“Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen” Bob Greene

I’m not exactly sure when I read this book, but there is a good chance that I finished it in 2008. I expect it took me several years to finish it. I kept picking it back up, but only read a few chapters each time. It is the kind of book you can do that with.

I like reading about World War II, but not in the sense of reading about the battles and politics of the war, but instead I like to read about how people’s lives were affected by the war. The Holocaust is a large part of what happened leading up to and during the war, and I have read the usual books about that, “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” “Schindler’s List,” “The Hiding Place” and others. I think it is important that we remember the Holocaust, but the war touched so many lives in many ways. One theme of my reading in the past three years has been to read about the lives at home during the war. “Once Upon a Town” describes the impact of the war on a small town in the center of the U.S. and the impact that town had on many soldiers lives.

This week I am driving from Indianola, Iowa, to Bellingham, Washington, and I find that there are many memories for me in the towns I pass through. Since 1992, I have traveled across Nebraska many, many times. Werner and I used to take a sleeper bus to Denver each Thanksgiving to ski in Colorado. We would usually stay awake until Grand Island and then put up the bunks and sleep the rest of the way, or slept the best we could in the cramped quarters of the berths. I have driven van loads of students across Nebraska on our way to Denver or Taos to participate in service activities. In a 15-passenger van pulling a 10-foot trailer, I have driven through 4 inches of snow between North Platte and the Colorado border. Seven years ago I took secondary roads through Nebraska and camped at the Nebraska National Forest (seems almost an oxymoron) as I wended my way to Fairbanks, Alaska.

For this trip to Alaska, I am on the interstate and staying in hotels. I need to meet the ferry this Friday, and although I would rather be driving the secondary roads and camping, I need to make time and March is too early for camping this far north. My first night of the trip was spent in North Platte. The plan was to make at least 400 miles each day, no matter how late I got started, and the first 400 miles of the trip landed me in the town of the Canteen. In Greene’s book I read of the incredible hospitality that the people in and near North Platte gave the servicemen who passed through their depot on their way across the country. Mom always said to expect the best of people because you generally get what you expect. I don’t know if I was really expecting the same level of hospitality 70 years later, but I have to admit the people of North Platte really made me feel at home, from the motel clerk to the waitress who served me breakfast. Considering it was a snowy day after months and months of snow, I really appreciated the homey atmosphere.

“Once Upon a Town” is a typical historical account of an event that lasted for a couple of years. Greene interviewed people who worked in the canteen and soldiers who had visited there. The train only stopped for a few minutes in North Platte, but in those few minutes the soldiers were served sandwiches, chicken, coffee, cakes, you name it. These were all made and donated by the local people and served by the women and girls of the town. Food and volunteers came from all over. The young men who were met with this hospitality were deeply touched by it. Many of them had never traveled far from their homes before and there were getting ready to travel overseas and preparing to fight and possibly die for their country. I can’t imagine the emotions they were going through as they left their families for the first time, and here was an oasis in the middle of the country, where women and girls reminded them of their mothers and sisters back home.

As with many books of this type, this book started out strong but was maybe 30% longer than it needed to be. Each chapter provided new interviews, but after awhile it seems that the stories were the same from chapter to chapter. I have found this with many nonfiction books, and this book lacked an overall story that unfolds little by little in each chapter. In retrospect, I would have been happy reading the first two-thirds of the book. On the other hand, in those first two-thirds I was never far from the tissue box because the stories were that touching. In my reading journal I wrote, “I found this deeply moving - the things that people can do when they put their mind to it.”

I was disappointed to find out that the Lincoln County Historical Museum, home of the Canteen exhibit, is only open from May 1st to September 30th. I wanted to relive the reading of the book, and possible shed a few more tears, by seeing the exhibit. I am sure that seven years from now, like the locusts, I will be back and maybe that time the museum will be open.