crumbled
inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was
whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside
another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I
peeked inside some of the other boxes. There was candy and
nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous
ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes.
There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour.
There was hole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items.
And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.
As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the
most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude.
And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.
....Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December..
And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop....
THE POWER OF PRAYER.
God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar.
You maybe going through a tough time right now but God is
getting ready to bless you in a way that only He can.
Keep the faith.
Let's continue to pray for one another.
Here is the prayer:....
Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and email buddies reading this right now.
Show them a new revelation of Your love and power.