[CS-FSLUG] OT: 'Don't know if this is a true story or not, but I do like it!

[Fred A. Miller]

*My 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 who ever would listen that I 
was willing to learn to 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 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. There 
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 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 only gives three answers to prayer:

1. 'Yes!'
2. 'Not yet.'
3. 'I have something better in mind.'*

-- 
Liberals! "No one is so generous as he who has your savings
to give." ~ German Proverb

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