I believe this will Bless someone today, it is quite long but worth it, Be Blessed!

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 tyres 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 home-made dress. I loaded them into the rusty old car and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town. Nothing. 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 nothing.

The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old drive-in that had been converted into 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, eleven 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 who babysat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pyjamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement for 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 Mummy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.

When I got home in the mornings I woke the babysitter 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 meagre wage. The tyres on the old car 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 autumn morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tyres on the back seat. New tyres! There was no note, no anything, just those beautiful brand new tyres. 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 tyres, 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 tyres.

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 left 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 Christmas morning.

Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boy's trousers, 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 dropping nickels into the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked until the wee hours of this 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 had managed to get home, 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 light ? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what.

When I reached the car I peered through warily through one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered car was filled to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's door, scrambled inside and knelt 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 were sweets and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enourmous ham for baking, canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and jelly and biscuits, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful doll.

As I drove back through empty streets while 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.