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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 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 forthe kids. I found a can of red paint and started
repairing and painting some oldtoys. 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 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, 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 nutsand 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....
THE POWER OF PRAYER. I
believe that God only gives three answers to prayer:
1. 'Yes!'
2. 'Not yet.'
3 . 'I have something
better in mind.'
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 you cannot imagine.
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