The Big Wheel
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 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, 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 a 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 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 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, to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with
boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly
opened the driver's side door, crawled inside and kneeled in the front facing
the back seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was 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 was 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 whole bags 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....
THE POWER OF PRAYER. I believe that God
only gives three answers to prayer:
1. "Yes!"
2. "Not yet."
3. "I have
something better in mind."
God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar. You maybe going through a tough time right now
but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.
My instructions were to pick four people that I wanted God to
bless, and I picked you.
Please pass this to at least four people you want to be blessed
and a copy back to me.
This prayer is powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive.
There is no cost but a lot of rewards. Let's continue to pray for one another. Here is the prayer:....
Father, I ask you to bless my friends, relatives and email buddies
reading this right now. Show them a new
revelation of your love and power. Amen.
I know I picked more than four, so can you.