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 dollars 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. I 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 and 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 another 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 owner of 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 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 full — full to the top with boxes of all
shapes and sizes.
I quickly opened the driver's side door, scrambled inside and
kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I
pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was a 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 were 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 a 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.
— source unknown
Have you been a secret angel to anyone in need?
Did you give for the praise of men or the praise of God?
Being Action Oriented
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says.”
