Touching Christmas story

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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 who ever 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 t hat 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 t he 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 andfound

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 inIndiana ? 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 I 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 th ey would be too far gone to repair.

On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big

Wheel. There 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 hoursof 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, to my 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, crawled 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 whole 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....