A Blessing for you all

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

I send this to each and every one of you. We all need each other and this has

been a great group of people that I have been fortunate enough to know. God

bless you all!!!!!!!!!

T. (Ohio)

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 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 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,

, 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 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 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 hole bag of laundry

supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy

trucks and one beautiful little doll.

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. God still sits on the

throne, the devil is a liar. You maybe going through

a tough time right now but God is getting ready to

bless you in a way that only He can. Keep the faith.

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.

[Guest guest]

I want to say thank you for the wonderful story. Sometimes we forget,

so caught up in our own woes how blessed we really are.

Theresa

> Hi all,

>

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[Guest guest]

That was a very touching story!

Thanks for sending it our way.

Angie in SC

" The happiest of people don't necessarily have the

best of everything; they just make the best of everything that comes along

their way. "