BOB GREENE'S E-T-T-S MOMENTS.
Newspaper columnist Bob Greene recently recognized that the people of North Platte, Nebraska, knew what to do when a few buses of hungry troops enroute from training to their base were passing through.
He previously documented the World War II canteen in Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. Book Review No. 7 will suggest that there are two themes at play in the book.
The first theme, which was more easily done just after the turn of the current century, was the recollections of canteen volunteers, railroaders, and the G.I.s who stopped off. The origin of the canteen would be hokey if somebody in Hollywood produced it: local residents were under the impression that a train-load of Nebraska National Guard, having been mobilized after Pearl Harbor, would be passing through North Platte on Christmas, and perhaps they would appreciate some extra food and good cheer enroute to their next duty station.
A trainload of Kansas National Guard arrived. The people who put the Christmas treats together decided that Kansans could also use some cheering up; and the treats were duly shared around.
On their own volition, the organizers then decided being able to provide some small treat (coffee, birthday cake, pheasant sandwiches, boiled egg) to each G.I. passing through (and there were a lot of troop trains in those days) might be a neighborly thing to do. Note: this became a purely community effort, with people from up to a hundred miles away participating as the volunteers, or as pheasant hunters, or sandwich makers, or cake bakers, contributing their own foodstuffs (from their own farms, or using their own ration coupons to acquire supplies, or stretching the ingredients through the use, for instance, of pheasant egg in the lemon meringue) or their own money. The Union Pacific were able to provide a heads-up that a troop train was on the way, using code phrases, but their in-kind contribution was otherwise limited to a waiting room in the passenger station; and neither state nor federal tax moneys were appropriated for the effort. The canteen continued after Victory and through demobilization, closing at the end of 1 April 1946.
Sixteen soldiers on a regular passenger train arrived just as the final crew was cleaning up. The pot of coffee those ladies made for after went to those soldiers instead.
The second theme is Mr Greene's encounter with contemporary small-town life, which changed utterly once the geniuses of infrastructure laid out the Interstate Highways around the settlements, rather than through them in the manner of the Lincoln Highway, National Road, or Route 66. Thus his first encounter with North Platte was at one of the chain hotels two miles from downtown, along Interstate 80.
That's how most people encounter small communities these days, it's possible to go from coast to coast without seeing a traffic light, or a local eatery.
The rumpus room area of the new Tru by Hilton hotel recognizes a number of local attractions and mentions the Canteen. Yes, it's possible to nose around or to plan a trip for Nebraskaland Days or the State Fair, to the east at Grand Island. Or, it's just background, check in late, sleep, push on the next day.
Years ago, I recall gaps in the Interstate Highways, perhaps at the instigation of local merchants who could see what would happen once all that traffic-light-avoiding Happy Motoring would be at best five miles from their stores. There was a notorious stretch missing from Interstate 24 southeast of Nashville in the late 1960s that I can't help but suspect was to keep as many people cruising past a strip of firework stands as practicable. The more forward-looking merchants, though, would figure out a way to take advantage of the space near the interchanges outside town, perhaps for a chain hotel or bun-n-run joint, or perhaps for a locally themed attraction.
The canteen was possible at North Platte as that was a scheduled servicing stop for all Union Pacific trains, perhaps with the Omaha based-crews replacing or being replaced by Cheyenne-based crews. Mr Greene was startled to discover the world's largest railroad freight yard west of the old downtown. That "Golden Spike Tower" refers to a visitor center that one of those enterprising merchants set up, just outside railroad property, to look at the proceedings in the freight yard.
Closest to the camera: three yard trimmers at work pulling sorted cuts of cars out of the eastbound hump yard for assembly into trains; a stack train that only gets inspected and sent on its way, the sorting of containers being done more easily with container lifting devices elsewhere; a hump trimmer about to go to work on the westbound side. Westbound trains push back to the east to be sorted on the hump, the better to take advantage of the generally down-sloping to the east that is true of all Nebraska.
Mr Greene professed surprise at finding this yard here, comparing it with a secret O'Hare or Hartsfield out in the country. Memphis, which is the Federal Express sorting hub, might make a closer analogy, as it's possible for a passenger to use Memphis either as terminus or to connect without encountering Federal Express. North Platte, by comparison, moves a lot more tonnage using a lot less space than any airport, whether devoted to cargo or to passengers.
The Canteen site itself is now, apart from a small memorial, a vacant lot.
Mr Greene was dismayed that there was so little by way of a monument, and that the site was a gathering place for transients. The Sunday I was there was hot and any down-and-outers probably had somewhere else to gather. In the distance, one of the freight trains the hump trimmers assembled awaits its crew and clearance to the east.
Until Amtrak took over, North Platte served the last of the Union Pacific City of ... streamliners, and a mixed train to South Torrington, Wyoming, on what is now part of the Powder River coal lines was still running. Afterward, the company was rich enough to be able to tear down all the former passenger stations, thereby reducing the property tax bill (and more than a little of that property tax money going to cover the operating deficit of the airport and to make the 10% match on Interstate Highway funding possible) and at the same time obliterating any trace of the Canteen.
The closest thing to a Canteen for those road-trippers is the only Starbucks in a hundred miles each way.
That's the standard-issue newspaper rack; I doubt that many copies of either the Times or the Journal have been sold from it. A local resident told me that the habit among residents is to use the online ordering application to pre-order a treat before hitting the highway, as the lines are often long with those motorists getting the only taste of cosmopolitan normality possibly between Denver and Omaha.
