I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just seventy-five 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 fifteen dollars a week to buy groceries. Since he left, there were no more beatings, but there was 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 attempted 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 was several miles out of town. It was an old root beer barrel drive-in that had been converted into a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel.
A lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone to work on the graveyard shift, which was 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. She paid sixty-five cents an hour and said I could start that night.
I raced home and called the teenager down the street that babysat 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. I averaged $2 in tips each graveyard shift. I'm not complaining; I was deeply grateful to have a job to buy food for my children.
As the weeks went by, heating bills began to add another strain to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again on the way 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 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 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.
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 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. I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.
Yes, there were small miracles in Indiana that long-ago December. They hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.
Simple Miracle: No matter how low your bottom, a way out is always revealed. Unexpected miracles happen all the time. Keep doing the right thing and you'll begin to see your own daily miracles.
