Angels, at the
truck stop
by Author Unknown
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 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 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 to the top with
boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side
door, crumbled 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.
