Angels In Indiana
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 little ones and I knelt to say our
prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job.
And so I stared 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 rock. 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 I 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.
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