Angels, Once in a While

(author unknown to me)

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-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!. Send this to someone you
think is an angel!