Wednesday, Dec 1, 2010A Holiday Story To Inspire You

My emotions are always busy during the holiday season. If I see someone down on their luck, it triggers my compassion and my generosity and I want to help them more during this season. If I see a child happily pressing her little nose to a store window with delight shining in her eyes, I become nostalgic with my own Christmas memories. When I see my mom doing her cooking preparations, hiding the cookies from the kids, my organizational skills kick in with To-Do Lists.

And what about you? What Christmas memories are there in your own mind that conjure up things past from the holiday season? Here’s a holiday story you might find inspiring.

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. 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 whoever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. The last place we went to was an old drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop 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 to baby-sit. 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 we knelt to say our prayers and thanked God for finding me a job.

I started at The Big Wheel. When I got home in the mornings, I sent the baby sitter home with one dollar of my tip money — 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 began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to and from work. One bleak morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, just those beautiful new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? 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 some old toys. 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.

When it was time for me to go home on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn’t wake up before I managed to 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, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car? When I reached the car I peered into one of the side windows.

My jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I opened the driver’s side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I found a whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! Inside another box were shirts to go with the jeans. There were candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham 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. 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. 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. ~ Author Unknown

I hope this holiday story will inspire you to create your own Christmas memories by doing for others this holiday season.