SHORT
STORY
Christmas at the Hacienda Café
I
woke up on a cold December morning in the year 1941 with seven hungry kids and
a driving snow storm outside, six cents in the match box, and their father
gone. My boys ranged from three months to seven years; my only daughter was two
years old. Their dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.
Whenever they heard his wagon wheels crunch on the gravel outside they would
scramble to hide under their beds with the older boys running to safety out the
back door. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings,
but no dollar a week to buy groceries.
If
there was a welfare system in effect in southeastern Idaho at that time, I
certainly knew nothing about it.
I
scrubbed my younger kids until they looked brand new and then I put on my best
homemade dress, loaded them into my old hay wagon, harnessed up the two tired
looking old sorrow work horses, and went to town in search of a job, the storm
still raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts.
The
eight of us stopped at every factory, store and restaurant in our small town.
The kids stayed “crammed” low below the side boards of the wagon and tried to
be quiet while I tried to convince whoever would listen that I was willing to
learn or do anything. No luck. I had to have a job. The last chance to get a
job on the way home was the La Hacienda Fine Dining Café, a melting spot for
locals located on the corner of State Street and Oneida. Ed Jackson had bought
the building from a local Taxidermist. He spent nine months remodeling it. The
manager of the Iris Movie Theater in town presently the "Worm Creek Opera
House Grand" helped Ed use horse hair and plaster on the walls. He and a
local lady upholstered the booths. Ed Jackson used a fine sand and gravel mix
for the floors. He hand painted the table and chairs he bought from a going out
of business sale.
I stepped down
from the wagon with a worried look on my face and went inside. I asked Ed if he
could use any help. He studied me, and the wagon, his eyes rolling back and
forth said nothing for a full twenty seconds. He peeked out of the window at
all those kids.
“Need a job? Yu
say?" Another long, thoughtful pause while massaging his goatee. Finally
Ed spoke, “I could use you to clean up and care for this place 7am to 4pm.” He
said he could pay five cents an hour and I could start tomorrow. I thanked him.
That was the biggest blessing in the world and I started to cry as I left the
café. I jumped up onto the seat of my wagon and my two sorrow work horses took
off for the barn, facing a head wind, running as fast as they ever went, it's
called racing for the barn on the road to Egypt.
I pulled the cord
on my telephone, turned the dial to three rings, lifted my finger and Sister
Darnel Peterson answered on the third ring. She lived a half mile away in a
small one room newly white washed house that had many years before been a
storage grainer. I bargained with her to come to my place for ten cents a day.
She could arrive when the older kids were leaving for school and I was leaving
for work.
This was a good
arrangement for her, so we made the deal. That night when we circled the
kitchen table and knelt to say our prayers, I thanked God for the blessings he
has restored on my family. And so I started
at The La Hacienda Fine Dining. When I got home at five pm I sent the
baby-sitter home with ten pennies of my tip money—fully half of what I averaged
every day. As the days went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage.
The tires on the old wagon had the consistency of penny balloons and began to
leak, more so because the road was gravel. I would have to fill them with air
on the way to work and again in the evening before I could go home.
One bleak fall
early evening, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in
the back of the wagon. New tires! There was no note, nothing; just those
beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in the land of Zion?
I made a deal
with the owner of the local Chevron Service Station. In exchange for mounting
the new tires, I would clean up his office and service bays. I remember it took
me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to change the tires.
I was now working
six days instead of five and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was only three
days away 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 the day before
Christmas, the usual customers, the regulars, sat around, talked, walked in an
out all that day. The Oneida County trooper Captain Wes Gold berry, Les, Frank,
Jim, were having small talk and coffee. A few musicians were hanging around
before going to play at the “Bloody Bucket”. A couple of guys were dropping
nickels in the noisy pinball machine. I was told to leave early because it was
Christmas Eve and the café was closing its doors at three. I left a little
after three, and to my amazement, my old hay wagon was filled full to the top
of the side boards with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly stepped up on
to the driver's bench turned around facing the beautifully wrapped packages.
Reaching down, I pulled off the lid of a box. Inside was a whole case of little
blue jeans, sizes two-ten. 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, pudding and Jell-O, 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, a ceramic
jar with twelve dollars and seventy-nine cents, and more.
I drove back
through the street, as the sun was slowly setting on the most amazing Christmas
Eve of my life. I was sobbing with gratitude. I will never forget the joy on
the faces of my precious little ones that morning.
Yes, there were
angels in Preston Idaho, and they all hung out at the Hacienda Café. DR. KARL
WALLACE D.D.S.
