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 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 to check on 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 me and the little ones 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
take 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 in December. And they all hung out at the Big
Wheel truck stop.

I BELIEVE IN ANGELS! They live next door, around the
corner, work in your office, patrol your neighborhood, call you
at midnight to hear you laugh and listen to you cry, teach your
children, and you see them everyday without even knowing it!.
Send this to someone you think is an angel!