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Angels In Indiana
"A Christmas Story"
"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 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 couldstart
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 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. 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.
From
Deborah Jean Smith
Phoenix,
Arizona
August 2002
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