The Big Wheel/ For all my wonderful friends

[Guest guest]

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 / Goddess 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

knelt 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 hole

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....

 

THE POWER OF PRAYER. I believe that God / Goddess 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 / Goddess 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:....

 

God / Goddess, 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.

Blessed Be

 

I know I picked more than four, so can you.

 

 

[Guest guest]

Yeah, wasn't life full of lovely fairy

stories back when we had real bona fide

deserving widows and orphans instead

of people thinking maybe Welfare

wasn't such a bad idea?

 

Ien in the Kootenays, tongue firmly in cheek

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