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 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 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. There were the truckers,
Les, Frank, and Jim, and 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, 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 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
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 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....