Pay it forward.

Angels in Indiana

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 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.

I BELIEVE IN ANGELS! They live next door, around the corner, work in your office, patrol your neighborhood, call you at midnight to hear you laugh and listen to you cry, teach your children, and you see them everyday without even knowing it!

Author Unknown

I didn't write the above. It's been passed to me several times in my email and I don't know whether it's really true or not and I don't care.

Last year, around this time of year, I received a Christmas card in the mail. I opened it up and to my surprise, $250 fell out into my lap. The card was signed "Friends who care." I have no idea who sent it and no one has fessed up to it but I kept the card and donated some of the cash to the Sarcoma Alliance, some to the American Cancer Society and the rest went for our holiday dinner. I've never forgotten it and one of the things hardest about receiving that envelope is that I couldn't thank who sent it and tell them what receiving it meant to me at one of the lower points in my life. I'm a cancer survivor, diagnosed last year. I survived treatments and a long and involved surgery and that's usually something I don't like talking about here because I deal with it so much in my normal life. The card itself, anonymously signed was gift enough. Today, a package came in the regular mail. Since I had everything I ordered online, I had no idea what this package was or who it came from. When I opened the package, there were gift cards and gift bags for all three of my children and for me with a note. This time the perps signed it, a long list of 25 -30 names who all pitched in and sent me and my kids a little extra for the holiday. To my Co-workers at AT&T, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for that. And since I can't send you all something for Christmas, I am vowing to pay it forward.

I got into a discussion a few weeks ago with a close friend of the family about Christianity and would God damn a non-Christian to Hell. She said "Yes" I vehemently disagreed. Not all of the folks who signed their names on this package were Christian. Jesus said, Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me" That implies that Jesus is in all of us, the Jew, the Hindu, the Muslim, and the atheists. Regardless of your religion, if a Non-Christian helps a Christian wouldn't it stand to reason that based on Jesus's words, he is doing unto Him? Is that not the "Way" to the Father? Are we not all capable of being Earthly angels? They really are all around us, there when we don't expect them, and always on time.

To my friends, have a Merry Christmas, a Happy and Blessed New Year, and Pay it Forward in everything you do.