Angels Among Us
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 the little
ones and I knelt to say our prayers we all said our
thanks 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.
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!.
Please send this to all of your friends .
Everyone needs to be reminded there angels among us. It
makes life much easier to deal with.
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