This is another story I got in my email today. I've read it in a "Chicken Soup" book, so its true! How neat!! Get those tissues out!
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. 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 alled 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
thestreet that baby-sat for people. I
bargained with herto 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 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
filled 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 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 a whole bag of laundry supplies
and cleaning items. And there were five toy
trucks and one beautiful little doll.
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