Mr Greene concludes with a few recollections of life during Depression and War: in some ways better, in many ways not as good, as contemporary living is.
(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)
He previously documented the World War II canteen in Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen. Book Review No. 7 will suggest that there are two themes at play in the book.
The first theme, which was more easily done just after the turn of the current century, was the recollections of canteen volunteers, railroaders, and the G.I.s who stopped off. The origin of the canteen would be hokey if somebody in Hollywood produced it: local residents were under the impression that a train-load of Nebraska National Guard, having been mobilized after Pearl Harbor, would be passing through North Platte on Christmas, and perhaps they would appreciate some extra food and good cheer enroute to their next duty station.
A trainload of Kansas National Guard arrived. The people who put the Christmas treats together decided that Kansans could also use some cheering up; and the treats were duly shared around.
On their own volition, the organizers then decided being able to provide some small treat (coffee, birthday cake, pheasant sandwiches, boiled egg) to each G.I. passing through (and there were a lot of troop trains in those days) might be a neighborly thing to do. Note: this became a purely community effort, with people from up to a hundred miles away participating as the volunteers, or as pheasant hunters, or sandwich makers, or cake bakers, contributing their own foodstuffs (from their own farms, or using their own ration coupons to acquire supplies, or stretching the ingredients through the use, for instance, of pheasant egg in the lemon meringue) or their own money. The Union Pacific were able to provide a heads-up that a troop train was on the way, using code phrases, but their in-kind contribution was otherwise limited to a waiting room in the passenger station; and neither state nor federal tax moneys were appropriated for the effort. The canteen continued after Victory and through demobilization, closing at the end of 1 April 1946.
Sixteen soldiers on a regular passenger train arrived just as the final crew was cleaning up. The pot of coffee those ladies made for after went to those soldiers instead.
The second theme is Mr Greene's encounter with contemporary small-town life, which changed utterly once the geniuses of infrastructure laid out the Interstate Highways around the settlements, rather than through them in the manner of the Lincoln Highway, National Road, or Route 66. Thus his first encounter with North Platte was at one of the chain hotels two miles from downtown, along Interstate 80.
That's how most people encounter small communities these days, it's possible to go from coast to coast without seeing a traffic light, or a local eatery.
The rumpus room area of the new Tru by Hilton hotel recognizes a number of local attractions and mentions the Canteen. Yes, it's possible to nose around or to plan a trip for Nebraskaland Days or the State Fair, to the east at Grand Island. Or, it's just background, check in late, sleep, push on the next day.
Years ago, I recall gaps in the Interstate Highways, perhaps at the instigation of local merchants who could see what would happen once all that traffic-light-avoiding Happy Motoring would be at best five miles from their stores. There was a notorious stretch missing from Interstate 24 southeast of Nashville in the late 1960s that I can't help but suspect was to keep as many people cruising past a strip of firework stands as practicable. The more forward-looking merchants, though, would figure out a way to take advantage of the space near the interchanges outside town, perhaps for a chain hotel or bun-n-run joint, or perhaps for a locally themed attraction.
The canteen was possible at North Platte as that was a scheduled servicing stop for all Union Pacific trains, perhaps with the Omaha based-crews replacing or being replaced by Cheyenne-based crews. Mr Greene was startled to discover the world's largest railroad freight yard west of the old downtown. That "Golden Spike Tower" refers to a visitor center that one of those enterprising merchants set up, just outside railroad property, to look at the proceedings in the freight yard.
Closest to the camera: three yard trimmers at work pulling sorted cuts of cars out of the eastbound hump yard for assembly into trains; a stack train that only gets inspected and sent on its way, the sorting of containers being done more easily with container lifting devices elsewhere; a hump trimmer about to go to work on the westbound side. Westbound trains push back to the east to be sorted on the hump, the better to take advantage of the generally down-sloping to the east that is true of all Nebraska.
Mr Greene professed surprise at finding this yard here, comparing it with a secret O'Hare or Hartsfield out in the country. Memphis, which is the Federal Express sorting hub, might make a closer analogy, as it's possible for a passenger to use Memphis either as terminus or to connect without encountering Federal Express. North Platte, by comparison, moves a lot more tonnage using a lot less space than any airport, whether devoted to cargo or to passengers.
The Canteen site itself is now, apart from a small memorial, a vacant lot.
Mr Greene was dismayed that there was so little by way of a monument, and that the site was a gathering place for transients. The Sunday I was there was hot and any down-and-outers probably had somewhere else to gather. In the distance, one of the freight trains the hump trimmers assembled awaits its crew and clearance to the east.
Until Amtrak took over, North Platte served the last of the Union Pacific City of ... streamliners, and a mixed train to South Torrington, Wyoming, on what is now part of the Powder River coal lines was still running. Afterward, the company was rich enough to be able to tear down all the former passenger stations, thereby reducing the property tax bill (and more than a little of that property tax money going to cover the operating deficit of the airport and to make the 10% match on Interstate Highway funding possible) and at the same time obliterating any trace of the Canteen.
The closest thing to a Canteen for those road-trippers is the only Starbucks in a hundred miles each way.
That's the standard-issue newspaper rack; I doubt that many copies of either the Times or the Journal have been sold from it. A local resident told me that the habit among residents is to use the online ordering application to pre-order a treat before hitting the highway, as the lines are often long with those motorists getting the only taste of cosmopolitan normality possibly between Denver and Omaha.
Mr Greene concludes with a few recollections of life during Depression and War: in some ways better, in many ways not as good, as contemporary living is.
(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)