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 dollars 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 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 and 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 another 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 full--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 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. 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.

--Barb Irwin