The Big Wheel

[Squishy0405]

Another one collecting dust from last year in my email...I didn't delete the aftermath, pray & send along or you will feel guilty! message

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 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, 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, to my 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, crawled 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
hole 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.
Amen.

I picked more than four, so can you.

[inkrose115]

If only the woman spent less time thanking god and more time thinking of the nice human beins who helped her out.

[We'veBeenHad]

Aside from the tagged-on junk at the end (which I'd wager wasn't written by the author but added later) she only thanked God for the job; it really isn't preachy. She seems to fully acknowledge that the benefactors were the people from the truck stop and she was heartily grateful. Of course I don't know if it's a true story, but it could happen. I had similar, if lesser, things happen when we were young and struggling with small children. Maybe I'm getting sappy, but I didn't find it to be an annoying glurgy story, really.

[Mouse]

Yeah, I kind of have to agree. With the exception of the "Pass it on or you're a heartless puppy-eater" tag at the end, this glurge wasn't too bad.

[queen of the caramels]

Originally Posted by Squishy0405

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. {snip}

When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes.

Jim" Okay Frank , Have to P@###s off home now. But I have some food left in the back of my truck!"

Les " Shoot. I have some clothes and c&*p toys.'

Frank" Hey Trooper Joe, that beat up Chevy, can we dump our s&^t in it?"

Joe" Go ahead , I'm towing it tomorrow!"


This is how you got the gifts.

Originally Posted by Squishy0405

I picked more than four, so can you.

Actually I only have 2 close friends I have e-mail addresses for. One is currently getting all snopes rebuttals and the other never replies to me after getting the rebuttals

[inkrose115]

Originally Posted by Mouse

Yeah, I kind of have to agree. With the exception of the "Pass it on or you're a heartless puppy-eater" tag at the end, this glurge wasn't too bad.

Although why people feel the need to wreck cute and heart warming stories by adding on this sort of crap I shall never know.

[TrishDaDish]

Truck Stop A-CHOW

That chain letter is still going around, I received it yesterday morning for the second time - and that's including the Big Wheel Angels in Indiana story.

The first time I got it was a year ago, it was titled "I Picked You" - and minus the story, but contained all the twisted religious exploiting crap. I screamed then, and screamed now as well.

The story might be okay if it wasn't part of a chain letter. The fact that it and others keep getting forwarded, circulating continuously, to turn up in one's inbox again and again over the years is enough to want to reply back with a wav or mp3 file of nails scratching on a chalkboard!

As for the crapola that got tacked on to this one, that deserves a stiffer punishment like some sort of wake-up call.

I wish some angels would answer my prayers and kill it already!

[DawnStorm]

And I thought this would be about the toy a friend of mine had when I was a child.

[Arts Myth]

Originally Posted by Squishy0405

When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to my 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, crawled 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
hole 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.

Thank-you, Chrisco!

[Agent 99]

Originally Posted by Squishy0405

... There was hole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. ...

I hope all those supplies didn't fall out!

[Halfmad]

This one ain't so bad, but it did occur to me that maybe she should get the door locks fixed on her truck.