The Big Wheel

This one is long but a great one!

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. 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 whoever 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 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,
and 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 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, crumbled 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."

God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar. You may be going
through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless you in
a way that you cannot imagine.

My instructions were to pick four people that I wanted God to bless, and
I picked you.

Please pass this to at least four people you want to be blessed and a
copy back to me.

This prayer is powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive.
There is no cost but a lot of rewards. Let's continue to pray for one
another. Here is the prayer:

Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and email buddies
reading this right now. Show them a new revelation of Your love and
power.

I know I picked more than four, so can you.