Angels,
Once in a While
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
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 cleaning 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
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