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. I had to have
a job
If there was a
welfare system in effect in Oneida County 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 sorrow
work horses, and went to town in search of a job, a raging storm the thick snow
blowing in gusts.
I stopped at every factory, store and
restaurant in 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. The last chance to get a job on
my way home was the La Hacienda Fine Dining Café, a melting spot for locals, on
the corner of State Street and Oneida.
Todd
Pritchard had bought the building from a local Taxidermist. Todd spent nine
months remodeling it. The manager of the Iris Movie Theater presently the
"Worm Creek Opera House Grand" helped Todd use horse hair and plaster
on the walls. Todd and a local lady upholstered the booths. Todd then used a
fine sand and gravel mix for the floors. He hand painted the table and chairs
he had bought in Idaho Falls 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 Todd 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 he
spoke,
“I could use you
to clean up and care for this place 7am to 4pm. I can pay five cents an hour you
can 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 in a 1 1/4th mile. It's
called racinthe
As soon as I arrived home, I pulled the
cord on my telephone, turned the dial to three rings, on the party line lifted
my finger and Sister Jensen answered on the third ring. She lived a 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 wagon to go home and found
four new tires in the back of the wagon. 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. It
took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did 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. 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, canned
vegetables, potatoes, pudding, 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.
-3-
I road home, as the sun was slowly setting 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 kids that morning.
Yes,
there were angels in Preston Idaho, and they all hung out at the Hacienda Café.
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
