Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen
by Bob Greene
from Harper Paperbacks
Millions of American soldiers, many of whom had never left their hometowns before, crossed the nation by rail during the years of World War II on their way to training camps and distant theaters of battle. In a little town in Nebraska, countless thousands of them met with extraordinary hospitality--the "miracle" of veteran journalist Bob Greene's title. "The best America there ever was. Or at least, whatever might be left of it." So Greene writes of North Platte, now a quiet town along the interstate, its main street all but dead. It was a quiet town then, too, at the outbreak of the war, but still a hive of activity as its citizens gathered to provide, at their own expense, coffee, sandwiches, books, playing cards, and time to the scared young men who rolled through by the trainload, "telling them that their country cared about them." Greene's pages are full of the voices of those who were there, soldiers and townspeople alike, who took part in what amounted to small acts of heroism, given the shortages and rationing of the time. Greene, generous in his praise if rather disheartened by the modern world, against which he contrasts the past, turns in a remarkable account of the home front. It deserves the widest audience. ---Gregory McNamee
In search of "the best America there ever was," bestselling author and award-winning journalist Bob Greene finds it in a small Nebraska town few people pass through today—a town where Greene discovers the echoes of the most touching love story imaginable: a love story between a country and its sons.
During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains en route to their ultimate destinations in Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town, wanting to offer the servicemen warmth and support, transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen.
Every day of the year, every day of the war, the Canteen—staffed and funded entirely by local volunteers—was open from five a.m. until the last troop train of the day pulled away after midnight. Astonishingly, this remote plains community of only 12,000 people provided welcoming words, friendship, and baskets of food and treats to more than six million GIs by the time the war ended.
In this poignant and heartwarming eyewitness history, based on interviews with North Platte residents and the soldiers who once passed through, Bob Greene tells a classic, lost-in-the-mists-of-time American story of a grateful country honoring its brave and dedicated sons.
Going West!: Quilts and Community
by Sandi Fox
from D. Giles Ltd.
Going West: Quilts and Community Along the Trail reveals the essential role that quilts and the making of quilts played in the lives of women on the frontier.
A Prairie Populist: The Memoirs of Luna Kellie (Singular Lives)
Old Jules (Third Edition)
by Mari Sandoz
from Bison Books
Nebraska: Under a Big Red Sky (Great Plains Photography)
by Joel Sartore
from Bison Books
The Expansion of Everyday Life, 1860-1876
by Daniel E. Sutherland
from University of Arkansas Press
The Blizzard Voices
by Ted Kooser
from Bison Books
Upstream Metropolis: An Urban Biography of Omaha and Council Bluffs (Bison Original)
by Lawrence H. Larsen
from Bison Books
Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (American Lives)
by Ted Kooser
from University of Nebraska Press
In the end, what makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, or baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood. This writer is a seer in the truest sense of the word, discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, the deep beneath the shallow, the abiding wisdom in the pithy Bohemian proverbs that are woven into his essays.
A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha (Nebraska)
by David L. Bristow
from Caxton Press
Most folks consider Omaha, Nebraska, a quiet, laid-back city in America's heartland. It wasn't always that way. In the nineteenth century, the town had a different sort of reputation. David L. Bristow tells the story of "the other Omaha."
"If you want to find a rogue's rookery, go to Omaha..." it is a "fitting subject for the prayers of a nation." Kansas City Newspaper, 1873
Rudyard Kipling was both fascinated and appalled by the town.
But scores of settlers, bullwhackers, gamblers, politicians, prostitutes and confidence men saw the future in it. Omaha, grew from a speculative scheme in 1854 to a booming city by the turn of the century. Along the way, there were scores of great stories, many of which Bristow includes in "A Dirty, Wicked Town". All the stories are true-they only read like fiction.
+++
